A good thing about writing for a weekly paper is that you have a little leeway before the next deadline. The challenge is that the deadline is several days before the paper comes out and that makes it tricky when the big news for the week (or maybe, in this case, for the century) is happening as the paper is being printed, mailed out and otherwise distributed to the readers.

For me, writing my monthly “op ed piece” (as some call it), ignoring THE LATE BREAKING NEWS for this particular issue is akin to ignoring the elephant (or perhaps the donkey) in the room. As I write, I don’t even know which pronouns to use in describing our new President! So… I’ve decided to concentrate on the pronoun situation instead.

Your preferred pronouns?

Increasingly, I receive correspondence signed with a name followed by parentheses enclosing the sender’s choice of pronouns. And, each time I’ve visited a doctor recently, I’ve been asked for my own pronoun preferences. Curious about what my choices might be, I went to Google and then to a variety of university, medical, and dictionary sites. Perhaps the most definitive thing I learned is that The Oxford English Dictionary is still considered the best authority, bar none, for English usage.

I wish I could report to you in twenty-five words or less what I learned about pronouns. Mainly, I was reminded that in contrast to most other Indo-European languages, English does not retain grammatical gender and most of its nouns, adjectives and pronouns are therefore not gender-specific. (Got that?) By some that is considered disrespectful and many see it as favoring male dominance in language and in society in general. I also learned that among pronouns being offered for modern times are co, en, ey, she, he, yo, ze. xe, xie, they. And that’s just for starters, depending upon which site(s) you look to for examples

It took less than a nano-second for me to revert to my 39 years as a primary teacher. Typically, I had 1st/2nd/3rd graders together and taught in a more-or-less ungraded fashion. When kids were ready, regardless of the time they had been in school, they moved ahead. Generally, pronouns were introduced at second grade level, but truth-to-tell most kids — even those whose home language was not English — were using pronouns correctly from the get-go. On the other hand, there weren’t choices as to “binary” or “non-binary” or probably a lot of other techie pronoun stuff.

As I pondered some of the considerations in today’s pronoun choices, I couldn’t help wondering about the appropriate grade levels for teaching those once-familiar parts of speech. Will seven- and eight-year-olds already be cognizant of the pertinent pronoun choices for themselves? Or will the choosing become a rite of passage like baptisms and bat mitzvahs and marriages? Pronoun usage won’t be an issue with our new president whoever that turns out to be. At least not this time around.

But wait!

Truth to tell, becoming a teacher was never on my priority list, even though in those days it was one of the top three career choices for women — right up there with nurse and secretary. But not for me. When I graduated in journalism from Stanford, my goal was to work in the newsroom of a Bay Area newspaper. I managed to get interview after interview. And rejection after rejection. Add finally it was suggested that I take a business course in shorthand and perhaps I could find a job on the “other” — the business side — of the paper (as opposed to the editorial side.)

Which makes me wonder. It was 1957. Did I get those interviews based on my name, “Sydney’? In those days, Sydney (whether spelled with a ‘y’ or an ‘i’ was an unusual name for a woman; most often it was considered a man’s name. And then… when they saw me, was I rejected because I was not the young man they expected? I wonder if anyone ever suggested to a person whose pronouns were “he” and “him” that he take shorthand?

So… I went back to college and “changed courses” so to speak, earning an elementary school teaching credential. After all. most school districts in the Bay Area were offering equal pay for high school and elementary teachers by then — even though most men were hired for high school positions (and traditionally had been paid more.) So, would I have saved myself a lot of grief had I stated my pronouns right up front? No newsroom interviews. No thwarted expectations. But maybe no teaching career… “Water under the bridge” now, but informative when you consider the pronoun choices (and challenges) of today.