[lit-ideas] Re: The Serpent's Club
- From: "Mirembe Nantongo" <nantongo@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 16:13:07 -0500
A worthy individual at http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/faq.html has spent a
great deal of time on the great GNP (gender neutral pronoun) question and
proposes several different solutions, illustrating each with the same
imaginative passage (below). If you don't mind feeling like Gollum you may find
that the following one of several proposals has some merit:
Try using the gender-neutral pronouns formed by turning the plurals of
"they/them/their" into singulars, just dropping the initial "th":
Subject: ey; object: em; possessive adjective: eir; possessive pronoun: eirs;
reflexive: eirself or emself.
A person was down at the river bank withdrawing some polliwogs for eir
froggery, when ey heard branches snapping nearby, and saw a creature creeping
towards em from out of the forest. Its eyes had a gleam in them that made em
think of all the fierceness of a salad, its nose resembled asparagus, its skin
was white and bumpy like cauliflower. Ey fell backward in terror, and it
stopped, a monstrous menacing mound of mobile vegetables. More crashings were
heard from the forest, and two more creatures appeared above em on either side.
The first creature spoke, in a quiet voice, and its breath smelled of root-beer
floats and anise. "One should not take the wogs from the river, no no no little
meatling. For they are pretty, and we likes to watch them." Another of the
creatures spoke, saying "You would be wise to put them back, tiny tasty
meatling, so that we doesn't have to savage you." With that, they raised their
massive arms, each covered with wriggling things like grated carrots gone mad.
Ey was indignant, feeling the polliwogs to be rightfully eirs, but under the
circumstances ey was not inclined to debate the issue. "No, no!" ey cried,
"I'll put them back! I'll put them back!" Scrambling over to the water's edge,
ey carefully deposited each one of them. "Yessssss...." they said, their voices
starting as whispers and ending in roars, "YEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!
Bwahahahahahahahaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!"
Meanwhile, R.A. Paul writes:
>What may interest people further is that Mirembe and I have eloped. This
> may not be immediately apparent to anybody, for, as she is in the State
> Department, and I am in the Philosophy Department, we will continue to live
> several thousands of miles apart, and have no plans to meet before the year
> 2010.
My notes say 2012 but I suppose that's a mere detail at this point.
>I apologize for injecting such personal note into the discussion, but
> sometimes one's enthusiasm overcomes they.
Or even ey.
Best, Mirembe
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