Are We Headed Toward the Pronoun Apocalypse?

Analyzing a recent (and terrifying) vibe shift in the "gender wars"

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Trump’s war on “gender ideology” is also, unsurprisingly, a blitzkrieg on freedom of expression and civil liberties — the spiritual core of the First Amendment. As of this writing (March 16, 2025), federal employees are being forced to remove their preferred pronouns from their email signatures (two gender-busting executive orders by Trump are the culprit). While I don’t have a “gender ideology” or strong position on preferred pronouns (sometimes I list them; sometimes I don’t), I do believe that any limitation on freedom of expression (especially at the federal level) could steamroll what’s left of our personal liberties in a post-9/11 surveillance state.

In other words, the choice to include or exclude pronouns from email signatures are a matter of personal preference — who gives a shit, live and let live — but restricting that is something we should all care about. What concerns me is that Trump’s war on gender could trickle down to the state and private sector and curtail personal liberties that are, for me, way more fundamental and core than “they/them” pronouns in email signatures.

Personal note: My only gender politics are that I’ll respect a person’s morphological or gendered freedom to express or edit/customize themselves freely, but not laws that coerce me to do so (this includes laws or executive orders that do the opposite).

Before moving on, let’s pause and recognize that “gender wars” and identity politics are already ancient and giving the discourse equivalent of inscriptions on clay tablets. The transhumanist view (which I share) is that technological advancements are going to produce a post-gender future (Kurzweil’s idea that technological singularity will fuse the human body with electronics). People are already biohacking themselves with cybernetics. Genetically modified cyborgs are the future. We are the prototypes; the anxiety over this reality is, I believe, fueling some of the current discourse.

“The Future is Female.” – Hillary Clinton

“I want to be software.” – Grimes

“I want to be a machine.” – Andy Warhol

Gender continues to be a national obsession and breeding ground for culture wars (and well-funded, gender-obsessed podcasts like Blocked and Reported). Gender pronouns in email signatures are a watershed moment for the next phase of the gender wars, which are either at their zenith (for trans or nonbinary people) or nadir (everyone else). It’s hard to say exactly how, but in the first quarter of Trump 2.0, the vibe has shifted in new directions that are still being defined. The collateral damage, in my opinion, will include free speech and privacy.

Five years ago, when NPR published its “proper use of gender identity terms,” the discourse was dominated by hyper-woke, corporate liberals who thought that gender pronouns were the future (they certainly would have supported federal laws coercing Americans to list their pronouns). Preferred pronouns felt inevitable (and omnipresent, in certain spaces) in 2022 when I was a TA in a class on Shakespeare, gender, and gaming; there were no games on the syllabus, just pronouns. A few weeks before the first day of class, my professor emailed me and asked that I include my pronouns on the syllabus. I ignored her. She wrote back, asking me to include my pronouns to avoid any confusion. I wrote back and told her that I preferred to simply be identified by my name. “Please respect my privacy” was a response I left in drafts. I strategically ignored her reply as if replying would send us to war (very Cuban Missile Crisis-y). I ended up not including my pronouns on the syllabus (she didn’t include them for me). A few months ago, before Trump 2.0, I thought mini culture wars over pronouns were beyond us.

Breaking news — they’re not.

What I was doing (in hindsight) was asserting the minimal amount of control I had left over my identity, personal privacy, and self-expression in a post-9/11 panopticon of woke or anti-woke, gender-obsessed overlords. At the time, “Big Brother” was, at least for me, a liberal white woman; today, it is the world’s richest man and the full authority of the U.S. military.

In 2022, I was flirting with cyberpunk, or just being punk, at my age, which included going on TikTok and reading comments written by 19-year-old biohackers, stans, and nonbinary kids who’ve melded with their devices (voluntary cyborgs), who seemed (at the time) to be pivoting away from the dogmatism of neoliberal white women, a specific kind of white woman — not the pugnacious populist from Harlan County U.S.A. (1976), Lois Scott, who rolled up her sleeves and fought off gun thugs for miners’ rights — no, I’m talking about white women who live in gentrified suburbs and drive Teslas they’ll soon exchange for Mercedes-Benzes because “Elon Musk is a Nazi.”

