My boomer parents will die on the hill that it sounds “wrong” to use “they” to refer to a singular entity. And whenever they bring that up, I always remind them that the word “they” has been used in that way for AGES.
Example: “Whose umbrella is this? Did they already leave?”
It doesn’t seem to make a difference.
Watched a video that addressed this in good faith, because it is a tad awkward. They brought up and old term (because this isn’t new), “thone”, short for “the one”. And I’mma be real with you, “THE ONE, DIRK MCCALLAHAN” does ring kinda hard.
“He or she” sounds and looks so cumbersome. “They” is the superior pronoun on style/conciseness alone.
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Yup, either singular or plural. It’s clear from context because you always refer to them in a previous clause. The user did this, they… The class did this, they…
The user must do this before first use, if he or she fails to… Ugh
The user must do this before first use, if they fail to…😘👌
They has been used like this for a long, long time.
And what are all the other definitions? Words can have more than one, like “they” does.
It’s funny to me how easy English has it. All you have to do is use “they”, and if people think that’s awkward, they should see how difficult it is to navigate it in a language with complex verb conjugations with gendered nouns and verbs. It’s complicated to the point that non-binary people will still use their assigned-at-birth (if that’s the term?) pronouns, to save everyone - including themselves - a headache. There’s of course a movement to change the language, but it’s difficult.
They went with them and then they decided to take off and took them with them, so we met up with some friends and then got together with them even though they didn’t join because they ultimately wanted to go home.
It’s less precise. That’s just a problem with English though. That said, just using people’s names more often isn’t that big of a deal and using gender neutral pronouns otherwise is, similarly, not hard and not a big deal. Nevertheless, I was referring to seven different distinct individuals in the above.
He went with her, but then she decided to take off and took him with her, so we met up with some friends and then got together with him though she didn’t want to join because he ultimately wanted to go home.
It’s still confusing, and the sentence is absurd, but you can get a better sense of how many people are involved with gendered pronouns. But no one talks that way, contextual clues would make it more obvious, and we’d use proper names in many of those instances by habit for clarification. That said, it would be easier if we just used a number-word in place of a pronoun. Thone, thwo, theree, thour, etc or something. Then we could refer to whom we mean with a numbered-pronoun to indicate agents. That would be the clearest way to differentiate agents in a sentence.
And to be very clear, I have no problem using non-gendered pronouns, but the idea that it isn’t slightly less precise is facile. But, again, only slightly. And who cares if it makes people more comfort and seen?
Unless the people in innane sentence are the same gender and it’s back to the same issue. You exists and it’s not an issue for anyone.
Even then, whether “them” references a group or an individual is left unclear–as I noted. E.g., “you” vs “y’all.” Exclusively using they/them is mildly less precise, but people acting like it’s the end of the English language is silly.
As I also explicitly stated, acting like it’s not slightly imprecise is facile. It could be worse, at least English doesn’t have gendered nouns like Spanish, Italian, etc. 😁
You don’t even need a convoluted sentence like that, just now on the news the reporter was talking about a trans woman’s mental health problems and said “Jane’s parents were concerned that they may harm themselves”
It is a bit of an awkward way of speaking
Yeah, and like in my own example, it’s easily clarified by simply saying Jane’s parents were concerned that Jane may harm theirself.
Over and beyond gendered pronouns, the overwhelming amount of confusing sentences I read aren’t confusing because of genderless pronouns. They’re confusing because they’re poorly written.
You sound like you live on Terf Island
yet the word you literally is about multiple entities
Since nobody has mentioned the actual reason for this phenomenon yet, the difference here is usually one of known vs. unknown gender/referent. (At least for practically all older speakers of English. Some younger speakers do seem to be able to use “they” grammatically to refer to known people. Changes in progress, woo!)
Your example is a perfect one: in a question like “whose umbrella is this?” we have no idea what gender the owner is, and so “they” is grammatical for the vast majority of English speakers.
Once the gender/referent is known, however, for many/most speakers of English (myself included), “they” becomes ungrammatical and the speaker must switch to “he” or “she”:
“Whose umbrella is this? Did they already leave?”
“That’s John’s.”
*“Oh, they need to come get it then.” (The asterisk here is the common linguistic notation for ungrammaticality. This also assumes that both speakers are familiar with who John is. You can still get grammatical “they” after responses that refer to unknown people, especially with common gender-ambiguous names like Pat.)
So, for anyone wondering why many speakers, probably including themselves (if they’re honest enough to admit it), seem to find known-gender singular “they” to be awkward/ungrammatical when supposedly “it’s been grammatical for a thousand years”, that’s why!
