Beyond the Looking Glass

This is our life. Or, is it their life? His life?

It’s amazing what a slight change of pronoun can do to a sentence. Where once there’s an all-inclusive ‘we,’ suddenly an ‘I’ walks in and ‘they’s’ the responsibilities onto others. Oh, it’s not so bad when the ‘we’ congratulates an ‘I’ for something ‘he’ did, and asks ‘them’ for help. But, when the ‘me’ takes a problem and ‘we’s’ it into everyone’s lives, ‘you’ might not feel as charitable.

‘I’ personally don’t think that many speakers know the power of pronouns, thinking that ‘they’ can throw ‘our’ words around willy-nilly. ‘They’ have the power to include or exclude who ‘they’ choose with one word.

Just think: “Welcome to ‘my’ school!” sounds proud, if not possessive. But, change it to ‘their’ school, and it has a twinge of exclusion or judgment. ‘Our’ school excites feelings of patriotism, whereas ‘your’ school has a trace of force behind it.

It’s just words, right?

It’s never just words.

Imagine what would happen if a ‘she’ became an ‘it,’ or a group became a ‘they’ which then became a ‘that.’ As soon as words leave ‘our’ mouths, ‘they’ are no longer harmless collections of ink or unformed thoughts. Words, specifically the ones ‘we’ use to label others, stratify and consequently nullify healthy relationships. ‘We’ can be a collected sigh of contentment, or a trap that forces a group of people to believe and ascribe to the same ideologies. ‘They’ can be an acknowledgement of differences, or a way to ostracize the unwelcome—the ‘them’ to an elusive ‘we.’

Or, what about when a ‘they’ becomes nothing more than an object of hate—an ‘it’ or a ‘that’? Once words blanket humanity, it’s easier to disregard validity.

Have ‘you’ noticed that when a speaker wishes to undermine a person, ‘they’ will never say ‘she’ or ‘he’? If the speaker knows ‘their’ pronouns, ‘their’ rhetoric, ‘they’ will say ‘that woman’ or ‘that man’ or even generalize more until the opponent is ‘that liberal’ or ‘that conservative.’

Pronouns have the power to place placards onto people, dehumanizing ‘them’ until viewers see nothing but what a word ultimately is: indifferent ink riling up specific feelings from those who choose to read.

Is ink truly indifferent? Are words nothing more than a collection of symbols placed strategically onto a page?

Or, is it possible that something as simple as a pronoun can decisively determine how a reader evaluates a person’s humanity? ‘I’ don’t think it takes much imagination to realize that speakers and writers are the true movers and shakers of the world, that with a single click of a pen, monsters come to life, villains purged. It doesn’t take much warning to realize that the words selected for a page are the products of an idea, a specific way of thinking.

Words are meant to be interpreted. Words are meant to be a jumping-off point for readers to imagine a new world of thought. Words are in ‘our’ hands as soon as ‘they’ leave a writer’s fingertips, which means that ‘we,’ (and ‘I’ do mean ‘we’) have a responsibility to look through the filters and see what’s really going on—which pronouns are favoring who, and for what reason.

So, ‘I’ advise ‘you’: watch out for the pronouns. ‘They’ can be deadly.