On fae/faer pronouns and cultural appropriation
HOW IT STARTED
I had a handful, a very small handful but more than two, responses in the Gender Census feedback box telling me that fae/faer pronouns are appropriative. The reasons didn’t always agree, and the culture that was being appropriated wasn’t always the same, but here’s a selection of quotes:
- “Fae pronouns are cultural appropriation and are harmful to use“ - UK, age 11-15
- “I’m not a person who practices pagan holidays but, my understanding is that pronouns like fae/faeself are harmful because the fae are real to pagans and is like using Jesus/jesuself as pronouns“ - UK, age 11-15
- “I know you’ve probably heard this a million times, so has everyone on the internet, but the “mere existence’‘of the fae pronoun feels really uncomfortable for some of us. I’m personally not against neopronouns like xe/xim, er/em and the like, I am a pagan but apart from the, imo most important, reasoning of that pronoun being immensely disrespectful, I worry as an nb about people who banalize the usage of pronouns ’'for fun”, and I’m quoting what some people have told me.“ - Spain, 16-20
- “I don’t agree with fae/deity pronouns just from a pagan perspective it’s very disrespectful to the cultures they come from. Like Fae are a legit thing in many cultures and they hate with a fiery passion mortal humans calling themselves Fae to the point of harming/cursing the people who do it“ - USA, age 16-20
- “only celtic people can use far/ faers otherwise it’s cultural appropriation, many celts have said this and told me this“ - USA, age 16-20
So that’s:
- ❓ Someone who doesn’t say whether they’re pagan or Celtic.
- ❌ Someone who definitely isn’t pagan.
- ✅ Someone who is pagan.
- ❓ Someone who doesn’t say whether they’re pagan or Celtic.
- ❓ Someone who doesn’t say whether they’re pagan or Celtic.
So, just to disclose some bias up-front, I am English so I’m not Celtic, but I do live in Wales so I am surrounded by Celts. The bit of Wales that I live in is so beautiful in such a way that when my French friend came to visit me she described it as féerique - like an enchanting, magical land, literally “fairylike” or thereabouts. Coincidentally I have also considered myself mostly pagan for over half of my life, and I can’t definitively claim whether or not the Fae are “part of paganism” because paganism is so diverse and pick’n’mix that it just doesn’t work that way.
To me the idea that fae/faer pronouns would be offensive or culturally appropriative sounds absurd. But also, I am powered by curiosity, and have been wrong enough times in my life that I wanted to approach this in a neutral way with an open mind. Perhaps what I find out can be helpful to some people.
So since we only have information from one person who is definitely directly affected by any cultural appropriation that may be happening, the first thing I wanted to do was get some information from ideally a large number of people who are in the cultures being appropriated, and see what they think.
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WHAT I DID
First of all I put some polls up on Twitter and Mastodon. [Edit: Note that this post has been updated with results from closed polls.]
I specified that I wanted to hear from nonbinary Celts and pagans, just so that the voters would be familiar with fae/faer pronouns. I asked the questions in a neutral way, i.e. “How do you feel about…” with “good/neutral/bad” answer options, instead of something more leading like “Is this a load of rubbish?” or “are you super offended?” with “yes/no” options. I provided a “see results” option, so that the poll results wouldn’t be skewed as much by random people clicking any old answer to see the results. And I invited voters to express their opinions in replies.
- Question #1: Nonbinary people of Celtic descent (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Brittany), how do you feel about non-Celtic people using the neopronoun set fae/faer? [ It’s good / No strong feelings/other / It’s bad ]
- Question #2: Nonbinary pagans, how do you feel about non-pagans using the neopronoun set fae/faer? [ It’s good / No strong feelings/other / It’s bad ]
The Twitter polls got over 1,100 responses each, and the Mastodon polls got over 140 responses each. With a little bit of spreadsheetery I removed the “N/A” responses to reverse engineer the number of people voting for each option, combined those numbers, and recalculated percentages.
Obviously this approach is not in the least scientific, but thankfully the results were unambiguous enough and the samples were big enough that I feel comfortable drawing conclusions.