“They” also refers to plurality. In the case of an individual having either both or neither and you aren’t trying to be disrespectful with “it” then it’s not confusing at all because it’s accurate.
That’s not relevant to our conversation here - we’re not talking about how language should be used (which linguistics, as an empirical/rationalist science, has nothing to say about), we’re talking about how it is used.
Once the gender/referent is known, however, for many/most speakers of English (myself included), “they” becomes ungrammatical and the speaker must switch to “he” or “she”:
I must be one of these “younger” people because I don’t get this. I have no problem referring to people as “they.” Sometimes I do so because the gender is irrelevant, sometimes to obfuscate who I’m talking about, and sometimes because they might not identify within the s/he binary.
What I don’t get is, how can knowing the gender suddenly make it difficult to use a neutral term, if it worked before?
Sometimes I do so because the gender is irrelevant
This seems to be part of the pathway of change that has led to the widespread adoption of specific singular “they” among younger speakers, and there’s some empirical evidence supporting this.
What I don’t get is, how can knowing the gender suddenly make it difficult to use a neutral term, if it worked before?
This is just one of those arbitrary rules that often exist in language, like how in many languages neuter/inanimate nouns can’t act as the subject of a sentence due to what’s called an “animacy restriction”.
For this specific phenomenon (the “older” ungrammaticality of definite singular they vs. the “younger” grammaticality of it), this recent paper argues that this is due to a difference in obligatoriness of morphosyntactic gender features. The paper is a bit technical if you don’t have a linguistic background, but the basic argument is that in older varieties of English, gender features must be obligatorily expressed in the morphosyntactic derivation if they are known, while in younger varieties, this expression seems to be optional, and therefore free variation between he/they and she/they is allowed by the grammar.
So, “It’s John’s. They need to come get it” is ungrammatical for older speakers for not obligatorily expressing the gender feature once it’s known, while it’s perfectly fine for younger speakers for whom expressing that feature seems to be optional in the grammar.
Maybe this analogy will help: Let’s say you meet someone, and you ask them “Do you have a cat?”. Note that you’ve used the singular here, though it’s acting number-neutral in this context. If they respond “I have two”, then it will immediately become ungrammatical for you to continue to use the number-neutral singular and ask “Does your cat like fish?”
Once you have access to the information that there’s more than one cat, then the arbitrary rules of English grammar require that knowledge to immediately be reflected in the morphosyntactic structure of your sentences from then on. And this makes no independent, logical sense, because there are tons of languages out there that don’t have plurality distinctions. But, English does, and so to speak grammatical English (for now), you have to use plural morphology to refer to more than one entity.
It’s the same for “older” speakers of English - just like it’s ungrammatical for you to continue to use the number-neutral singular once you know that there’s a “plural number feature” in the linguistic context, for older speakers of English it’s ungrammatical for them to continue to use the gender-neutral “they” once they know that there’s a “masculine gender feature” in the linguistic context.
Also, it’s important to note that this term “ungrammatical” is descriptive, not prescriptive - it’s not saying that it’s not “proper” or “correct” according to some arbitrary standard that someone decided on in the 1800s, but rather that’s literally not how those speakers’ mental grammars work. While it may seem illogical (and even regressive from a modern political perspective), every natural human language is composed of arbitrary rules that often seem illogical. Like how the past tense of “go” is the completely unrelated past tense of the older English verb “to wend”, “went”. Or how the past tense of the verb “can” isn’t “could” anymore – that’s reserved for modal usage now in most English dialects – it’s the completely awkward phrase “was able to”.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t, or shouldn’t, try to accommodate non-binary people of course, as is unfortunately often argued, but it does mean that, contrary to what I commonly see people say on the internet, doing so for these speakers does require a constant, concerted effort to consciously override their mental grammars.
Maybe this analogy will help: Let’s say you meet someone, and you ask them “Do you have a cat?”. Note that you’ve used the singular here, though it’s acting number-neutral in this context. If they respond “I have two”, then it will immediately become ungrammatical for you to continue to use the number-neutral singular and ask “Does your cat like fish?”
This helped a lot. It is true that I do not feel this way about “they”, but it does put things into perspective. Thank you.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t, or shouldn’t, try to accommodate non-binary people of course, as is unfortunately often argued, but it does mean that, contrary to what I commonly see people say on the internet, doing so for these speakers does require a constant, concerted effort to consciously override their mental grammars.
This is true also when someone you’ve known for a while transitions, or changes their name (like in the case of marriage, or just a regular name-change). Most people are okay with you tripping up, it’s expected even. It’s just when it’s done in bad faith that it becomes an issue.
