7 ms·

I think the blowback is really just about cognitive load. There's only so much you can expend on social mores before the actual subject you're discussing gets

I think the blowback is really just about cognitive load. There's only so much you can expend on social mores before the actual subject you're discussing gets eclipsed. Everyone deserves equal respect, but I understand that when I'm not in the majority in a situation that my perspectives/language may be alien to some of those in the majority- I don't hold it against them unless there is explicit hostility. I find myself starting to subconsciously just use "you" or "them" and avoid any specific gendering altogether- in this day and age it just seems the least tiring route to go.

urthen 7y ago
Absolutely "They". They they they they they. English already has a perfectly good gender-neutral pronoun. I explicitly list my pronouns as "He/his or they/their" because I think the neopronouns are ultimately a way to gatekeep inclusivity, which is ironic.
- notadoc 7y ago
  What will happen with grammatically gendered languages, like Spanish?
  - gwbas1c 7y ago
    Then you need to go look up how it's handled in Spanish. BTW, English is gendered, just not as much as Spanish, French, and Italian are.
    - davvolun 7y ago
      What are you talking about? English is verifiably not as gendered as Spanish, at the very least. All nouns in Spanish require a gender article (el/la or los/las). In English, you do not have to figure out whether "día" should be prefixed with el or la -- and in the case of "día" despite it ending in "a" which usually implies feminine and la, it's actually masculine and is properly "el día." That doesn't even bring into it examples like ellos/ellas ("they" or "them" in English) referring to a male group or a female group where the standard rule is to use ellos if referring to an unknown group or even a group of 100 women and one man, the only application of ellas should be when you can verify every single member of the group is female.
      - gwbas1c 7y ago
        Look more closely at Latin gendering rules, not romance language gendering rules. In Latin, gender comes from the suffix. It's typically carried over in suffixes from Latin: Words ending in "a" are feminine, words ending in "um" are masculine. Or, look through common English names and see how often they follow Latin gender suffixes. Adam / Ada is an example. ("Am" is a male suffix.)
        wbolster 7y ago
        nit: the suffix -um in latin typically indicates a neuter grammatical gender. -us is usually masculine, and only in its accusative form it becomes -um. there are exceptions though, e.g. feminine 'manus' (hand). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension
        davvolun 7y ago
        I recall responding to the statement "English is just as gendered as...", but clearly that's not what you wrote. That's my fault.
  - gruez 7y ago
    They hamfist in their solution of using "x". eg. latina/latino -> latinx.
    - kelnos 7y ago
      How does that work in the language itself? In English people say "latin-ecks". In Spanish do people say "latin-equis"?
      - danillonunes 7y ago
        It doesn’t. It’s a written-only solution. If you listen to a speech from someone who uses the latinx you will notice they don’t even try to speak it, and they just go with the “latino and latina”.
- guessmyname 7y ago
  > I explicitly list my pronouns as "He/his or they/their" […] This reminds me of an interview I had with a recruiter from Slack HQ. The first question the interviewer asked was which pronoun should I be called? The question threw me off for a moment but after reflecting about it for a while I thought it was a good strategy to make themselves look inclusive. If you are in California and want to work at Slack, know that at least their interviewers will respect whatever pronoun you want to be called.
  - pandaman 7y ago
    This is what confuses me the most: the pronouns usually listed by people who insist on listing them are third person pronouns. How do you use a third person pronoun when talking to somebody to reference the very same person? Or are "he/him/his" etc actually second person pronouns? I.e. if somebody listed pronouns as "they/them/their" should I say "Hi, how are they doing? Can I offer them something to drink?". I hope this is not the case and these are really third person pronouns but then I fail to see how you can use them when addressing that person in a one-on-one interview (since it's "the interviewer" it was a one-on-one, right?). PS. In Russian there are two second person pronouns and sometimes people will ask if it's appropriate to use a less-formal singular "you" instead of default plural "you" but this makes no sense in English. There is just one second person pronoun.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
      It makes no sense to me either. When you reply to a person, you never use a pronoun apart from 'you' when you refer to them.