“Elon Musk is not a Nazi. The Nazis made nice cars.” – SNL

I saw a post-gender, technologically progressive movement brewing on TikTok, where young people were saying shit like, “I’m good with any pronoun” or “it’s impossible to misgender me” or “I don’t care about titles.” Pop stars (who have PR people who go on TikTok for them) were suddenly saying shit like “If you misgender me, that's ok” (Demi Lovato). There was a desire for inclusivity that was un-PC and unaligned with the neoliberal lawn sign politics of your average college professor. The vibe was shifting. Last of Us star Bella Ramsey in 2024: “Call me she, call me they, call me he, call me however you see me. You cannot go wrong! It’s impossible to misgender me. This is the last I will talk about gender stuff for a while. Thanks for your support!”

We were making progress, I thought – gender stuff felt so 2017. Actor Elliot Page said something similar in an interview he gave to The Guardian in 2024 — something he would not have said in 2015 — the first time the general public saw bills (and gender wars) about gender-neutral bathrooms, known as the “bathroom wars.” The point is that Elliot Page would not have said this five years ago: “I get misgendered all the time, and I don’t care unless someone’s trying to, you know….”

Things were normalizing, I thought, live and let live, but the vibe was shifting in ways that were unpredictable. Two years ago, “comedian” Bill Maher delivered his famous “we’re all getting gayer” rant, which predicted where normie Democrats were headed:

“Not everything is about you,” which popped his studio audience. The week prior, during his monologue on abortion bans in Louisiana, Maher joked that, “suddenly, getting the right pronoun doesn't seem so big.” This also popped his studio audience. If you want to know what liberals really think, just listen to how Bill Maher’s audience reacts to his bad jokes. I was listening; I wasn’t laughing, but I was listening: the right pronoun doesn't seem so big.

Two months later, the internet “blew up,” according to Fox News, when Kamala Harris introduced herself with her pronouns (she/her) at a meeting with disability rights campaigners. Harris proceeded to describe what she was wearing as “a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit.” Regardless of her intentions, the clip encapsulated everything that felt inauthentic and cringe about the “I’m With Her” wing of the Democrat Party (this was the optics — you either saw it or didn’t). A troll account I follow on Twitter shared a meme that mocked the moment: “The only pronouns Kamala Harris needs to worry about are ‘inflation’ and ‘gas prices.’”

I was reminded of the white woman who wanted me to list my pronouns at a time (2022) when I was an underpaid TA with debt. Kamala’s she/her meme was a watershed moment in the vibe shift away from identity politics. The memes were indicative of how the Democrats had exploited identity and turned gender (and race) into corporate brands with labels.

But then something happened: On October 27, 2022, the transphobic anti-woke billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter and announced that misgendering would be allowed on Twitter (misgendering/deadnaming previously resulted in suspensions).

Vibes were shifting in ways that no longer felt like progress, as Elon (a gender-obsessed ideologue) was defining his own “identity politics.” In December 2022, Elon tweeted that his pronouns were “Prosecute/Fauci,” which ignited a culture war. In an op-ed, Noor Noman wrote that “Elon Musk's pronoun tweet marks a dangerous turn.” The tweet produced 1.1 million likes. The right pronouns don’t seem so big, for a moment, but then they did, as Elon now controlled the platform that had foregrounded the gender wars for nearly a decade. Because of Elon, Twitter is no longer a central discourse-battlefield over topics like gender and race; the “woke mind virus” has been buried under right-wing memes like “My Pronouns are U/S/A.”

Your identity is now his algorithm.