It’s important to understand that Hank is specific to say “correct prounons” and not “preferred prounons”. We as creature of civilization have to right to control our place in that creation, so when someone misgenders, it’s not that they are nessecarily showing disrespect, but being factually wrong. It’s okay to state the wrong thing if you don’t know, but if you insist that only YOUR interpretation of another person is correct, even more so than how THEY THEMSELVES interpret themselves, then you have crossed the rubicon in to bigotry.
To see another person on the street and think you have a better view of them than they do in a mirror is just wild levels of arrogance. They know themslevss far more than you ever will.
That’s John Green, but they’re the same person, according to the internet.
This is exactly the comment I was gonna leave, I strongly dislike the phrase “preferred pronouns,” because that implies that it’s a preference. Big props to John for making the distinction
The problem with “correct” pronouns is that what’s considered correct will differ depending on who’s saying it. There’s no confusion with “preferred” pronouns. Also, it is a preference, because some people use pronouns that are not the standard he/she/they ones. It’s not their gender that they chose, it’s (potentially) what pronouns they want to use to refer to said gender.
Try some proofreading your own comments. Dimwit.
🤣 😂
Sorry if the quick comment I left on my phone while on the toilet wasn’t up to your standards, but since you aren’t actually contributing anything of substance I don’t see a reason to care what you think.
Edit: Jesus your comment history is sad. Seems like you never can think of anything worthwhile to say. Stay mad I guess?
It’s also proofreading
I’m getting pretty old.
Transgender stuff is new and confusing to me.
My only experience with it was in a bar I used to frequent in Los Angeles, though I think they were more transvestite than transgender. Pronouns never came up there. We just used names.
It’s easy for me to use any name given when introduced. If you introduce yourself to me with a feminine name when you appear quite male, it’s no skin off my teeth.
Pronouns are more difficult simply because of my embedded native language of English dictating gender. While difficult, it’s no more inconvenient than to slow myself down, think about what I’m saying, and try to use what’s preferred. If I should slip up, then maybe a brief, “oops, sorry about that,” is in order.
The hardest thing for me is if I have known you as one name and now I’ve got to use a new name. This has nothing to do with gender or politics however. It’s just how my brain stores things. My sister uses a different first name in adulthood than when we were kids, and I never have been able to adapt. Since my sister is awesome and understands me, she gives me a pass on this.
Bottom line, the linguistics can be difficult for us oldies, but that doesn’t give us reason to fear, hate, or persecute.
38 years here. Pronouns based on appearance are pretty solidly baked into my brain.
I’m willing to improve if you’re willing to be patient and deal with my fuck ups.
I think (in general) any one should be just allowed to say “oops” in any situation, in any case, however bad it is, to note he/she/(add any extra pronouns) has said/done and gone something that should not have happened or taken place. It’s like software crashing of thinking, which happens and will happen more than we would like to.
And yet, in both cases, there is a significant subset of people who don’t see it that way. They see it as your personal fault/failure as a human being from not knowing the right pronoun, or that the software crashing is your fault.
If I’m genuinely trying to adapt to something, I’ve got no time for intolerance toward my errors en route to learning. That’s on the other person regardless of makeup or identity.
The hardest thing for me is if I have know you as one name and now I’ve got to use a new name. This has nothing to do with gender or politics however. It’s just how my brain stores things. My sister uses a different first name in adulthood than when we were kids, and I never have been able to adapt.
That’s interesting. I’m certainly not young myself (approaching 47), and while I had no problem with remembering the new name for my high school friend who had transitioned in the years between us knowing each other then and getting back in touch, I have so much trouble remembering to call my own (cisgender) daughter by the shortened version of her full name, which she’d prefer. Maybe because my friend also changed her gender and, obviously, her look so it’s easier to remember when I talk to her?
Luckily most people are going to be like your sister.
Sometimes people have their own shit going on that might make them “overreact” to your slip ups.
Weirdly you’ll see people that trust you more react more strongly but it’s not a you problem. They’re likely venting against constant micro aggressions in a “safer” space, so try and be forgiving:)
You’re right about it taking more work the longer you’ve known someone the harder it gets… It takes zero time for me to register “they/them” for someone I just met… But I still fuck up with a 20 year friend that switched 5 years ago…
Just remembering it’s not about you and as long as you try your best you’ll be fine.
Using pronouns isn’t a “problem” though, it’s that people genuinely don’t care.
I don’t care very much if I’m honest. I’ve never interacted with someone who informed me that their pronouns were not the usual ones.
