For years Italy has questioned the usefulness of studying Greek and Latin at school, which would have taken hours away from the much more useful Stem subjects and the much more spoken living languages. From Los Angeles finally arrives the assist that all classicists were waiting for: perhaps as a final tribute to dead languages, singer Jennifer Lopez, live, presented her 14-year-old daughter Emme using the neutral pronoun. More: perhaps as a final tribute to Walt Whitman’s poetry (I contain multitudes), J. Lo referred to the girl with the neutral plural they / them, that is they / them, leaving the audience stunned who, at that point, was expecting the intervention of other guests on stage, next to her daughter. art.
But no: they / they were just little Emme, ready to sing with mom Jennifer. “I always ask them to sing with me but they never do so, this is a very special occasion, because they are very, very busy and expensive,” said the 52-year-old pop star as she introduced her daughter to the Blue Diamond Gala. The two then performed in a version of Thousand years by Christina Perri. “They are worth every single penny, they are my favorite duet partner,” J. Lo pointed out. We confess that, at this point in the speech, we get lost a bit. One thing is the debate on gender and on – sacrosanct – equal opportunities between individuals, regardless of sexual identity, one thing is these pop star habits that seem little more than a parody of the debate on gender, colorful stuff like schwa in a article by Michela Murgia.
In any case, the parent-child dynamics are unfathomable when we enter this minefield. Ask Xavier Musk, son of the divine Elon, who started the procedure for changing name and gender. According to the US gossip site Tmz, the 18-year-old wants to be called Vivian Jenna Wilson, taking the surname of her mother, the writer Justine Wilson, the first wife of the Tesla founder who launched the takeover on Twitter. And – he had the boy write on the file filed with the Los Angeles Court – he wishes “not to be related in any way or form” with the bilogical father who called his first-bed children Griffin, Xavier, Kai, Saxon and Damian and those of second bed, had with the singer Grimes, X AE A-XI and Exa Dark Sideræl. There is great confusion under the sky and it really comes to regret when Greek and Latin were living languages. There was the masculine, the feminine and the neutral but, when you wrote, the woman was feminine and the man masculine. Then, in bed, everyone did as he pleased.
