In the past few years, many new personal "fads" have been gaining more and more momentum. Recently, correct pronoun usage has come into a more defined focus in our culture—something that I think is long overdue. Some people, however, would argue and say that it's a ridiculous notion.
For example, I was perusing the social platform YikYak recently and there was a post that mentioned how it would be nice for people to use the pronouns that individuals preferred for themselves. There were a few comments from users that were very negative, and even childish in response. One of the more rude retorts to asking people to use correct pronouns went as follows, "I shouldn't have to put in extra effort to not offend someone." This made me a little upset. If you were introduced to someone named David and upon meeting them, they asked to be called "Dave" instead, I think the general reaction would be to accept it and call them Dave from that point on.
It made me think, why does someone respond to something as simple as a two to five letter change with such a negative reaction? For me it would actually take more energy to not use the correct pronouns. Every time I refer to that person I would have to think something along the lines of "Oh, this person uses different pronouns than what I have initially assigned to them because of the culture I am immersed in, but you know what, just to upset them I'm going to use the wrong pronouns and make their day awful." That seems so villainous to me that I have a hard time understanding why someone would do that unless they really disliked that individual because using the right pronouns has nothing to do with attempting to upset everyone else's lives.
It doesn't even have anything to do with offending someone, it's about having a baseline of respect for all people in general. I, for one, think that it's very sad that when it comes to any gender/sexuality/gender expression that deviates from the cultural norm, some people's initial reactions are to be upset that someone does not fit into their world view and instead of opening their minds to a new point of view they respond with rudeness and disgust and disrespect. Maybe they don't understand that their reaction is affecting a real live person who has thoughts and feelings and emotions. Someone who just wants to be accepted for who they are and instead they are met with anger and disgust, two things that are very detrimental to the human mind and spirit.
Don't get me wrong, I think that there are plenty of people in the world that are accepting and open-minded about pronoun usage, but I also think that even one person behaving in a way that is harmful to someone else is one too many, and that we should all strive to be accepting of people. No one deserves to feel ostracized because of who they are.
