Perhaps someone among the blogger cognoscenti can fill me in on an interesting phenomenon I've lately observed as I browse the blawgs of law students and young(erthanme) lawyers. This is the increasing use of the word "em." I've deduced that this is supposed to be a gender-neutral third-person pronoun, but I remain mystified as to its origins and skeptical of its worth.
I agree that a unitary gender-neutral term may be preferable to s/he or he/she or similar terms. And I suppose the idea behind the proliferation of "em-ing" is that as more writers use this construction, it will become ingrained in the lexicon. Perhaps someday, we will treat "em" as the English equivalent of the French third-person-neutral "on" (which does double duty as "we" as needed).
And yet, I find it terribly distracting, and it has a certain jarring resonance to my uninitiated ear. If we must be in the business of arbitrarily creating words, can't they be pretty ones, at least?
Thus, I now open the comment box to alternative proposals for a gender neutral, third-person singular pronoun. To start the ball rolling, I offer you this rather obvious one: shizee.
I love shizee! But seriously, that wouldn't work either. "I spoke to Judge X today, and shizee told me that shizee was not pleased with the motion I had submitted to shizee earlier."
I wonder if it's my blog that prompted this post by you. Probably. My last post is filled with annoying em's, and I agree with you: they're grating on the eye and they read like crap. I don't like 'em. (He he, pun intended!)
As far as its origins: I wanted a gender-neutral way to write my posts, and I didn't want to use "he/she" over and over again (that's even more grating). So I googled the issue and found a few websites specifically referring to "em", among other terms. Since I remembered "em" was used often on Greedy Associates, I just went with that. I'm all ears to other suggestions!
Posted by: UCL | April 05, 2004 at 06:36 PM
I just started noticing this recently. Maybe because I'm not used to it, but I find it quite distracting too. But, hey, if it works, I guess...
Posted by: monyca | April 05, 2004 at 08:29 PM
I'm right there with you. Change the gender to protect the innocent, if you must, but don't make me listen to a ridiculous word. Just tell me you may or may not have switched genders and then proceed with the story using "he" or "she." I don't care which, but constantly reminding me with this artificial word that you're trying to hide something from me -- essentially, that you don't trust me with your stories -- is off-putting.
Posted by: scheherazade | April 06, 2004 at 07:18 AM
I'm afraid Scheherazade's suggestion won't work from the perspective of an anonymous blogger.
It's an anonblogger thing, you wouldn't understand.
Posted by: UCL | April 06, 2004 at 08:53 AM
Thanks to UCL for the illuminating post re: the origins of "em." But I don't like any of the others better, because (as I said in the post) they are so unfamiliar to my ear as to jar. I'm still fond of shizee (I actually like your example, UCL -- it has a certain poetry to it). But as Schehezerade says, this whole neuterizing of the pronouns seems an effort to hide yourself (I think, as does she, more than your subjects) from us. Then again, as you point out, we "known" bloggers can't fully comprehend the subterfuges of the anonoblogger.
Posted by: mad | April 06, 2004 at 09:04 AM
Thon.
Posted by: Matthew | April 06, 2004 at 10:06 AM
Huh. And to think that I went to Vassar, even, and missed this one!
Posted by: mad | April 06, 2004 at 10:11 AM
I like "em" because it so nicely dehumanizes those whom I discuss (who aren't all that human anyway, so not much is lost). ;-)
Posted by: Katherine | April 07, 2004 at 04:58 AM
Regarding the "em" thing, the problem with UCL's offering is that shizee only uses the nominative "shizee" (he/she), but in the sentence shizee offered, some of the pronouns should have been in the objective case ("him/her"). Since I have no idea what the objective case form of shizee is, I will make it up myself, and suggest the following edits to UCL's comment: "I spoke to Judge X today, and shizee told me that shizee was not pleased with the motion I had submitted to shimer [say shihMUR] earlier." Does this help? Probably not!
Posted by: mom | April 07, 2004 at 11:35 PM
There's a perfectly useful pronoun used by those of us older than 40 - the hypothetical and subjunctive "one" - in the case of the judge, refer to the person by tilte - "judge"
Posted by: Badger | April 09, 2004 at 11:00 AM
Hi, Madeline, My Trackback elf has apparently taken the holiday weekend off. So I wanted to point over to my posting on this topic at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethicalesq/#a1192 .
Posted by: David Giacalone | April 10, 2004 at 01:18 PM
I've been trying to get che going as a he/she replacement no luck, but it does sound like an english word, and flows naturally.
Posted by: Kevin | December 15, 2004 at 12:51 PM