The Problem With Pronouns, Pt. 1

"He fell in love the moment he saw her face." As an avowed cynic, I have to of course take issue with the content of that sentence. But what might surprise you is that I also find trouble in its form. It's so easy to say. But because it's so easy to say, that means that writing a homosexual love story is harder to write. That's like saying, "you're here, you're queer, but we're going to adjust your car so it gets 5 miles less to the gallon." It's not a deal breaker but why?

The sentence I introduced this post with, when moved to a same-sex couple, sounds no longer lovely but just narcissistic. But if the meek shall inherit the Earth, the porno kings will charge $7.95 a month until they do, and so it's them I feel sorry for. Cause when you're reading high-falutin' literature, you can think about staging. But when you're... That's a sentence better left unsaid.

Take a typical sentence of a love scene: "he kissed her knee." Change one of the players to female, and we get "she kissed her knee", which has at least four meanings. Even if you're lucky and get an unkissable location like "elbow" it's still unclear who is kissing and who is kissed.

Stay tuned to the Enfranchised this week for more hard-hitting investigative journalism and late-breaking stories about that most mammoth of Megacorps... The English Language.

-Dan