Thursday, August 28, 2008

Who do they think they are?

When I was a child it was common to be ticked off for using the word she

She is the cat’s mother. Use her proper name

This mystifies me still

But perhaps some atavistic objection to the pronoun partly explains why, before the 1970s wave of feminism, most people were happy that, linguistically speaking, the male embraced the female

The pronoun which I should like to see banned is they

Not in a simple everyday sense: “Where are the children?” “They are in the garden”

It is the they who are not us which upsets me. They who do things which people like us would not dream of doing. They who are they just because they look like, share a skin colour or a nationality with, someone who has done something we deplore

The they who have only one identity

Who perforce share all the qualities or characteristics which we assign to their community