There’s a crusade afoot. It might be misguided, it might be futile, it might be one person strong ... but it’s a crusade nonetheless. And she’s not shutting up about it.
Johns Hopkins professor D.N. DeLuna has coined “hu” as a gender-neutral pronoun to replace the awkward “his/her,” “his or her” and exclusive “his” or “her.” She’s even founded the vaguely sinister-sounding Archangul Foundation for the sole purpose of promoting the use of “hu” (pronounced like “huh”). As in, “Everyone can do what hu wants.”
Just one problem: We already have a commonly accepted gender-neutral singular pronoun. It’s called “they.”
“Some very fussy grammarians would get quite upset,” she argues against “they.”
Who has any time for very fussy grammarians?
Lexicographers, grammarians and even academics long ago accepted “they,” “their” and “them” for usage in the singular. Plenty have tried to come up with gender-neutral substitutes—remember the glory days of “zim”? “hir”?—and all have ended up bowing to the superior “they.”
But there’s something weirder about DeLuna. She’s edited a scholarly essay collection titled The Political Imagination in History: Essays Concerning J.G.A. Pocock, littering “hu” all over the joint. What’s more, the first review blurb on the book jacket reads, “This book isn’t something you or I will ever read. The Political Imagination ... is a scholarly work that only fans of J.G.A. Pocock, whoever hu is, would appreciate.”
“It’s not unheard of to sort of diss the book in a very ironic, I want to say hip way,” says DeLuna. The cover is an enigmatic image of flying horses and nude maidens.
The text is near-unreadable academic-speak.
Is J.G.A. Pocock just an invention, a front for the dissemination of “hu”?
“He’s a fantastic historian,” DeLuna insists. But the book—edited by DeLuna—arrived on the Angry Grammarian’s desk accompanied by a press release touting not J.G.A. Pocock’s credentials as a historian, but rather the volume’s use of “hu.” The pages containing the word were highlighted with multicolored tabs.
“I have patience,” DeLuna says of her upcoming world domination. “I do think that, in time, this will be a stunning success. But it will take time.”
Time, persistence and a catchier name than Pocock.
Hear the full absurd interview with D.N. DeLuna in this week’s Angry Grammarian podcast. Subscribe free at www.theangrygrammarian.com.