It occurs to me that it’s been a while since we marvelled at the mind of Laurie Penny. We must correct that immediately:  

Laurie and her novelty pronouns.

She “earned that pronoun with a lot of hard work,” you know. While also, rather suddenly, becoming a being of indeterminate gender. A they, depending on who’s nearby, and how fashionable they are.

Update, via the comments:

As long-time readers will know, this is part of Laurie’s ongoing, seemingly endless drama, in which she feels a need to ‘come out’ to the same group of Twitter followers, over and over again, as in some way unconventional or sexually anomalous, each time with some new twist or contradiction, some new basis for applause. Such that one has to wonder exactly how many times this feat of stunning bravery can be achieved.

Of course, if Laurie didn’t keep outing herself as something or other every few months, apparently depending on which word is in fashion, people might not realise just how fascinating and complicated she is. And in the hamster-wheel world of competitive self-definition, being merely feminist-and-a-bit-bisexual is so old hat. Even adding polyamory to her list of attributes doesn’t cut it anymore. 

Given that straight, cis and white are now commonly used as pejoratives, not least by Laurie and her followers, there’s an obvious incentive to depict oneself as unblemished by such low-status labels. And hence the periodic modifications to Laurie’s ongoing project of self-description. You don’t want to be seen wearing last season’s identity tags. 

And so, what we’re seeing above is a status-game called My Pronouns Are More Complicated Than Yours™. As Laurie’s latest must-haves are apparently dependent on whim and arbitrary contrivance, and could change again at any moment, and in unforeseen ways, it’s a strong hand. Among the neurotic and pretentious, I mean.

Update 2

Oh no, mockery. How very dare they.




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