It also never happened to me but I imagine the conversation would be something like:
Hello X
Please don’t call me X I don’t like it, call me Y instead
Ok
~ ~The end~ ~
Okay imagine that… but with an internal crushing anxiety knowing that under best case there will be probably around five somewhat invasive follow up long answer questions either about your personal history or about trans people’s existence in general. Then an optional depressing thing people think is them being magnanimous where they say “I don’t get it but okay.” OR they look at you like you grew another head and walk swiftly away to watch/glare you with furtive long stares or try and speed run whatever brief social interaction you are participating in like you have the plague.
Aaaaand mental picture complete!
“OK comrade!”
You’d hope that.
But in my experience it’s a 50/50 chance they will go off on you.
People genuinely do care considering Jordan Peterson’s entire career is based on the whole “you can’t force me to use your pronouns” bullshit that no one was trying to force him to do in the first place.
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Both of those things are lies. And I showed a link that demonstrated the lies.
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That is irrelevant to the fact that Peterson was lying, so I’m not really interested in discussing it.
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You should, indeed, expect me to not change the subject when the discussion was about Peterson.
So you’re saying that the loonys care.
Loony for. Loony against. Twins, basically.
No, I’m saying bigots and assholes care. You can be sane and be a bigot and/or an asshole. And there a huge number of such people.
And if you mean that people who know what their gender is are loony and would prefer it if people didn’t get it wrong, you are probably loony yourself.
They’re both loony.
You’re loony yourself if you think someone consistently calling you by the wrong gender every time they talk to or about you wouldn’t be very rude.
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Since that is totally irrelevant to what we are talking about, no I don’t.
I will start by saying I am very open minded and really don’t agree with a lot of what Peterson says. I’m also pro LGBT and leaving people be who they are and love the life that makes them happy… But he’s right that we shouldn’t be forced to use someone’s pronouns. At the time there was discussion about making this a law. If someone wants to be a prick let them. Better to know who they are.
No one is being forced.
For fuck’s sake.
Peterson just lied about the bill.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qbnamx/no-the-trans-rights-bill-doesnt-criminalize-free-speech
No one is stopping him or anyone else from being a bigoted asshole. Asking people to stop doing it and telling them why is not forcing them.
Ok. Thanks for the clarification.
Sorry I got mad, I’m just so angry that people believe that lie because it’s turned into so much hate against trans people.
Thanks for the apology. I really hate the LGBT hate. I don’t understand what’s wrong with letting people live their own lives the way they want, if they aren’t physically affecting others. Shame my original post got downvoted so much. I didn’t think it was offensive.
Edit: also thank you for correcting my misconception over the law! I’ll make sure to correct people going forward.
Wow this sounds really reasonable, wtf kinda drugs is Peterson on if he thinks it restricts free speech…
TLDR: bill C-16 adds gender identity and expression to the list of discrimination protections, a list which already includes gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. So yeah right now you can’t fire someone for being black, under C-16 this will also apply to trans people. Ontario already has this in their provincial laws, so Peterson is already living under such a “regime”.
lots of people are being harassed and intimidated into it though. lots of people take an absolutist stance on pronouns, and if you misgender someone or don’t ask them what their pronoun is, you are considered a ‘bad person’.
labeling and harassing people into social conformity is being forced to do something.
What people? I have never seen anyone get angry about being accidentally misgendered.
No one is being “harassed” or “intimidated” into calling people what they want to be called. You’re just an asshole if you don’t do it because you’re not giving them a very basic amount of respect: the acknowledgement of the right to be who they are.
On the contrary in fact, I’ve seen people be very forgiving if you accidentally screw up but genuinely mean well. I accidentally misgendered a friend of mine once, and when I realized it I immediately started profusely apologizing. They appreciated it but said it was all good.
At the end of the day, everything can be distilled down to one maxim – be genuinely kind to people, and 99% of people will respond in kind and forgive mistakes.
Sure, anyone can make a mistake. Trans people know that just as well as cis people. If you just say sorry and correct yourself, most trans people would probably be fine with it. It’s the people who do it on purpose that are the problem.
I have, many times. Don’t know where you live… oftentimes it’s not ever the trans person getting mad… it’s a straight cis person with a hero complex goes around as a self appointed pronoun police officer and calls you names if you even ask them wtf the deal is.
If someone was a jerk to you, then that person is a jerk.
If everyone is a jerk to you, then you’re probably the jerk.
It was made a law, it’s also a law in many parts of the US. It’s not about preventing random people from being pricks, it’s about discouraging harassment from employers, school administrations, and government officials. They’re prohibited from persistently misgendering you in the same way they’re prohibited from calling you slurs. I struggle to imagine a scenario where life would be improved by removing those sensible guard rails on civil society.