Celts on fae/faer pronouns being used by non-Celts (561 voters):
- It’s good - 42.5%
- No strong feelings/other - 44.0%
- It’s bad - 13.5%
Pagans on fae/faer pronouns being used by non-pagans (468 voters):
- It’s good - 47.2%
- No strong feelings/other - 39.5%
- It’s bad - 13.3%
Here’s how that looks as a graph:
The limitations of polls on these platforms means that we have no way to distinguish between people who have more complicated views (”other”) and people who have “no strong feelings”, so we can’t really draw conclusions there. If we stick to just the pure positive and pure negative:
- Celts were over three times as likely to feel positive about non-Celts using fae/faer pronouns than they were to feel negative.
- Pagans were over three and a half times as likely to feel positive about non-pagans using fae/faer pronouns than they were to feel negative.
So Celts and pagans are way more likely to feel actively good about someone’s fae/faer pronouns, even when that person is not a Celt/pagan. That’s some strong evidence against the idea that fae/faer pronouns are appropriative, right there.
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CORRECTIONS
To be clear, I haven’t done any research about the roots of fae/faer or the origins of the Fae and related beings, but my goal here was to get a sense of what Celts and pagans think and feel, rather than what an historian or anthropologist would say.
On the anti side, here were the replies that suggested fae/faer either is or might be inappropriate:
- “I only worry that not everyone understands the origin of the word outside of modernized ideas of fairies.“ - pagan
- “As a vaguely spiritual Whatever (Ireland), I think a mortal using “fae” as a pronoun/to refer to themselves is asking for a malicious and inventive fairy curse (on them, their families and possibly anyone in their vicinity, going by the traditions). I have not heard of this term before, so this is an immediate reaction from no background bar my cultural knowledge of sidhe/fae/term as culturally appropriate. My general approach is people can identify themselves as they want.“ - Celtic
So we’ve got a pagan who’s wary that people who use fae/faer (and people in general) might not have a fully fleshed out idea of the Fae. And we’ve got a Celt who doesn’t mind people using fae/faer personally, but based on what they know of the Fae they wouldn’t be surprised if the Fae got mad about it. No outright opposition, but a little concern.
There were not a lot of replies on the pro side, but not because people weren’t into it, judging by the votes. There were a lot of “it’s more complicated than that” replies, many of which repeated others, so quotes won’t really work. Here’s a summary of the Celtic bits:
- “Fae” is not a Celtic word, and Celts don’t use it. It is French, or Anglo-French.
- “Fae” can refer to any number of stories/legends from a wide variety of cultures in Europe, not one cohesive concept.
- There are many legends about fairy-like beings in Celtic mythologies, and there are many, many different names for them.
- The Celts are not a monolith, they’re a broad selection of cultures with various languages and various mythologies.
And the pagan bits:
- Paganism is not closed or exclusive in any way. It might actually be more open than anything else, as “pagan” is a sort of umbrella term for non-mainstream religions in some contexts. A closed culture would be a prerequisite for something to be considered “appropriated” from paganism.
- From my own experience, pagans may or may not believe in the Fae, and within that group believers may or may not consider the Fae to be sacred and/or worthy of great respect. (I’ve certainly never met a pagan who worshipped the Fae, though I don’t doubt that some do.)
And then we get into the accusations. 🍿
- “this issue wasn’t started by Celtic groups or by people who know much about Celtic fae. It was started primarily by anti-neopronoun exclusionist pagans on TikTok.“
- “[I’m] literally Scottish […] and it’s not appropriative in the least and honestly to suggest as such is massively invalidating towards actual acts of cultural appropriation and is therefore racist. Feel like if this was actually brought up it was either by some people who seriously got their wires crossed or people who are just concern trolling and trying to make fun of both neo-pronouns and of the concept of cultural appropriation and stir the pot in the process.“
- “It wouldn’t be the first time bigots falsly claim “it’s appropriative from X marginalized group" to harass people they don’t like, like they did with aspec people when they claimed “aspec” was stolen from autistic language (which was false, as many autistics said)“
- “It’s been a discussion in pagan circles recently … People were very quick to use the discussion as an excuse to shit on nonbinary people.“
- “I think it would be apropos to note that the word “faerie/fairy” has been a synonym for various queer identities for decades, too. The Radical Faeries are a good example.“ (So if anyone has the right to [re]claim it…)
A little healthy skepticism is often wise in online LGBTQ+ “discourse”, and some of these people are making some very strong claims, for which I’d love to see some evidence/sources/context. Some of it certainly sounds plausible.
