A review by bradley
What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She by Dennis Baron

funny informative slow-paced

3.75

What's Your Pronoun: Beyond He and She by Dennis Baron (he/him) is a discussion about the lack of a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun.  I picked this book up because of my interest in trans and nonbinary history, and by extension the roots of the gender neutral pronouns we see today such as xe/xem, zie/hir, and ey/em. Knowing many of these pronouns predate the 21st century--some of them even predating the 20th century--Baron does talk at length about the reasons these words were coined. That reason being a lapse in the English language that has been the source of debate for literal centuries.

In other words, what pronoun do you instert into this sentence:

Harry or his wife will stop by, and ______ will pick up the books.

The debate over the "correct" answer has been waged since at least 1770.


Like I said, this lapse in English wasn't really why I picked up the book, but not being the reason I was drawn to a book doesn't make it a bad book, and it did introduce me to concepts I hadn't considered such as using the so-called "generic he" in laws and how that effected women's sufferage and first wave feminism, as covered in the section The Politics of He. 

What's Your Pronouns can get repeditive at times, and in the chapter titled The Politics of He in particular, can get downright hard to trudge through. The point behind the chapter stands tall, but example after example, only the names, dates, and cities really changing in the dozens of examples provided become boring. 

Other chapters are engaging and interesting, my favorite of course being Queering the Pronoun, when Baron discusses the adoption of previously-thought failed pronouns are adopted by the nonbinary community. As Baron puts it, "thon's not dead yet." (!) 

If you're looking for a book about how people react when a foundational word is missing from English, this will pertain more to your interests than if you're looking for a book to enlighten about the history of trans people, though it is touched upon (not in depth, but not superficially either.) But that wasn't how the book was advertised, and I did get out of the book what I was searching for--the origin of the pronouns I see today, plus more I wasn't particularly looking for, which I won't complain about.

Note: I included some content warnings below, but Dennis Baron is very respectful of trans and nonbinary identies, these are subjects touched upon due to the nature of discussing nonfiction transgender experiences, and not graphic detailed passages and are not perpetrated  by Baron himself. 
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