Sick and Tired of the Pronoun Police

They/them is tedious.

The Trump administration has made it clear that they will not respond to emails from reporters who bother to stipulate their preferred pronouns.

"As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a New York Times reporter who had asked an unrelated question. Leavitt apparently means business; White House comms staffers have declined to answer several inquiries on this basis, according to the Times.

This is a kind of rebellion against an increasingly common progressive accommodation of gender nonconforming individuals—the idea being that there are some people whose outward gender presentation does not match their self-identification, and if we all adopted the habit of stating our preferred pronouns outright, we would spare these people from having to correct everyone else all the time. Conservatives charge that pronoun listers are overcomplicating a fundamental simple matter: There are just two genders, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, it is perfectly obvious who belongs to which pronouns. On the other hand, sometimes it's not obvious whether you are emailing a man or a woman—some names are gender neutral.

Thus we find ourselves in a situation where a new, empowered conservative movement has taken something that is, charitably speaking, kind of cringe and annoying, and attacked it in a maximally dramatic fashion. It's weird and off-putting to get really worked up about pronoun policing, and it's also weird and off-putting to get worked up about policing pronoun policing. Can everyone calm down?

They/Them

Speaking of people who need to calm down about pronouns… a moment from CNN's town hall with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) on Wednesday night caught fire on social media. In the clip, an audience participant corrects host Anderson Cooper, who naively assumes the woman (?) goes by she. Instead, the question-asker demands a they pronoun.

An attendee at CNN's Bernie Sanders town hall corrects Anderson Cooper on pronouns: pic.twitter.com/GRhkVXst6o

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) April 10, 2025

What's funny about this exchange is that the subsequent question for Sanders was something along the lines of: How can the Democrats win back various demographic groups—men, minorities, etc.—who are fleeing the party in record numbers? What Democrats really need is an attitude adjustment: It's precisely this condescending, hectoring schoolmarm routine that has so thoroughly repelled voters, particularly young males. Just be normal is an underrated rule of politics. Telling someone you want to be called they/them just strikes a lot of people as abnormal.

This Week on Free Media

I am joined by Amber Duke to discuss Donald Trump's tariffs, Dave Smith's feud with Sam Harris, Michelle Obama's podcast, and the return of the dire wolf.

 

Worth Watching

Here are five thoughts on the finale of White Lotus Season Three. Spoilers!

1. Overall, I liked the season. I'm not sure whether I liked it more or less than the previous two. It was a bit slower, perhaps.
2. I found it odd that the other characters were not given time to react to what was effectively a mass shooting at the hotel. We got just the briefest glimpse of the trio of ladies, who did not seem overly traumatized. How did Chloe feel about the deaths of Rick and Chelsea? What about Saxon—did he know about it? For that matter, we didn't see the Ratliff family react to the near-death of Lochlan at all.
3. My two favorite scenes were Victoria Ratliff's Randian speech to her daughter about why they were entitled to enjoy the fruits of their labor and Laurie's declaration that at the end of the day, she is in fact happy for her friends.
4. I liked the resolution of Belinda's storyline; it was appealing that she effectively did to Pornchai exactly what Tanya did to her in Season One.
5. If I were the showrunner, I would make another self-contained season, perhaps featuring Belinda's son, and then do a final reunion season back in Hawaii. This season would include various characters from seasons one through four—in particular, Greg/Gary, who must finally get his comeuppance!