While honouring people’s preferred pronouns, we’ve begun to neglect forms of formal address. Perhaps we need a rethink
Referring to people by their preferred pronouns has come to be seen by many people, at least in Western societies, as mandated not merely by manners but also by morality. People include their pronoun preferences in their email footers and declare them on name badges. Those who do not announce their preferences often have these solicited.
What typically goes unnoticed is that this trend is in tension with another social development, namely a move to greater informality in addressing and referring to people. Instead of considering whether adults, for example, are comfortable being addressed by their first names by strangers or children, informal modes of address are increasingly simply assumed.
What are we to make of these trends? Are they really in conflict? And should a commitment to pronoun preferences carry with it greater consideration for preferences between formality and informality?
The trend towards greater respect for pronoun preferences is not uncontroversial, but the best reason for using people’s preferred pronouns is simply that it is better, all things being equal, to refer to people or to address them in accordance with their preferences. That is why we call some people William, and others Will, Willy, Bill or Billy. That is what politeness requires.
Of course, all things are not always equal, and presumptions can sometimes be defeated. If my student’s preferred (second-person) pronoun is ‘Your Royal Highness’, I am under no obligation to address her that way. Arguably, the reason why the presumption is defeated in this case is that my (hypothetical) student is deluded. If she is not a princess in some royal family, I am not required to participate in her delusion that she is.
Words, including but not only pronouns, have a gender rather than a sex
There are those who think that the same reason – delusion – also applies to some pronoun preferences, for instance, for gendered third-person pronouns. In the view of these people, males who prefer female pronouns or females who prefer male pronouns are deluded, and we have no duty to encourage such delusions. I do not share that view because it is entirely reasonable to understand pronouns as attaching to gender rather than to sex. The traditional distinction between sex and gender is that sex is a biological category, whereas gender is a social one. Thus, somebody might be biologically male but have psychosocial attributes that are feminine. Similarly, biological females can have a masculine gender. Put another way, males should not be required to be masculine, and females should not be required to be feminine.
The view that pronouns attach to gender rather than to sex is more concordant with linguistic terminology, which refers to words, including but not only pronouns, as having a gender rather than a sex. Moreover, words are described as being ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ (or ‘neuter’) rather than as ‘male’ or ‘female’ (or ‘intersex’).
Compare the pronoun trend with the decrease in formality. It is curious, that while some societies have become increasingly concerned about respecting people’s pronouns, they have been moving in the opposite, less respectful direction when it comes to other ways of addressing or referring to people. There was a time, not so long ago, when children and even younger adults would not have presumed to be on a first-name basis with those old enough to be their parents or grandparents. Similarly, strangers would not presume the familiarity of a first-name basis – at least not immediately. Many people now have no such compunctions.
Because some people prefer the previously dominant convention of greater formality, the steady change of the convention toward familiarity may be in tension with the practice of respecting people’s preferred pronouns. If we should refer to people using the pronouns they prefer, and we should do so precisely because they prefer those pronouns, how can it be acceptable to ignore other preferences for how one is referred to or addressed? The question is arguably most pressing for ‘progressives’ and liberals, who are much more likely than conservatives both to defer to pronoun preferences, and to assume familiarity in address and reference.
One answer is that preferences to be referred to or addressed by a title are like my imagined student’s preference to be addressed as ‘Your Royal Highness’ in that such preferences all presuppose a hierarchy with associated delusions of grandeur. According to this view, the more egalitarian convention of familiarity is the better one.
We need to distinguish between objectionable and non-objectionable power differentials
However, there are at least two problems with this view. The first is that it confuses moral equality with other forms of equality. One can think that we all matter equally, without thinking that students and their teachers, for example, are or should be social equals. Many are quick to recognise such inequality if students and their teachers have (even consensual) sexual relations. We are then very quickly reminded about power differentials. If people are unequal in that sense, then it may be unreasonable to pretend otherwise.
Perhaps it will be objected that preserving a unidirectional more respectful form of address only reinforces power differentials. Here we need to distinguish between objectionable and non-objectionable power differentials. It is wrong when power is distributed on the grounds of sex, race or ethnicity, for example. If there were a convention for women to address men respectfully, while men called women by their first names, that would be a convention that should quickly be subverted. But the convention that differentiates between children and adults, or students and teachers, is not of this kind. Here social differentials are often unavoidable. If teachers are as ignorant and inexperienced as their students, we have not attained some ideal state of affairs.
The second reason is that, even if one thinks everybody should be on a first-name basis with everyone else, there are still constraints on how we ought to reach that goal. Conventions do not change in an instant. While conventions for deferential reference still persist to some extent, there is significant scope for particular instances of familiarity to be seen, with good reason, as disrespectful.
There are still such conventions. For example, many schoolchildren address or refer to their teachers using a title. Even more people are not on a first-name basis with their parents, instead using ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ or some variant of those. But if a child refers to his teacher by title, how does it make sense to assume first-name familiarity with, for example, the teacher’s spouse or the teacher’s former teacher? If you are not on a first-name basis with your parents, who are not only familiar but also familial, how can you presume to be on a first-name basis with unfamiliar adults even older than your parents?
So, while some of those who prefer to be addressed more formally – just like some with pronoun preferences – may be self-absorbed and narcissistic, this need not be true of them all. For some people, it is not that they think they are special. Instead, they wonder how arrogant the upstart must be to presume a first-name basis with any person so much older or more experienced than they are. That is not an unreasonable interpretation when the convention still exists to some significant extent.
Thus, if one is committed to bringing about more familiar forms of address and reference, there are appropriate and inappropriate places to start. For example, it is one thing to invite others to address one informally, and quite another to presume familiarity with those whose preferences may differ. For example, having your children call you by your first name is very different from teaching them to call you ‘Mommy’ or ‘Daddy’ while you obliviously imply that even older adults are to be referred to by their first names. But those older adults’ preferences might be different from your own. If pronominal preferences count, then other preferences for reference and address do, too.