Most people I know (outside of academia) no longer list their pronouns in email signatures or social media bios. If they add or remove them, they’ll do so before a job interview or because they want to troll their college professor. Nobody notices if they do or do not have their pronouns listed. This was not the case when AOC did the same thing in November.

After Trump’s electoral victory, the right orgiastically ran with the story that AOC had abandoned identity politics — as if she was desperately signaling the vibe shift. Democrats, still reeling from Trump’s Hiroshima-like “Kamala is for They/Them” ad that blew Kamala’s campaign into rainbow-colored smithereens, were now rebranding, and AOC (the final boss of “wokeness”) was at the vanguard of the party’s shift away from the “insanity” of Kamala’s “she/her” pronoun meme (this was the optics).

Right-wing influencers reacted with a blend of masturbatory pleasure and Facebook mom “how dare you” energy: "They’ll pretend they never embraced (or even celebrated) the insanity. Don’t forget who the compliant, virtue-signaling sheep were," Riley Gaines posted on Twitter. Who’s Riley Gaines? Imagine if someone coded transphobia into a Cabbage Patch doll.

A few days later, AOC tweeted that the removal of her pronouns was not politically motivated:

I’m not sure I believe AOC (maybe she’s triangulating). I’m also not sure that I don’t believe AOC, but this was, as far as I can tell, the last time pronouns were at the center of the zeitgeist tornado on Twitter (probably because the story advanced Elon’s “anti-woke” narrative).

It’s also too early to fully CSI the crime scene of Elon’s takeover of Twitter, but there’s almost no denying that muting certain voices (“woke”) while boosting others (“anti-woke”) has consequences, especially when they guy with his finger on the mute button treats his trans daughter (or son, if you’re a Republican) like some SJW meme. I also don’t think it’s “woke” to say you should love you child, unconditionally.

B-list Sarah Palin, Lauren Boebert, tweeted the following in 2021: “My pronoun is “Patriot,” which is actually a noun, but the point is the online right has been memeing pronouns (and the people who use them) into cringe-camp spectacle for years (which has been rocket boosted by Elon’s takeover of Twitter). This is working. Fatigue is setting for leftists who continue to defend inclusive language while losing elections (and middle-class followers). The internet’s re-normalization of slurs like “retarded,” for example, are reminding disability advocates that they cannot compete with 4Chan trolls who are being monetized and supported by a neurodivergent billionaire who has designated the word cisgender as a “slur” on Twitter — where “retarded” is not a slur — which is pushing culture away from the rigidity of political correctness toward cruelty at the federal, state, and local level.

I’m pretty sure there’s a large chunk of people who think AOC has moved on from “gender stuff” altogether (which has political and cultural ramifications). I also find it fascinating that character limits on Twitter may have restricted her ability to express her preferred pronouns, which raises the question of whether techno-feudalists like Elon — who have a dystopian vision of transhumanism — are going to use technology to curtail gender expression like a form of speech. But I digress; perhaps AOC is moving away from identity politics because it’s no longer politically or economically profitable. Maybe we all are (I can’t say for certain), but I saw something on TikTok last year that communicated a vibe shift in a positive direction. It was a video of Cosmo Lombino (the flamboyant “Queen of Melrose,” a self-identifying former drag queen), who was being asked about her preferred pronouns:

“It really doesn’t matter. I love being called she. I mean, what queen doesn’t? I’m just comfortable with anything the people are comfortable with. The [Pronouns] stuff really confuses everybody…I just feel like me, Cosmo. I do embrace the feminine part of me. I also like the macho part. I just like all of it, and I really don’t put a title on it.”

It’s been eight years since pronoun discourse peaked on Twitter, before Elon began to mute it, when users were sharing clips of Jordan Peterson opposing bill C-16, which amended the Canadian Human Rights to include gender identity and gender expression as federally protected rights. I was sympathetic toward Peterson’s free speech argument – even though I was skeptical and not Canadian-enough to give a shit – but I also could not support someone whose default position was the weaponization of “free speech” for personal gain. Because it is now unprofitable to do so, Peterson has not criticized or even offered a single comment on how Trump and Elon’s war on gender could curtail free speech. 2017’s “free speech” warriors are 2025’s version of a "woke mob” that subordinates speech in favor of identity politics.

