This is why AOC’s pronoun purging matters: it’s an unspoken admission that there are two Americas. There’s the America of performative virtue, inhabited by the credentialled classes, where certain rituals have become de rigueur, chief among them the declaration of one’s pronouns. Pronoun posting serves no practical purpose. Everyone knows AOC is ‘she’, just as they know Joe Biden is ‘he’ – yes, even this 81-year-old male staple of the establishment has felt compelled to state his pronouns in the fashion of the post-class high-minded millennials who have lately conquered his party. No, the purpose of stating pronouns isn’t to provide information but to profess loyalty. Loyalty to the credo of the post-reason elites that govern our societies. It is a code of the inner sanctum, proof to your fellow travellers in the universe of staged virtue that you, too, genuflect to the religion of genderfluidity; that you, too, are good.