Last week, pop artist Sam Smith made a stunning revelation: He is plural. The Sam Smiths announced that their new pronouns are “they/them.” No longer are they just one Sam Smith, with trite and outmoded pronouns denoting a single male individual. “He” and “him” are the pronouns of the unenlightened; the pronouns our primitive ancestors etched onto their cave walls because they didn’t have a hieroglyphic to communicate higher concepts like pansexuality and gender fluidity. The Sam Smiths have evolved beyond that.
They explained their pronoun swap this way:
I’ve decided I am changing my pronouns to THEY/THEM after a lifetime of being at war with my gender I’ve decided to embrace myself for who I am, inside and out. I’m so excited and privileged to be surrounded by people that support me in this decision but I’ve been very nervous about announcing this because I care too much about what people think but f**k it! I understand there will be many mistakes and mis gendering but all I ask is you please please try. I hope you can see me like I see myself now.
Tragically, we still live in a world where most people are satisfied to consign themselves to “grammatically correct” pronouns. Rather than treating language like a toy that can be owned and manipulated and played with, these unthinking drones are stuck in the last century — when language was thought to be a method of communication that depended on certain set structures, rules, and conventions. The Sam Smiths are far too smart and interesting for that kind of barbarity. They have looked within themselves and discovered that the standard English language just cannot properly convey the depth and beauty of their inner experience. Some would say that he is just enormously pretentious. But that’s outrageous. They are enormously pretentious — but nonetheless courageous.
Inspired by their courage, I would like to share a very personal announcement of my own: I am changing my pronouns to “we/us/our.” You see, I — or rather we — identify not just as myself but as all selves. We identify as me, but also you and everyone else. You might protest that you are not me, to which we would agree. You are not me because there is no me. You are us, we are you, yours is ours. This isn’t difficult to understand.
For too long we — the universal we, not the me we — have thought of pronouns as simple grammatical constructs, but this has only led to our — I mean our referring to me, which is us — further alienation and oppression. We — universal we — must accept that we — me we — have an identity that goes beyond and transcends grammar. If this makes you — by which I mean just you, not me, which would be we — uncomfortable, that’s your problem.
And we must take one step further. If we are already reaching into the dictionary and taking ownership of a certain set of pronouns, claiming it as ours and instructing everyone to acquiesce, we might as well select our own verbs, prepositions, nouns, and adverbs while we’re at it. On that note, our personal verb is “swim,” our personal preposition is “in,” our personal noun is “Indian Ocean,” and our personal adverb is “elegantly.”
It would obviously be highly offensive and traumatizing for you to use any other pronoun, verb, preposition, noun, or adverb in relation to us. No matter what we happened to actually be doing, the only thing you are allowed to say to describe it is: “We are elegantly swimming in the Indian Ocean.” That is how we identify. Those are the words that speak most intimately to our inner experience. That, therefore, is the one and only sentence you are ever allowed to say to us, about us, or around us. That is our sentence. Go get your own sentence. This one is ours. This is how language works now. Or how it doesn’t work, as the case may be. Please cooperate or we will be forced to destroy your life. And by that I mean we will elegantly swim in the Indian Ocean.
Editor’s Note: Because the internet is filled with foolish and utterly dishonest people, the editors of The Daily Wire wish to note that this column utilizes a literary device called sarcasm.