Nobody is “forced to use pronouns” at present but this stance misses the point. It looks at the harms of misgendering as a situation that doesn’t cause other inequities and harms.
For the average social interaction where you are on equal terms but can walk away being misgendered is something a lot of us hate but live with like any small annoyance. It is like stubbing your toe. Not fun but whatever it’s fine that’s just “someone being a prick”. But if deliberate misgendering is allowed to happen over a long period in a workplace setting it is not something we get to walk away from. If we have to regularly interact with that person or lose our ability to feed and house ourselves then we are forced to have mental health problems because someone essentially doesn’t like being told what to do. Having to deal with panic attacks at work because you had to be locked in a room with someone hitting every trauma trigger you have exposed to the world or else you have to find a new and maybe worse job is a barrier to participation in society.
If it’s in a medical setting where we have to balance our health outcomes knowing that if we don’t comply with the misgendering our care is impacted because a doctor holds our lives or the relief from pain in their hands. A lot of trans people become shy and don’t seek help early and often because they equate doctors visits with a sense of powerlessness and shame knowing that they can’t stand up for themselves. In that instance it’s not just “someone being a dick” you are placing someone’s complete physical wellbeing before someone’s egotistical need to be “right” about you.
If a trans person in a social club and misgendering isn’t checked by a majority it can mean that they might not have a choice on whether or not to go. The world becomes a smaller place when you have gender related trauma.
Deliberate misgendering in a professional setting isn’t just “someone showing you they are a prick” the burden always falls upon trans people disproportionately because our participation in society often forces us to compromise directly on our health and there are real traumas and weaknesses that underlie our transness. If someone was openly making rape jokes around someone you knew had sexual assault trauma you’d step in right? Why not the same for someone with gender related traumas?
What Peterson is railing against is protections for participation in regular society through professional setting misgendering cases.
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What are you even talking about?
That very few adults spend their time fretting about how people refer to them in the third person.
If you were regularly harassed by being called a gender that you aren’t after spending years pretending to not be that gender because other people wouldn’t like it, you might care.
Just like you might care if you were black and someone refused to stop calling you ‘negro.’
That’s my whole point though.
I just can’t imagine caring about this very much. Sure, when I was an angsty teen, but as an adult “what people think” about me is just so far down the list of things I care about.
Maybe because you come from a place of privilege where you didn’t have to hide who you really are due to a vast amount of society hating you for it and just want a little bit of courtesy from the people around them instead of endless hatred?
Your perception and opinions is likely why you don’t know of any adults who fret over third person pronouns. You are not a safe person to bring those concerns up to so no one is going to out themselves around you. I assure you it’s more common than you think.
Generally speaking we’re looking to gain quality of life. If someone negatively reacting is a bigger problem than the internal dysphoria triggers then we take the loss and just quietly hope we don’t have to be around you for long.
Is this invading your safe space?
Yes! Get off my lawn they! 🤣
Gender-concerned people telling me how to speak is like fundamentalists telling me to wear a dress. I tell them both to piss up a rope.
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the fundies are just as full of performance moral grandstanding hypocracy as the pronoun nutbags.
I don’t understand. What is the middle ground between “you should refer to trans people by their chosen gender” and “you shouldn’t refer to trans people by their chosen gender”? Do you flip a coin?
Yes indeed.
I’d even go simpler than that. “If calling people by their preferred pronouns is one of the hundred biggest challenges…” Inserting “correct” into the statement just begs to get into an argument with a conservative and feels like you’re trying to force them to accept a different reality than they want to.
IMHO it’s simply a personal preference thing. Let people live how they want to live. You don’t have to convince everyone that Sally is really a woman trapped in the body of a man, you just have to say that it’s her preference you call her as a “she”. People should have the freedom to define themselves. That’s it. End of story.
My conservative neighbor brought up trans stuff thinking he’d use all the conservative media talking points and my answer was simply “it doesn’t really bother me. I’m a live and let live kind of guy. If they want me to use a different pronoun I’ll do my best to switch to that pronoun.” If you spin it as a freedom instead of a reality then it’s easier to accept.
It’s the right phrase, and if it triggers a conservative to start arguing, so be it
but someone’s preferred pronouns are the correct ones to use for them
It’s an inherently anti conservative thing, funny enough. At least with how some conservative voters think – Keep government out of it and let people live how they want to. Respect how they want to live, as a good neighbor.
I agree with you that spinning it as freedom is a good way to do it. You could probably put a Christian tilt on it as well.
