Adventure: Man invents car, gets into a car chase with a villain.It is to the last type of story that inspired today's post.
Gadget: Man invents car, holds lecture on how it works.
Social: Man invents car, gets stuck in traffic in the suburbs.
One of the few things that's unique to the SF genre is working out the unintended consequences of any new technology or changes in cultural mores etc.. Asimov himself wrote about mobile phones in his robot novels, which I've mentioned before, had a scene where a character apologizes that he can't speak as he's in a public space.
Oh, if only that were true, huh!?
So who would have predicted pronoun choice as a sociocultural prediction? I know some authors wrote about variant genders, or the ability to change sex, but who would've thought that this would lead to people introducing themselves with a declaration of their preferred gender?
Not me. Yet here we are.
I had to go away and think about this, have been mulling it over for several years. At one level I'm bothered by people declaring their gender pronouns, but on the other hand I'm a boring old fart and the times they are a changing. I generally predisposed to accept changes if they are for the better.
I mean, you'd be crazy not to. Amirite? Hah!
So while I may not be in the habit of declaring my preferred pronoun, I'm cool with it.
Of course if pushed my instinctual reaction would be, you're smart, figure it out. Yeah, guess I've gotta work on being more agreeable. However, an exchange I had with a friend who suggested, fucker, you fucker as the new go to pronoun, which I should've seen coming.
So, the unintended consequences of social change may lead to unintended outcomes, and therefore one should be careful what you wish for. The future's bright and stranger than you can imagine.
If you regard yourself as male, present as conventionally male, and don't mind being called "he": no problem. Ditto female/female/she. But for people who don't fit into those groups it makes their lives easier if pronoun-specification becomes a normal thing to do, so that they don't look strange simply for asking for it.
ReplyDeleteI find I am increasingly using "they" in the absence of a stated preference, because for the majority of the time I'm writing/talking about people it really doesn't matter what sex they are – just as "poetess" fell out of fashion, and more recently "actress", I find myself inclined to save gendered pronouns for when they're of some relevance.
I tend to use they a lot too.
DeleteBut my point here is that this can be twisted in ways that were not intended, and I predict will be twisted in ways unintended.
As always, good intentions don't necessarily lead to good outcomes.