zmeydros
patreon
Pronouns In English: Why Paitishek use “She”
🕑 Added 2018-09-05 04:13:31 +0000 UTC
Our most common language only has one set of third person pronouns for sentient beings centered around the base pronoun, "keb." When we we first watched English broadcasts, we were struck by the assumptions people made based on pronoun usage. We knew what was going on, definite gender roles based on biological sex.
Modern human gender roles had evolved quite a bit past the black and white female/male system. But in most cultures, the first born sons were favored. Even in cultures that had shifted, the entrenched favoritism of the past had left a mark.
To us, this imbalance was a humanitarian issue. We had eradicated those types of gender roles and replaced them with a new system because of our religious beliefs.
There was a cost associated with this. Many of our traditions fell apart. For instance, we had functions that different genders fulfilled. One gender would tend to parents when they aged while the other would focus more on children.
One of my great great grandmothers died homeless and alone just before we'd figured out how to end aging. It was right after gender roles were thoroughly obliterated. Her offspring kept themselves busy fighting over whose duty it was to care for her while she deteriorated. Millions of elderly people shared her fate. It took decades for this and other fallout to be accounted for.
As we were preparing for first contact, the captain of our ship had us vote. Would we use "he/him/his," "she/her/hers" or a new set of pronouns as our default in English? During the first round of voting, "he/him/his" was knocked out of the running.
During the second round of voting, two-thirds of us voted for "she" pronouns. Why was this?
The most revered quality in our society is a nurturing sort of empathy we call giishai. Giishai is empathy that extends to nature. For us, an added quality that goes with nurturing is protecting.
The concept of giishai became part of our global consciousness due to a multinational environmental campaign. It was desperate attempt to change our culture when our oceans experienced a massive die off. The gist of it was that if we could have empathy for our planet in addition to ourselves, we would ascend as a people. That we wouldn't become yet another race contributing to the Fermi Paradox.
It was the right campaign at the right time. My great grandmother Miidae told me that the movement really upset corporations because it caused gigantic protests of corporate headquarters.
Then, the oceanic die off worsened and stoked the movement into a fervor. Riots broke out where people shut down factories.
As a result of this cultural background, the traditionally feminine qualities appealed the most to us. We wanted to be associated with the same history of empathy and stewardship that the pronoun "she" called back to. We thought it was the exact sort of association we wanted when humans thought of us.
Mother earth. Gaia. Conceptions of the planet as a living web of things had notes of mothership. Beautiful femininity.
Only later did we realize that buying into the distinction between "he" and "she" we had helped perpetuate it. Many of us now use singular "they" as their pronoun. And others use pronouns like "xe" and "ve."
Our default use of "she" has had a couple positive effects.
1. It has offset the deficit caused by the default English pronoun for a human being "he."
2. We've helped to decouple "she" from what sexual organs a person has due to our hermaphrodism.
I feel as though, "she" fits me. It's possible that this is just because I'm used to it. But, I'm not sure how to untangle that, so I'm going to stick with it for now.
What pronoun fits you best? Let me know in the comments.