You are asking us to tolerate the intolerant.
that’s what tolerance is. not tolerating them is being intolerant, and self-defeating ultimately.
sorry, should we go an extirpate the Amish because they don’t accept lgbt+ people in their community? or another community that disagrees with lgbt identities? are we going to bomb the middle east in the name of trans rights? those are utter ridiculous ideas, so is the idea of being ‘stamping out intolerance’. all that tells me is you think others should conform to your beliefs or be removed.
no, we’re not. because that’s insane. we tolerate the intolerate all the time. just like you don’t scream at your annoying co-worker who bores you to tears about sports or wahtever shit they try to chat you up about.
Look up the paradox of tolerance. In order to be tolerant, you must be intolerant of intolerance.
ok. lets just round up all the intolerant people and re-educate them until they are tolerant like we are.
because it’s totally cool fo us tolerant people to be fascists, as long as we are eliminating fascism!
Hey man, I’m just sharing the philosophical concept of what happens when a society is tolerant of everyone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
No one is suggesting that only fascism can prevent fascism. It’s the ‘right to refuse service’ when people are being an asshole, and you have to exercise that right when people go too far. There have to be some consequences for being intolerant in order to maintain a tolerant society.
No one where? Here?
Where I live in liberal leftie land… people are 100% often totally for facism, as long as it’s targeted at the ‘right’ people. And ironically, also they all bend over backwards to accommodate assholes as long as have a minority identity, because you know, it’s perfectly ok to treat people like shit because you’re categorically oppressed.
And in the few spaces that are generally open to everyone… they get shit on by these same supposed tolerant people, becuse these spaces are not ‘safe’ if the evil bad majority is allowed into them.
It’s pure insanity. Largely fueled by nitwits who have no experience with genuine oppression and tell me I’m an asshole when I tell them my stories of genuine racist and sexism, because it makes them ‘uncomfortable’. lol
I do not dress to suit the amish. And I do not speak to suit these gender-obsessives. Towards that sort of dictation, no, I do not practice tolerance.
But I do tolerate those who think (dress, live etc ) differently from me to peacefully do their thing.
(To clear up your equivocation there.)
This seems sane to me. How about you?
There IS a correct answer, though. If someone says, “My name is John”, you don’t get to tell them, “Well you look like a James to me, so I’m only going to call you James”. That would be incorrect. You don’t get to define other people’s existence like that.
Same thing. ‘John’ isn’t a preferred name. It’s his name. Calling him a different name would be incorrect just like using different pronouns.
That’s a fair point. When I said “choose” I meant that they did not necessarily go with what they were assigned at birth. So it was “choose” in the sense of choose to be honest about who you are. I guess saying coming out of the closet would be more accurate. Sorry for the confusion.
My conservative neighbor brought up trans stuff thinking he’d use all the conservative media talking points and my answer was simply “it doesn’t really bother me. I’m a live and let live kind of guy. If they want me to use a different pronoun I’ll do my best to switch to that pronoun.” If you spin it as a freedom instead of a reality then it’s easier to accept.
That sounds to me like he realized he couldn’t have the argument he wanted to have, not that he accepted anything. Edit - but I generally agree with your overall point.
Yeah, let people live. But also, let me live. Let me define myself the way I want. Stop telling me what the fuck to say and do and think and labeling anything that is ‘different’ than your way of thinking ‘bad and wrong’.
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Part of accepting someone is accepting their pronouns since it’s part of their identity.
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Maybe they don’t care if you take them seriously, they just care if you respect them enough to just call them what they want to be called.
I call people by whatever pronouns they like out of he/him, she/her, or they/them. French pronouns, no.
Neo pronouns are essentially just another experimental project to combat some of the linguistic issues behind using they/them singular pronouns. Consider you use singular they/them pronouns for people you don’t know ("I found someone’s cell phone, I will try to get it back to them. ") or some people get confused if their attention wanders and someone starts talking about a non-binary person whether you are talking about a single person or not.
Some non-binary people find they/them pronoun options to be dehumanizing or dislike the linguistic effect problem… However there isn’t a cultural concensus on a strictly singluar non-gendered pronoun. There are a handful of established neo-pronouns but they are akin to regional varieties born out of very specific communities but non-binary people are not a monolith. Even inside our communities there’s a lot of variation. The attempt to try and normalize new language across is board isn’t high on a lot of people’s priority list who are fine with the path of least resistance because they are dealing with a lot right now. People who use neo pronouns know it’s a big cognitive ask but they are doing it for the same reasons any trans person who asks for an accommodation - a quality of life issue. Something about the status quo is actively not working for them. It’s not based out of a desire for attention or a way to feel unique - quite the opposite usually it is nerve wracking asking for an accommodation knowing people will likely treat you as lesser for asking.