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HOW DID IT START?
I had a look on Twitter and the earliest claim I can find that fae/faer pronouns are cultural appropriation is from 18th February 2020, almost exactly one year ago today. Again, tweets are not the best medium for this, there was very little in the way of nuance or context. If anyone can find an older claim from Twitter or Tumblr or anywhere else online, please do send it my way.
I have no idea how to navigate TikTok because I’m a nonbinosaur. (I’m 34.) I did find some videos of teens and young adults apparently earnestly asserting that they were Celtic or pagan and the use of fae/faer pronouns was offensive, but the videos were very brief and provided nothing in the way of nuance or context. For example:
- This one from October 2020 with 29k ❤️s, by someone who I assume is USian based on the word “mom”?
- This one from December 2020, that says “I am pagan and i find it rather disrespectful. It’s like using god/godr or jesus/jesusr.” That’s probably what inspired the feedback box comment above that refers to hypothetical jesus/jesusr pronouns.
If anyone is able to find a particularly old or influential TikTok video about fae/faer pronouns being appropriative I’d really appreciate it, especially if it’s from a different age group or from not-the-USA, to give us a feel for how universal this is.
For context, fae pronouns were mentioned in the very first Gender Census back in May 2013, though you’ll have to take my word for it as the individual responses are not currently public. The word “fae” was mentioned in the pronoun question’s “other” textbox, and no other forms in the set were entered so we have no way of knowing for sure what that person’s full pronoun set actually is. This means the set may have been around for longer. The Nonbinary Wiki says that the pronoun set was created in October 2013, as “fae/vaer”, later than the first entry in the Gender Census, so I’ll be editing that wiki page later! If anyone has any examples of fae/faer pronouns in use before 2013 I would also be very interested to see that.
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IN SUMMARY
Obviously I can’t speak for everyone, as the Twitter polls are not super scientific and they only surveyed a selection of Celts and pagans within a few degrees of separation of the Gender Census Twitter and Mastodon accounts, but I can certainly report on what I found.
For a more conclusive result, we’d need to take into account various demographics such as age, culture, location, religion, race/heritage, etc.
As far as I can tell based on fairly small samples of over 400 people per group, a minority of about 13% of Celtic and/or pagan people felt that use of fae/faer pronouns is appropriative.
A much higher number of people per group felt positive about people who are not Celts or pagans using fae/faer pronouns. The predominant view was:
- It can’t be cultural appropriation from Celtic cultures because fairy-like beings are not unique to Celtic cultures and Celtic cultures don’t call them Fae.
- It can’t be cultural appropriation from pagan cultures because paganism is not “closed” or exclusive in any way, it’s too broad and open.
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If your experience of your gender(s) or lack thereof isn’t described or encompassed by the gender binary of “male OR female”, please do click here to take the Gender Census 2021 - it’s international and it closes no earlier than 10th March 2021!
This post is a very good example of why one should always vet new claims of “x is harmful/appropriation to [group]”, particularly if those claims are rarely or never actually coming from members of the group is question.
Particularly with the advent of tiktok, we’ve entered into an era where being violently “progressive” - or, more correctly put, finding new ways to apply progressive language - is seen as a way to gain social status. Which means there are tons of people out there purposefully looking for new things to deem “problematic” solely for the attention it gets them, rather than out of any actual desire to help minorities.
Always remember: The only people who can be called an authority on whether or not something is harmful, are the people it supposedly harms. When vetting, look for as many sources within that demographic as you can find and draw a consensus from that; do not trust random social justice bloggers to feed you a list of things you should be offended by.