January 24th, 2007
Notes on "Na"
“Na” (he/she/him/her) and “nan” (possessive his/her) are sex-neutral third-person-singular pronouns invented by the lesbian-feminist writer June Arnold in her brilliant book, “The Cook and the Carpenter: A novel by the carpenter” (Daughters Inc., Plainfield, VT, 1973). As an introduction to the novel, Arnold writes:
Since the differences between men and women are so obvious to all, so impossible to confuse whether we are speaking of learned behavior or inherent characteristics, ordinary conversation or furious passion, work or intimate relationships, the author understands that it is no longer necessary to distinguish between men and women in this novel. I have therefore used one pronoun for both, trusting the reader to know which is which.
She forthwith refuses to identify her characters by sex through three-quarters of the novel. I’m not going to give you a spoiler here, because the book is charming and well worth reading and a challenge to ingrained notions of sex-related behavior, even for the new millenium feminist. It’s out of print, as all the best books are, but there are plenty of used copies floating around, and I encourage everyone to read it.
I’m toying with the idea of using “na” and “nan” in my own writing. I have not decided whether this is appropriate, because, unlike Arnold, my purpose is usually not to illuminate the absurdity of sex role stereotyping, and the sex of the people I write about is usually obvious from the context. However, I’m also aware of the need for feminists to accompany our critique of patriarchy with some vision of what we’d like to see instead, and to try, to the best of our ability, to put that vision into practice. Remember that quote from Jan Raymond? “How do women live in the world as men have defined it while creating the world as women imagine it could be?”
I’m also aware that the transgender movement has popularized some new pronouns and sex-related words–like “zhe,” “hir,” and “boi,” for example. These words are homophones for pronouns we already use, and thus, their difference, in speech, is easily missed. I wonder if that is not altogether accidental, since the transgender movement has so far demonstrated itself to be much more interested in swapping existing sex roles than with getting rid of them. Because I am mostly opposed to transgender politics as I understand them, I am unwilling to let that movement define any more terminology than it has already tried to do, and therefore I claim the lesbian-feminist-originated “na” and “nan” as a small step towards the sex-role-free world lesbian feminists have always worked for.