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So just because you have what you need out of an accommodation you are going to turn around and put up barriers for other people who are not served by your level of accommodation?
If they/them pronouns work for you that’s awesome. It’s in a way another path of least resistance… But there are some people do hope for more from their nearest and dearest. Generally speaking they like all of us take what we can get from the people who legitimately wish them well.
Turning around and dumping on someone else’s accommodation the same way others dump on yours so you get to feel “respectable” is pretty classless. Maybe take a step back and realize the company you keep when you act like that.
What if it were a new national identity? Do you call people Taiwanese? Why not just Chinese?
It’s not.
True national identities are just social constructs
Bingo!
Just like genders!
Don’t stereotype people by the online facade. I’ve met maybe one weird trans person who fits the stereotype but most of the time they are normal people
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The message is a follow on in agreement
I’ve met plenty of people who fit stereotypes, and are not normal well-intention ed people. Trans or straight or cis or whatever. Plenty of people just lean into their own stereotype purposefully… these are also the same folks who are obsessed with social media, trends, and policing what is ‘cool’ or ‘strong’ or whatever image they want so desperately to project.
I put pronoun police into the same category as bro-dozer drivers. insecure assholes who are desperate to be recognized.
What’s with the comments in this post?
I feel like it was written by people where English is their
thirdfifth language.Not knocking it. But even AI sounds more natural.
the bots and trolls are here now.
Guarantee most of the people who argue about pronouns on the internet don’t even know a trans person.
and most decent transfolks don’t give a shit about prounouns. they just want to be left alone and stop being made into child raping monsters by politicans looking to scare up the voter base.
I mean… I care about pronouns, so do most of my trans friends, and I’d like to think we’re all “decent” trans folks. It sucks when someone misgenders you. I would also like the conservatives in my country to stop using trans rights as a wedge issue. I can care about both of these things at the same time.
I’d like people to stop screaming at me for misgendering them when I meant no ill-will. Just like I don’t scream at people when they ask me if I’m Italian or when they mispronounce my surname.
God forbid we don’t get pissed off at people for making mistakes, especially strangers.
Oh, you’re the same user who was lying in another comment thread about trans people beating you up in a coffee shop.
Ironic that you’re commenting about politicians making up stories about trans people to scare voters, seeing as you’re doing the same thing to win an argument on the Internet.
Nah, unlike you I’m capable of realize that trans people are people. Which means they are just as shitty as any other person.
I mean what will they make us do next??? Ask us to call them by their names as well?
Seriously. There are a bunch of people in this thread who seem to think that the most very basic amount of courtesy is too much for them.
I have never met anyone in real life that doesn’t address you the way you ask them to. My language, however, does not have gender neutral pronouns so the “did you just assume X gender” question is kinda annoying.
Like this is a question that people ask and not a troll ragebait. People most positively misgender on purpose upon inspection that a person is trans. If a cis person says “but I am a boy” they will bend over apologizing.
My question comes from a grammar /German background: We have four cases. They have different pronouns. Which ones should I list?
English also has cases, we just don’t think of them much. It’s why pronouns are typically given as nominative/objective pairs: she/her, they/them, etc. So, similarly in German you’d probably only need to give one or two examples to make it clear which set to use. Or give all four.
From what I recall from briefly studying German, there’s still a masculine/feminine/neuter pronoun in all 4 cases. Couldn’t you just use the appropriate one in each case?
Whichever ones you want English speakers to use when referring to you.
Simple, isn’t it?
Everything is simple when you know the solution.
I was not really expecting English speakers to use my German pronouns, they are for German speaking people.
Would that be the Dativ or Akkusativ form? They are both quite common and important
Es geht nur um das Geschlecht, also er/sie/es. Mann kann das gleiche auf deutsch machen, die Fälle haben eigentlich nichts damit zu tun.
Es geht nur darum, wie sich der Person fühlt. Leute mit eine biologische “Zwischen-Zustand” sind ein gutes Beispiel für uns “0815” leute. Sollte ich sie oder er sagen zur eine Person mit weiblichen Büßen und einen Penis? Die leute (und auch andere die sich als nicht Standard fühlen) wollen einfach selber einschneiden wie man sie adressiert.
(Entschuldigung wegen meinen Grammatik-Fehlern, mein Deutsch wird ständig schlimmer)
Yep, pretty much what UNY0N said. It is about the gender, not the pronouns per se. It is an English thing that they have gendered pronouns when mostly all other stuff in the language is (assumed not) gendered. Such meticulus discussion of pronouns detached from gender makes me wonder what your reaction would be if someone held a door open for you and then called you Fraulein. Would you feel misgendered then?
