Congratulations, it's an "it"

 

So, we're picking our pronouns, now, are we? I got an email from someone and at the bottom, in the tag line, it mentions that this person's pronoun choices are she, her and hers. It seemed appropriate enough, as the person's name was Jill. 

But I was in the doctor's office the other day, filling out some paperwork so that I could get my Covid shot, and I ran into the same thing. On the form, it asked me to state my preference of personal pronouns. I picked "he, him and his."

Thinking it over, I should have opted for "it and its." I don't really know what I am, truly. It goes beyond gender. It goes beyond even being a human. I simply don't know the totality of what I am. So why should I be restricted to a gender or even a species? I'm fairly confident that I'm some variant of "life form." 

I know it means a lot to some people to express their innermost feelings about their gender identity by making the statement to the world, "I am a he (or she)," in blatant disregard for whatever appendages they may or may not have hanging about their loins. I'm not belittling anyone's struggle with identity or their difficulty feeling accepted by society for who they feel they are. Really, I'm not.

Somewhere along the line, it was deemed necessary to make distinctions based on sex and assign separate pronouns to the different genders. I really don't feel the need to buck the status quo on this one. I've got a penis, so I'm a guy. Guys are hes, hises and hims. Simple. 

But since we're opening up the field to any and every form of self-identification, well, I think I'll self-identify as a purple cabbage. You are what you eat, right? Well, I eat a lot of purple cabbage, and I just happen to like the color purple. Most cabbage you see at the supermarket don't self-identify by gender. Hell, they don't self-identify at all, as far as I know.

That's me. I'm just a vegetable on a shelf. If you refer to me, please use my proper form of pronoun. Say, "It's hungry, and it would like to have breakfast" instead of "he's hungry and would like to have breakfast." Be respectful. Plants are people too.