      - pandaman 7y ago
        It might make some sense in a multi-party discussion, I think. E.g. "When Soandso implied X he or she made a mistake by assuming Y". In an interview though? Unless it's from the Silence of the Lambs, I don't see where third person pronouns could ever happen.
- bsza 7y ago
  Singular they always gets me confused about how many people we're talking about. As a non-native speaker, I wouldn't call this solution perfectly good.
  - jhanschoo 7y ago
    On the other hand, I think it's an advantage that plurality is ambiguous. You can always make the plurality certain with additional words and when it is necessarily, and e.g. "you" is already a pronoun that has ambiguous plurality. I assume that your native tongue is one where pronouns necessarily indicate plurality, and also that your English education almost always uses they to indicate the plural. But there are languages that have independent subject pronouns that do not mark for plurality; they indicate plurality when necessary with other words.
- hinkley 7y ago
  That doesn't fix everything. My kid's best friend is now a they. After knowing a 'her' for three years, it's been hard to switch. I have a hard enough time some days stringing the right adjectives into sentences without also worrying about pronouns too. It's easier for me to do when typing, but I can't speak for everyone. Since their first name is a single syllable, I've found myself avoiding pronouns entirely when talking about them. Because accidentally saying 'she' more than once in a while causes stress for everyone. It's a big deal, their father is not okay with this, and we are frequently the safest house for this group of kids to hang out at. Our kid has always gone by a nickname. When she got older she decided she wanted a change. I was the first one in the house to use her new first name reliably. I'm not sure why I'm the one having trouble with pronouns.
  - slowmovintarget 7y ago
    A friend of mine transitioned. Using the new name came fairly quickly. Adapting all of my own history with this friend to bubble up a new pronoun reliably is still a work in progress.
  - BrandoElFollito 7y ago
    You mean that you say "do they want some chocolate" when directly asking that single person if that single person wants chocolate? I thought that "they" is too ne used instead of he or she (3rd person) - which I find useful to avoud he/she or (s)he EDIT: I had an epiphany under the shower, sorry I misunderstood you and you probably meant that you now have to say "ask your friend Jane if they want chocolate"
crimsonalucard 7y ago
I highly disagree. It isn't about cognitive overload. It is about sexism. People aren't gender neutral and don't want to be referred to by an offensive gender neutral pronoun when their gender is anything but gender neutral. It is absurd and insensitive to refer to things as neutral when they have a gender For example my gender is zygort bilop and the pronoun is zula. Referring to me as gender neutral is the ultimate offense. I mean you don't go around calling African Americans the n-word right? It's the same thing when you call me a "he," "she" or "it."
- Sohcahtoa82 7y ago
  sigh Imagine how much more productive conversations about gender identity and pronouns could be if we didn't have trolls.
  - crimsonalucard 7y ago
    Wait you are accusing me of trolling? That's offensive. I'm offended.
  - crimsonalucard 7y ago
    It seems like I'm trolling but within the rules of gender identity what I am doing is absolutely valid. Unless you can prove that I'm trolling definitively you can't accuse me of anything. The fact that you believe I'm trolling puts the whole argument of gender identity into question. If I'm trolling, how do you know the whole movement isn't trolling? The ambiguity possibly illustrates the absurdity of the whole argument. Maybe a better way of thinking of productivity is thinking about the pointlessness of this debate. You are more productive if you don't care for this trivial stuff. But I wouldn't know, I'm too busy getting offended when people don't address me by my made up gender.
Kye 7y ago
That's the most reasonable explanation. Some of the reactions here are beyond absurd and make no sense except if they feel overwhelmed. I can at least empathize with that. Too much too fast can be hard to deal with. Sometimes I forget I've spent a lot of time in a LGBTQ+-heavy community where this sort of basic respect for self-identity has been the norm for years. I think a lot of folks screaming bloody murder today will accept it once they acclimate and realize the requests were nothing extraordinary. People who are used to he and she based on appearance and they when you don't know may need some time. They'll get there.
happytoexplain 7y ago
I not only sympathize, but completely agree with that point of view. However, the idea that the hate-driven portion of the blowback might be so small as to be negligible seems unrealistic to me, almost regardless of the forum.

