A Cool Take On Pronouns

I recently posted a funny anecdote to my Facebook feed about a home-schooling faux-pas. With school happening on Zoom this year, I’ve made an effort to hold class with my seven-year-old whenever I can — to teach things beyond what he’s learning in second grade. I’m not going to get into the details here, but let me assure you it was comedic gold — on par with Cosby’s Kids Say the Darndest Things. But the punch line resulted from my introduction of pronouns, and my use of the word “sex” rather than “gender”.

Anyway, I thought it was funny, and I shared it on Facebook. Full disclosure: my intent was two-fold. One was the hope to elicit a chuckle from some people I know; the other was to see if I’d receive blowback for using the s-word.

I should also mention that I’m not a big Facebook user. Back when my kid was born, I posted a baby picture every other day. But these days — apart from my comic posts — I throw up a link to an interesting article or podcast maybe every two weeks. And when I do, I receive little feedback. To be honest, I’m not popular on social media.

I’ll also mention that what I posted was a simple block of text — four or five paragraphs long. No fancy photo or meme. In fact, a reader would have to click “read more” to see the potentially inflammatory mention of sex.