Ted Cruz criticizes CGS pronoun policy

By George Pritchard ‘23

On January 28, Texas Senator Ted Cruz sent out a tweet with a photo of the Catlin Gabel School (CGS) inquiry form. The photo showed an image of the pronouns an applicant can select.

The initial photo of the application came from twitter user @NoelleNoelNoL. It was then quote-tweeted by an account titled @libsoftiktok, which made it go viral, gaining over 3.4 million views and 26,000 likes.

One of the people whose attention was caught by this tweet was Cruz. The Republican senator retweeted the photo with the caption “This cannot be real.” Cruz’s account has nearly six million followers, which led to the photo gaining more publicity.

However, it is real. On the CGS inquiry form, users can select their pronouns. Among the options are commonly used pronouns, such as he/him, she/her and they/them. Additionally, there are neopronouns, such as kit/kitz/kitself, vae/vem, and moon/moonself.

Neopronouns are words that are used as pronouns without necessarily showing gender. They can take many shapes and sizes, often either creating new words (i.e vae/vem) or building off pre-existing words (i.e moon/moonself). They are rare: according to a 2020 survey, only 4% of self-identifying LGBTQIA+ youth said they used neopronouns. Even so, they are becoming more mainstream

Many people have yet to recognize the legitimacy of neopronouns, as evinced by CGS’s mentions on Twitter. Users who saw Cruz’s tweet have been criticizing CGS for its pronoun policy, as well as the school’s tuition.

As of Feb. 19, the school removed two neopronoun options from the inquiry form, kit/kitz/kitself and moon/moonself, but left vae/vem.