To the Editor:
Jennifer Finney Boylan (“That’s What Ze Said,” Op-Ed, Jan. 10) argues that English needs a non-gender-specific pronoun, and that we should therefore accede to any person’s demand to be called by any personal pronoun of choice, as she does for her students at Barnard.
I can accept the first part of this argument, but not the second. English, an evolving language, can accommodate a new, standard, non-gendered personal pronoun, and is capable of settling on one after a period of experimental usage, as it did with “Ms.” But to accept anyone’s requested vanity pronoun is to invite chaos, strain the limits of memory and elevate narcissism above consensus communication. It is also to normalize something more dangerous: the deployment of extreme individualism in the service of political power over institutional and linguistic conventions.
JESSE LARNER, NEW YORK
To the Editor:
In a 1947 reader competition, published in the magazine Alphabet and Image, Ian Fleming proposed the idea of a 27th letter of the alphabet. Given today’s gender and identity fluidity, perhaps it’s time to reopen the notion, so that the letter would represent those who eschew “he” or “she,” or as Jennifer Finney Boylan might add, “hir,” “ze” or “xem.”
JEFFREY J. SUSLA
WOODSTOCK, CONN.
The writer teaches writing at the University of Hartford.
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