We’d hear about how there weren’t enough women on corporate boards, but not how there weren’t enough female garbage collectors; there’d be complaints about how actresses didn’t earn as much as actors, but not about how female fashions models command far more income than their male counterparts. It was never about equality. It was always about power and prestige.

Rather, the New York Times provides a guide on the matter and asks, “Are you a person, place or thing?” before presenting neopronoun examples such as “bun/bunself,” “kitten/kittenself,” and “prin/cess/princesself.” Mine, at least right now, is besidemyself.

They probably thought they’d finally come up with a school mascot so banal, so antiseptic, so plain vanilla that it couldn’t possibly offend anyone. That is, until a school official suggested that evergreen trees could conjure thoughts of black people being lynched.