on this bus

[calimac]

wild_irises read The 57 Bus, "a true story of two teenagers and the crime that changed their lives," by Dashka Slater. I was curious and decided to pick it up from the library. It's 305 brief pages and reads fast.

The incident occurred in 2013 in Oakland. Two students from different high schools are on a city bus. Sasha, white, a senior, identifies as agender (preferring the pronoun "they"), likes to wear both neckties and skirts, is dozing in the back of the bus. Richard, black, a junior, has been in trouble but is identified by himself and others as mostly a good kid, is fooling around with some friends, flicks a lighter and touches it to Sasha's skirt.

It's flammable, and ignites. Sasha is seriously burned, but eventually recovers. Richard is arrested the next day and charged as an adult.

You'd think the book would mostly cover the aftermath, and it does, but the author is just as concerned with portraying both characters and the contexts of the lives they led before the incident. It's very interesting, but my own takeaway focuses on two other things:

1. Why did Richard do it? The first assumption of many observers is that it's some sort of homophobic hate crime and the police interview tends to confirm that; but Richard insists he intended no serious harm and just thought it would be funny for someone to wake up and find their clothes smoldering, which is what he thought would happen.

We can discuss whether playing with fire is an appropriate occupation for 16-year-olds, a conversation this book evades, but the point is that it'd be a different conversation than one about homophobia or "hate crimes."

2. The story offers a continuing lesson that agendered pronouns present a different and more complex socio-linguistic challenge than pronouns for binary transsexuality do. Sasha had made an announcement at school: "It's important to respect people's preferred pronouns and if you're not sure what those are, you should ask."

Fine, but there's no time to ask a stranger about preferred pronouns when you're trying to put out their clothes that are on fire. In the description of this scene, which is evidently transcribed from the bus's security camera video, everyone refers to Sasha as "he," which - the author has eventually gotten around to telling us - is what Sasha was born as and evidently still looks like. (And which is a given if Richard is to be charged with homophobia over the skirt.) Even Sasha's parents, who know the preferred pronoun, keep getting it wrong, and not just under stress. These are very deep waters we're getting into, much deeper than we've experienced with previous linguistic adjustments.

Comments

[wild_irises]

I'm glad I led you (or anyone) to this book; I think it's important.

I don't think anyone, including Slater and probably including Richard, is defending 16-year-olds playing with fire. I think Slater is just making the point that 16-year-olds do sometimes play with fire, and consequences ensue. I didn't really think she evaded the point.

As for gendered pronouns, they are complicated and deep. Again, I didn't get the slightest hint from Slater that she thought the EMTs and good samaritans should have been concerned with pronouns. (If I'm on fire, you can call me "it," and I'll still appreciate what you do for me.) I think the point is to widen the lens of the readers thoughts about gender/pronouns/identification, which the book does well, in my opinion.

[calimac]

Sure. But my point is that I took away from this book lessons other than the ones the author wanted to teach.

I don't think Slater was defending playing with fire. That wouldn't be evading the question. I want to leave it at that, because a button of mine got pressed on this matter, and I wish not to rant.

And sure, the book widened the lens of this reader on pronouns. What it made me realize is that the problem is even more difficult than I'd thought. Slater may not be concerned about pronoun use, but Sasha is. But it turns out that Sasha's solution (which I quoted) is not a practical one.

[wild_irises]

I'm still having this conversation with you in my head, so I thought I'd put a bit of it on paper (respecting your buttons, of course).

The singular "they" is hard to wrap one's mind around. I made it a New Year's Resolution in 2015, and by 2017 I'd gotten pretty good at it though, like Sasha's parents, I still screw up.

What I notice though is that the younger people I know screw up less than I do, and the younger they are, the more it seems natural to them. My niece, for example (26 years old and firmly in the "she" camp for herself) has a lifelong friend who prefers "they," and it trips off my niece's tongue with no hesitation.

Many college students are now in schools where pronoun preference is regularly asked at various times, and (presumably) mostly respected once determined.

I think that the difficulty may be pretty generational (and regional/political), but that folks like you and me and Sasha's parents are not the best indicators of how difficult this shift will turn out to be.

[calimac]

Remembering the pronoun preference of a person you know is, of course, an entirely separate issue from knowing how to refer to a complete stranger whom you're talking about, not to.

Regarding the former issue, what struck me is that Sasha's parents had trouble with the pronoun, but not with Sasha's change of personal name. My guess is that the brain circuits that keep proper names and pronouns work differently from each other.

I think the difference that you're seeing is not a generational one, not when the older people involved are those like you or Sasha's parents, or even me, who are open to accepting varying ways of being human. I think it's a difference of age. Younger people's minds are more flexible to rewiring. I find that, while I accept "they" as a way of referring to an unspecified individual, my brain rebels against using it for a specified person. It also rebels against invented pronouns, and I first saw those over 30 years ago. It's not that I think they're wrong, it's that I'm terrified of making faux pas by failing to internalize them. The older I get, the more glitches I make even when not culturally charged. For instance, I'm stunned at how I keep calling the new Gary Oldman movie Greatest Hour even though I know perfectly well the title is Darkest Hour.