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English Teacher Runs Shelter for Abused Nouns and Pronouns
“F/friends”, “W/we”, “T/they”—there’s no question that abused nouns and pronouns are a common sight today. Most of us just wince and try to forget. But Jessica Bittner, a high school English teacher from Pocatello, Idaho, is fighting back. In 2004 she opened a shelter for abused nouns and pronouns.
"One day I was surfing the Internet, and I came across a website where--oh God, it was just terrible. I saw a noun looking at me from the screen, a beautiful young noun, but it had this hideous deformity attached to the front of it. The first letter was capitalized, then there was a forward slash, then the first letter was repeated but in lower case. I was outraged. I thought, 'What human could have done such a thing?' I kept reading the website, and it was the same thing again and again--nouns and pronouns with their first letter violated. I wanted to shoot someone."
Luckily for the nouns and pronouns, Ms. Bittner found a more productive way to channel her energy.
"I went back and found the first noun, the one that had really grabbed me, and I took him home with me. At first he didn't want to come—he was obviously scared of people--but I offered him a treat and eventually he kind of sidled over and let me pick him up. He had my heart right there. I'd never seen anything so sweet."
Of course, Ms. Bittner says, she couldn’t stop there.
“I didn’t have much room in my apartment at the time, but I took in as many nouns and pronouns as I could. Eventually I moved out and got a good-sized house, which worked for a while, but soon I realized I was going to need outside help. I’ve received donations from the public, as well as from a couple of wealthy private donors. It’s always a stretch, but we get by.”
Now her shelter is a dedicated two-storey building, staffed mostly by volunteers, housing over 200 nouns and pronouns. Most of them find homes soon after their capital letter and forward slash have been removed.
"I really feel I've been given a new life," said one pronoun, who asked to remain anonymous. "I mean, I still feel a little nervous on the Internet, and BDSM people especially scare me. But my confidence is definitely higher. If you compare me now to me two years ago, it's like two different pronouns."
The pronoun's therapist agrees. "She's made incredible progress in the last two years. She'd deny this if she heard me say it today, but in another year she should even be able to be typed by submissive women without fear."
Studies have long shown a connection between noun abuse and human abuse. Ms. Bittner is happy to see the public becoming more educated about this connection, but wishes it weren’t necessary.
“Harming a noun is a bad enough thing in itself,” she says. “We shouldn’t have to show a connection to human abuse to get people involved here.”
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