Eye - 3 January 2020
From political pronouns to friendly creativity
Political pronouns
In an article about the politics of pronouns published in November 2019, a writer in The New York Times turned to early Friends for insight.
Teresa M Bejan, a professor of political theory, wrote about the issue of gender pronouns in the context of trans, nonbinary and genderqueer activists promoting ‘the use of gender-inclusive pronouns such as the singular “they/their” and “ze/zir” (instead of “he/him” or “she/her”)’.
She suggests ‘we look backward for an illuminating… perspective on the politics of pronouns’ and describes the way early Friends broke the rules of grammar and civility when they saw them standing in the way of equality.
When Quakerism was emerging, ‘you’ was a plural, used by and towards those of higher social rank, like the royal ‘we’. Meanwhile, those of lower rank were referred to by ‘thee’ and ‘thou’.
She writes: ‘As one early Quaker explained, if a man of lower status came to speak to a wealthy man, “he must you the rich man, but the rich man will thou him”.’
George Fox led the way in Quakers refusing this practice: ‘[God] forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low; and I was required to “thee” and “thou” all men and women, without any respect to rich or poor, great or small.’
Teresa M Bevan describes this as ‘a form of egalitarian social protest… Modern practitioners of pronoun politics can learn a thing or two from the early Quakers. Like today’s egalitarians, the Quakers understood that what we say, as well as how we say it, can play a crucial part in creating a more just and equal society… If the rules of grammar are indeed an obstacle to social justice, then the singular “they” represents a path of least resistance for activists and opponents alike. It may not be the victory that activists want. Still, it goes with the flow of the increasing indifference with which modern English distinguishes subjects on the basis of their social position.’
An inspiring vision
Series two of People of Science has seen a Quaker take centre-stage.
Episode six, broadcast on 5 December 2019, sees Joanna Haigh, professor of atmospheric physics at Imperial College London, highlight the work of Lewis Fry Richardson (1881-1953), who was a mathematician, physicist and Quaker.
Available on BBC iPlayer, the five minute episode looks back at his career and academic work, most notably a scheme that he designed, called ‘a forecast factory’.
Joanna Haigh explained: ‘[It] was essentially going to be forecasting the weather. This is long before there were any computers so it was entirely in his mind how these things could work… he referred to it as like being inside the Albert Hall where the North Pole is in the top and the equator is around the side and the other pole is in the orchestra pit. And you’ve got it marked out into squares and to each square sits a computer – now a “computer” is not a machine as we know them, it’s a person who’s doing a calculation and the people either side of that person would know the solutions and would pass their solutions around.’
Unfortunately ‘the forecast was wrong’ due to the technological constraints of the time, however, what Lewis Fry Richardson mapped out in his book, Weather Prediction by Numerical Process, is essentially the method used today by computers.
People of Science also explores the impact that Lewis Fry Richardson’s Quaker faith and conscientious objection in the first world war had on his life and career: ‘Anyone who was a conscientious objector was then barred from having a university post.’
Friendly creativity
Quakers in Dumfries have been letting their creative juices flow, using old copies of the Friend!
Local Friend Jan Lethbridge told Eye: ‘Each year at Christmas Dumfries Friends express their seasonal greetings to each other on a big card. This year’s was an exercise in recycling and simplicity.’
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