Who Owns Pronouns Anyway?

Was just reading about another idiot millennial who doesn’t just have custom pronouns, but now has different pronouns depending on whether you, the speaker are “cis” or not.

Which got me thinking, “Why are people being allowed to define their preferred pronouns at all?” Pronouns are used when the speaker is talking to someone about a third party. So long as there’s no confusion between the participants of the conversation, the pronouns should be acceptable, and are none of the third party’s business.

So if I was talking to RetiredGeezer and said, “That DaveinTX got all Twitterized and now he doesn’t blog at IB anymore,” both RG and I understand who “he” is, and DaveinTX doesn’t enter into our choice of pronoun. In fact RG and I could use a number of substitutions for “he.” For example:

“that loser”

“that traitor”

“that guy with soft hands and an easy touch”

If Dave was in the room, he could object to our choice of references, but he should have no authority to dictate how RG and I converse.

But in today’s twisted world, of course, he has exactly that authority.

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