Today, I accidentally mentioned my girlfriend by “He” pronoun among 15 other students in an English class. My classmates found it a bit funny (not weird), we had laughed for a moment and continued. Because all of us have done it many times during our learning process. I am sure every Persian student have asked themselves once, why any language would have multiple pronouns to differentiate genders? I questioned this because I was too lazy to learn new complexities which I instinctively knew it is not necessary. As always, I stumbled upon the internet to find a few answers and ideas. Despite my first motive, which was laziness, I found that pronouns are already huge arguments among the people.
I have found that the Persian used to be a gendered language until 700 years ago, but for some reasons, literary elites decided to eliminate the extra pronouns from the official language. I’ve also seen few video footage of arguments about the formation of LGBT concepts. For instance, in Dr. Phil reality show, in each LGBT related episodes, calling the right pronouns is highly demanded by participants. Another example is a video of StevenCrowder YouTube channel, once again, the pronouns part is the difficult and often contradictory argument. While I was watching these videos, a curious and confused voice in my head asked why do the gender pronouns exist at all?
As far as I know, in some rare cases, English pronouns gives a little bit of extra information in a single sentence. For example, I would call my pet “He” when it became important and precious to me. But frankly speaking, it’s not really worthwhile to have 3 different pronouns, therefore to form lots of complexities in language including LGBT contradictions. A woman, a man or even a tree can be mentioned with a single pronoun without rising a big drama out of it.
What I felt after I had started learning English, particularly about pronouns, the concept of gender has become more important in my conscious mind, although, it doesn’t affect my behavior at all. But what about native English speakers? (or any other gendered language speakers) Have they ever felt not to pay attention to gender unconsciously? Maybe it would be possible through a process of assimilation, yet it’s a process and will take time and effort. I know my country is far behind the equal rights, especially in the sexual role, but as a person who was lucky enough to not have anyone’s beliefs thrust upon me, I felt the transition from not valuing the gender to paying a slight attention.