Because of Peterson (and the SJWs that opposed him), in 2019, “pronouns” were declared the word of the year by the American Dialect Society. In 2021, the Pew Research Center reported that 26% of Americans knew someone who preferred pronouns such as “they” instead of “he” or “she,” an 18% rise from 2018. I suspect this number is much higher today; I also think fewer people today care about being misgendered as much as they care about being legally prevented from self-identifying freely in their personal and legal documents (including their email signatures).

Two weeks ago, the Texas Real Estate Commission gave a local program manager named Frank Zamora an ultimatum: Remove your pronouns from your work email signature or lose your job. Zamora could not, in “good conscience,” comply, so he was fired. Elon and the governor of Texas celebrated Zamora’s firing on Twitter. One user posted on behalf of what seemed like everyone else:

“Did removing pronouns from emails make eggs and gas cheaper yet?”

It’s a different world with a different set of problems being vacuumed into the center of the zeitgeist tornado. We can’t really define the shape of those problems in their full capacity — not all of them, not yet — though we do seem to be moving beyond the outrage machine of language-obsessed “woke” identity politics and toward right-wing tyranny that is also weirdly obsessed with language. The vibe also seems to be shifting away from performative “cancel culture” outrage toward genuine apocalyptic terror over whether one’s identity is under their control or the state’s. It’s not just a question of whether the federal government should only recognize two sexes; it is a question of how far the government will go to control freedom of expression that does not comply with the state’s preferences.

A week ago, California governor and grifter Gavin Newsom (pronouns: I/Me/Mine) interviewed the Rush Limbaugh of frat row (Charlie Kirk), who sat there as Newsom said that it was “deeply unfair” for trans women to compete in women’s sports (echoing Riley Gaines). He also acknowledged that the “Kamala is for they/them” ad was “devastating.” He then questioned people announcing their preferred pronouns: “I had one meeting where people started going around the table with pronouns…I’m like, ‘What the hell, why is this the biggest issue?’”

What’s fascinating isn’t Newsom’s pivot toward the Bill Maher wing of the party; it’s that nobody cared. The Democrats responded with what Axios described as a “muted rebuke” that was couched in a conservative argument: “We want to make sure that these decisions are made by the communities…by the schools and others that are the ones closest," Senator Andy Kim said on CNN's “State of the Union.”

The middle-class seems to lack the political energy to care about preferred pronouns in a world where the price of eggs is at all-time high and their speech is being censored by an oligarch who controls 60% of the satellites in orbit, funding for starving children, cancer research, social security benefits (which he wants to cut, just as the cost of living skyrockets), the entire EV market, usage of the word “cis,” and, with a flick of switch, could create the inciting incident for World War Three.

Suddenly, getting the right pronoun doesn't seem so big.

Will it ever be? I think so, especially if the right continues to radicalize young people who want to list their pronouns (or people like me, who believe they should have the right to do so). One of my favorite transhumanist-coded writers (I will not name this person), who identifies as they/them, but shifts between she/her and they/them, and does not give a shit if you misgender them, could wake up tomorrow morning and make preferred pronouns (or something else) their cyberpunk troll of the biological-determinist status quo. Others can do this; they could also not. As much as preferred pronouns and gender wars seems to be fading from the center of the zeitgeist tornado on Twitter, there’s a very real possibility Trump 2.0’s war on gender could radicalize the “Dark Woke” or another group (post-gender, undefined) to spark a new kind of gender war that could accelerate us towards either a post-gender or traditional, biologically deterministic future, with lots of collateral damage along the way, including free speech (or what’s left of it).