Mr, Ms, Miss… and now – Mx!
View(s):It’s official. There are three genders, now. At least, the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary’s 2015 edition says so! And you just read all about it in your favourite Sunday newspaper. So it must be true…
Let us begin at the beginning. Shall we? In the good old days, there were just two genders. Holy writ proclaimed it from old. Humanity experienced it as long as history was recorded. Culture and civilization compassed and confirmed it. Genesis, the book of beginnings for three of the world’s great monotheistic faiths, reported that “in the beginning, when God created humanity, He created them in His own image; male and female created He them…”
This state of affairs lasted from around the epoch of Moses up to the age of Malthus. (Moses was a legendary politician and demagogue; the Revd. Thomas Robert Malthus a learned political economist and demographer.) Even Marie Stopes – the famous/infamous author, academic, eugenicist, and campaigner for women’s right to birth control – would be loathe to admit, for all her sangfroid and savoir faire, that there was more than Mister and Missis in the world as we knew it. But it couldn’t last… Could it, dears?
So where we had Mr., Ms., and Miss, (and I don’t mean MR, MS, and well, let’s not mention the other one, let’s not) we now have an embarrassment of sexes. The eds. of OED are pleased to call him, er her, um it, Mx. Which is to say: a person of indeterminate gender, or one who does not wish to disclose his, er her, um its, sex. The old joke was that there were three sexes: men, women, and clergypersons. The new version is that there are three: Mr., Mrs., or Miss. And Mx. QED.
Well, what does it all mean? According to the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary – that bible of wordsmiths, savants, idiots, demographers, e-literati and glitterati as well as literati alike; to say nothing of common or garden journalists, editors, and writers – OED has a new word among many. In reality a prefix, the honorific ‘Mx’ will be included in OED 2015 and beyond. Pronounced ‘mix’ or ‘müx’, it will identify and describe those who either do not admit to being of any particular sex, least of all traditional male or female, or those who are transgender.
You would finger the likes of Bruce Jenner for this fad, wouldn’t you, dears? I wouldn’t. As much as the Kardashians’ step-father has upped the ante for transgendered people, one can hardly trace the movement to him. Er, her. For those of you who don’t know it yet, the once much-married Jenner – an erstwhile Olympian who was even considered for the role of James Bond and Superman after his 1976 showing at the Montreal Games – is slowly but surely transitioning from a man to a woman. Arguably the most media-visible of his adoptive progeny, his step-daughter Kim Kardashian, has tweeted that she is proud of her dad. Er, um, mum?
However, that is not to say that we can lay the responsibility at the Jenner-Kardashian doorstep. As the Sunday Times – UK astutely noted, over the past several years, the honorific ‘Mx’ has gradually been included in virtually every British database. So the transgender movement is a trans-ponder (if you will forgive the trans-Atlantic pond, er pun). More to the point, perhaps, and maybe more than in the US, ‘Mx’ is already accepted by British government departments, local councils, most banks and not a few business concerns, some schools and universities, the Royal Mail (very significant, that) and the Department of Motor Vehicles in the United Kingdom.
One of the assistant editors of OED has noted that ‘Mx’ was the first addition to the traditional and hidebound honorifics of Mister, Missis, Master, and Miss. He, Mr. Jonathan Dent, asserted that the development was a demonstration of how English was “evolving to accommodate a changing and more open-minded society”.
Back at home – in Sri Lanka, not ole Blighty – certain purists are still struggling to cope with new ‘dictionary’ words such as ‘ginormous’. Which is, of course, as you can see almost immediately, a portmanteau from ‘gigantic’ and ‘enormous’. That reminds me of one young lady account executive at an advertising agency back in the day, who complained bitterly that the “purity” of the English language was being spoiled by “unwanted additions” such as “asweddumize” – a loan word from (you guessed it) Sinhala. Happily, a sharp-tongued young creative writer (who shall remain nameless for shame of the humble stamp of his lowly origins) snapped back: “Yes, pity about all those ‘unwanted’ Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Celtic, Viking, Frankish, Germanic, Italian, Spanish, and Tamil words that are ‘spoiling’ it, too!”
But back to Jonathan Dent, Esq. (Ah, there’s an honorific I haven’t heard used in a long while!): “This is an example of how the English language adapts to people’s needs, with people using language in ways that suit them rather than letting language dictate identity to them.”
You said a mouthful, M. Dent! Wonder what the next honorific to emerge will be? Will it come from the LGBTIC communities? Maybe Mf, Mz, or Mxy? Or will OED take the plunge and plagiarize S/He – or Xe or Zhe – to set the tone for a liberal new linguistic identity crucible?