Enough With The Pronouns March 4, 2025 I got an email from a 78-year-old heterosexual partner in a major law firm whose first name is clearly male. His signature block specified his pronouns: he/him/his. The grammarian in me wonders why anyone needs to include the possessive. Is there an imaginable gender identity that would allow for he/him/hers? The progressive in me believes that most people who specify their pronouns, though wonderfully well-intentioned, should stop. I can think of only two reasons to specify pronouns. 1. To provide needed guidance, which the world should be grateful for and enthusiastically respect. This makes total sense. In most cases, however, guidance is not needed. Most people identify as — and are readily identifiable as — men or women. So the only reason for them to specify their pronouns is . . . 2. To signal support. Which is a beautiful thing but which raises this question: Does the comfort it provides our gender-nonconforming brethren outweigh the discomfort it may cause good people who are not yet at ease with gender-nonconformity? I want to win elections — not least to help protect the gender-nonconforming, who do not fare well in MAGA land or autocratic states like Russia and North Korea (our latest allies at the U.N.). By specifying pronouns when they’re not needed, we signal that we think everyone should — that specifying pronouns is what all enlightened people do. It kind of says (not literally, of course, but subtly): Democrats do this, Republicans don’t. (Well? Do you know Republicans who specify their pronouns?) If we controlled one or two branches of government, and if the Republican Party had not become the party of the Proud Boys and autocracy, I might feel differently. But when so much is at stake, I think we should avoid signaling to millions of good people that they really don’t fit in with us. Because on almost every policy that matters to them — from health care to the economy to climate, from taxing billionaires to sensible gun safety to not pardoning cop-beaters — we are exactly the party they fit in with. BONUS Did you see Heather Cox Richardson’s recent post? “Putin is on the inside now.” It is so worth reading in full.