Words Matter

Yesterday, Massachusetts' version of Easthampton had a Pride Ride, an event promoted by local All Bodies on Bikes maven Jacob. I'd joined last year and appreciated the family and everyone else friendly atmosphere, even lending a hand and a pocket knife to help unsnarl streamers from a kiddie trailer, and there are lots of kiddies on these rides. That seems to soften the impact of a ride that takes the full lane and stops motor vehicle traffic at intersections. I prefer that feel over Critical Mass, which I don't dislike.

I'd liked the ride enough last year that yesterday I arrived a half hour early for the volunteer orientation in the hope I could help out a wee more officially this time. We had lots of helpers, so I was placed in the role of "jelly", someone who would meander through the group, checking in on people, directing anyone in need to someone who could truly help, and more generally trying to promote an open, friendly atmosphere. Yes, I'd prefer if my role had the title of "floater," but I'm weird and would actually revel in the other connotation.

Volunteer orientation concluded with everyone introducing themselves and their pronouns, the latter which has presented me with some struggle. My degree is in English, so words matter to me. Their importance justifies my four years of education. The problem is, words are used by people who are wonderfully imperfect, so meanings, overtones, and undertones shift over time. Let's start with sex. See, that word now can have a new meaning and lots of extra bagage while it once simply referred to the type of reproductive equipment a person had, or dangly bits, as I like to call them.

Over time, sex came to mean intercourse, the act of reproduction, which, in case you somehow were miraculously unaware, is a subject oddly taboo for being so necessary to the continuation of the species. With sex becoming a subject and word people avoided from discomfort, gender started to take its place, but gender covers either more or less, depending on your perspective, than biology. Gender's definition more fully entails society's expected behavior from a person with particular dangly bits. Men don't wear pink.

I have male reproductive parts, like wearing pink, and don't like society dictating how I should behave. I'm comfortable having a sex, a luxury I know isn't true for all, but I'd really rather not have to fulfill any gender role, and that, technically, is what picking pronouns entails. So, society, or at least part of it, has adopted "they" as a gender neutral response to the pronoun question, and I hope to strongly support people who choose it. But remembering that English degree? It means I'm not comfortable adopting a plural pronoun for little old singular me. I'd feel like I would also have to start referring to myself with the royal we!

So, a year ago, with probably another year of contemplating and trying responses before that, I arrived at a response which gives all parts of me, including the precise fake-engineer with an English degree bit, satisfaction: "I haven't chosen pronouns for myself, so I'll answer to anything that makes you comfortable." I like that, and when I used it yesterday in my most gender sensitive environment so far, I was pleased to see it receive an approving nod from Jacob.

Words matter! We are verbal creatures and the use of words has a real impact on how those around us feel, and the complexity of language means intending to convey one idea can result in an entirely different one being heard. On the plus side, complexity also means we can communicate complex ideas. Lately, I'm been musing with the question of what if the entirety of human laguage consisted of one sound, say, for example, "beep," and people had to transmit everything they wanted to say through that one sound? That's not a box in which I want to live!