Lol, that happened already.
Okay, then you use whichever English pronoun you wish to use. Again, pretty simple. I really don’t think this is something you couldn’t have figured out for yourself just by spending time around English speakers or even just watching English-language media or listening to English-language music.
whichever one you feel is the most correct any any one time
….
This isn’t actually a real issue. Your language preference isn’t the same as someone pushing you to change your own pronouns.
Thanks for being receptive to treating people with decency (I mean that), but this conflict you are perceiving isn’t actually a thing. Unisex and gender neutral in this context mean the same thing – this is just the more commonly used term in this era, but that’s just because patterns of language usage have changed.
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Doesn’t work because of the ratios of the populations. For a majority group, their interaction with the minority group is 1 in 100 interactions. For the minority group, they are interacting with the majority group 99 of 100 times.
Being mindful 1 time every 100 is not a big deal. Hearing something hurtful 99% of your day every day is a very big deal and could easily be the most difficult thing in your life.
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You can disagree with the reason the minority group is feeling hurt, you can’t proclaim that they aren’t feeling hurt.
And with that being the situation you can only decide whether you have the empathy and belief in common humanity to do your small part in reducing the amount of hurt in the world. Or not.
If which seat you get on the bus is the most difficult thing in your life…
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Was sitting in a particular seat the entirety of the civil rights movement? Is being addressed by your correct pronouns the entirety of the trans movement? Are they both smaller manifestations of much larger issues of bigotry and bias that shitty people can isolate to try and mock and trivialize the hardships that minorities and marginalized people face?
Geez, how you gonna equate civil rights with civil rights? What a stretch!
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Well that’s convenient timing with your eyes. Otherwise you’d have to learn to cope with being wrong.
Being misgendered constantly is a very difficult thing for trans people. Why wouldn’t it be?
because i don’t need another person’s consent or validation to be myself?
It’s not about consent or validation, it’s about being harassed. I’m not sure why that isn’t clear to you. Do you think trans people have an easy life?
me misgendering you is not harassment. i honestly don’t care and you shouldn’t either. people that want to die on that hill are wasting everyone’s time. move on. don’t engage with people who don’t take the time to respect your whatever.
Accidentally misgendering someone is not harassment.
Intentionally doing so is. Because that’s the whole point of intentionally doing so.
But accidentally misgendering someone is often considered paramount to taking part in the holocaust. I’m not mean, I’m just lazy, and I don’t want to talk on egg shells to make sure I accurately read someone’s gender correctly. You can only take some much unjustified vilification before you start to think “you know what? fuck you. I’m going to misgender you out of spite”.
I accidentally misgender trans people all the time. Never have I ever been accused of being transphobic because I handle it like calling someone the wrong name accidentally. I quickly correct myself and move on, and actively do my best to remember their pronouns going forward.
Sure, it takes half a braincell of effort at first, but then it becomes easier. This is a strategy known as “not being a dick”.
That said I call everyone Carl because I’m too lazy to learn everyone’s name, and I don’t want to walk on eggshells to make sure I don’t call someone the wrong name accidentally./s
But accidentally misgendering someone is often considered paramount to taking part in the holocaust
Just because 4chan and Fox News says so, doesn’t make it true
“you know what? fuck you. I’m going to misgender you out of spite”
Gosh it sure seems like you’re just making excuses to be a spiteful petty asshole to groups you don’t like
Dude, don’t listen to bullshit propaganda. Actually talk to trans people and find out what they think.
That problem is never the worst in someone’s life, though. If they have that problem, they also have the problems of people calling the police if they use a public bathroom, or being killed on a first date… Slightly bigger problems.
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My personal favorite for singular gender neutral pronouns are Zi/zir/zirs/zirself or Ze/zer/zers/zerself.
Xe is just trying to be Zi/Ze and it would be confusing for Chinese people. There’s also female connotations with X genome vs Y genome. Which is he Ye is also meh.
I wouldn’t mind Ve, ver, vers, verself either.
Ze sounds more unique and it’s kinda neat how it’s Gen Z helping push it too.
Otherwise just use the pronouns they prefer.
Having to write official documents while having to use they/them is annoying without gender neutral terms coming into it.
English really just needs a better gender neutral singular and plural pronouns. Since they has been used for plural most of my life it feels like better singulars are the way to go, but it doesn’t really matter. Just someone make it official please lol.
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… Through the power of it sounding different using different letters to distinguish a different meaning. A common attribute in language.
Do you pronounce a Z and H similarly in your language I’m not familiar with?
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FontMasterFlex
Gottem!
?
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We should just go back to the generic he and make it really easy.
Stop it.
