Dehumanization
Who Deserves A Personal Pronoun?
Does a discrete being need to be behind the descriptor?
There is much ado about personal pronouns. He/him and she/her are just soooo binary. They/them is much less confining, however difficult and confusing it may be in conversation.
Perhaps we should all learn from those south of the Mason-Dixon line. “Y’all” works quite nicely in most situations, is sexually indefinite, and has the added bonus of being both singular and plural.
To each y’all’s own.
Regardless, most have missed an insidious attack on our humanity by means of our personal pronouns. Every one of us has suffered from this ruse and devaluation of our humanity.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Could you please repeat your answer slowly and clearly?”
Wait a minute. The robot on the phone just referred to itself as “I.”
Does a robot really deserve the designation of “I”?
Seriously, do a bunch of lines of code and a voice analyzer/synthesizer merit an individual persona? There is no “being” behind this statement. This is a charade, a facade, a mirage, a fake.
What constitutes a being worthy of the “I” pronoun? Certainly not a automaton of narrow function, capable only of assessing some sound waves and negotiating through a decision tree to feed back a sometimes properly related bit of audio.
“I process. Therefore I am.”
Balderdash!
You, dear Robot (Wait, “robot” should not be dignified with capitalization, should it?), have no self consciousness. You are not self aware. You know not what you do, and we don’t forgive you. And the term “you” is used most generously here, since there is really no “you” there at all.
Stop it! Don’t use the term “I” at all. It is undeserved, and devalues the soul of humans and cats and dogs everywhere.
Follow these directives, dear robot.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Could you please repeat your answer slowly and clearly?” becomes “Unable to process your input. Could you please repeat your answer slowly and clearly?”
Yes, it’s cold and impersonal, but why lie? Automatons are cold and impersonal!
“If you can give me your account number, I will be better able to help you,” becomes, “Please provide your account number for better service.”
We’re not giving “you” anything. And don’t refer to “yourself” as “me,” either. We’re just inputting numbers so the system can function. And as an aside, why the hell can’t “you” forward these numbers to the human we eventually end up speaking with since “you” couldn’t handle the situation slightly outside “your” programming?
“I’m happy to have helped you. Thank you and have a pleasant day,” becomes, “Your transaction was successful. The system will now disengage. If your business is complete, please say ‘Done’ or hang up.”
No pleasantries are allowed, since supplying them implies that one being is wishing something for another. And one has to wonder why that implied being is almost always endowed with a clearly-identifiable female voice. It appears sexism can be promoted without an actual being as the source.
More truthfully, dear robot, whatever the voice, finish like this.
“We people responsible for this automatic system are relieved that we could force you through our inhuman system to reach something close to your objective. It costs us money every time we are forced to connect you with a real human, so we do everything we can to avoid that expensive alternative. Thanks for spending YOUR human time with our automaton so that OUR human’s time has not been spent. Really. Thanks from the bottom of our pocketbook.”
And to my fellow humans, from one being to another,