urthen 7y ago

Absolutely "They". They they they they they. English already has a perfectly good gender-neutral pronoun. I explicitly list my pronouns as "He/his or they/their" because I think the neopronouns are ultimately a way to gatekeep inclusivity, which is ironic.

notadoc 7y ago
What will happen with grammatically gendered languages, like Spanish?
- gwbas1c 7y ago
  Then you need to go look up how it's handled in Spanish. BTW, English is gendered, just not as much as Spanish, French, and Italian are.
  - davvolun 7y ago
    What are you talking about? English is verifiably not as gendered as Spanish, at the very least. All nouns in Spanish require a gender article (el/la or los/las). In English, you do not have to figure out whether "día" should be prefixed with el or la -- and in the case of "día" despite it ending in "a" which usually implies feminine and la, it's actually masculine and is properly "el día." That doesn't even bring into it examples like ellos/ellas ("they" or "them" in English) referring to a male group or a female group where the standard rule is to use ellos if referring to an unknown group or even a group of 100 women and one man, the only application of ellas should be when you can verify every single member of the group is female.
    - gwbas1c 7y ago
      Look more closely at Latin gendering rules, not romance language gendering rules. In Latin, gender comes from the suffix. It's typically carried over in suffixes from Latin: Words ending in "a" are feminine, words ending in "um" are masculine. Or, look through common English names and see how often they follow Latin gender suffixes. Adam / Ada is an example. ("Am" is a male suffix.)
      - wbolster 7y ago
        nit: the suffix -um in latin typically indicates a neuter grammatical gender. -us is usually masculine, and only in its accusative form it becomes -um. there are exceptions though, e.g. feminine 'manus' (hand). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension
      - davvolun 7y ago
        I recall responding to the statement "English is just as gendered as...", but clearly that's not what you wrote. That's my fault.
- gruez 7y ago
  They hamfist in their solution of using "x". eg. latina/latino -> latinx.
  - kelnos 7y ago
    How does that work in the language itself? In English people say "latin-ecks". In Spanish do people say "latin-equis"?
    - danillonunes 7y ago
      It doesn’t. It’s a written-only solution. If you listen to a speech from someone who uses the latinx you will notice they don’t even try to speak it, and they just go with the “latino and latina”.
guessmyname 7y ago
> I explicitly list my pronouns as "He/his or they/their" […] This reminds me of an interview I had with a recruiter from Slack HQ. The first question the interviewer asked was which pronoun should I be called? The question threw me off for a moment but after reflecting about it for a while I thought it was a good strategy to make themselves look inclusive. If you are in California and want to work at Slack, know that at least their interviewers will respect whatever pronoun you want to be called.
- pandaman 7y ago
  This is what confuses me the most: the pronouns usually listed by people who insist on listing them are third person pronouns. How do you use a third person pronoun when talking to somebody to reference the very same person? Or are "he/him/his" etc actually second person pronouns? I.e. if somebody listed pronouns as "they/them/their" should I say "Hi, how are they doing? Can I offer them something to drink?". I hope this is not the case and these are really third person pronouns but then I fail to see how you can use them when addressing that person in a one-on-one interview (since it's "the interviewer" it was a one-on-one, right?). PS. In Russian there are two second person pronouns and sometimes people will ask if it's appropriate to use a less-formal singular "you" instead of default plural "you" but this makes no sense in English. There is just one second person pronoun.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
    It makes no sense to me either. When you reply to a person, you never use a pronoun apart from 'you' when you refer to them.
    - pandaman 7y ago
      It might make some sense in a multi-party discussion, I think. E.g. "When Soandso implied X he or she made a mistake by assuming Y". In an interview though? Unless it's from the Silence of the Lambs, I don't see where third person pronouns could ever happen.
bsza 7y ago
Singular they always gets me confused about how many people we're talking about. As a non-native speaker, I wouldn't call this solution perfectly good.
- jhanschoo 7y ago
  On the other hand, I think it's an advantage that plurality is ambiguous. You can always make the plurality certain with additional words and when it is necessarily, and e.g. "you" is already a pronoun that has ambiguous plurality. I assume that your native tongue is one where pronouns necessarily indicate plurality, and also that your English education almost always uses they to indicate the plural. But there are languages that have independent subject pronouns that do not mark for plurality; they indicate plurality when necessary with other words.
hinkley 7y ago
That doesn't fix everything. My kid's best friend is now a they. After knowing a 'her' for three years, it's been hard to switch. I have a hard enough time some days stringing the right adjectives into sentences without also worrying about pronouns too. It's easier for me to do when typing, but I can't speak for everyone. Since their first name is a single syllable, I've found myself avoiding pronouns entirely when talking about them. Because accidentally saying 'she' more than once in a while causes stress for everyone. It's a big deal, their father is not okay with this, and we are frequently the safest house for this group of kids to hang out at. Our kid has always gone by a nickname. When she got older she decided she wanted a change. I was the first one in the house to use her new first name reliably. I'm not sure why I'm the one having trouble with pronouns.
- slowmovintarget 7y ago
  A friend of mine transitioned. Using the new name came fairly quickly. Adapting all of my own history with this friend to bubble up a new pronoun reliably is still a work in progress.
- BrandoElFollito 7y ago
  You mean that you say "do they want some chocolate" when directly asking that single person if that single person wants chocolate? I thought that "they" is too ne used instead of he or she (3rd person) - which I find useful to avoud he/she or (s)he EDIT: I had an epiphany under the shower, sorry I misunderstood you and you probably meant that you now have to say "ask your friend Jane if they want chocolate"

crimsonalucard 7y ago

I highly disagree. It isn't about cognitive overload. It is about sexism. People aren't gender neutral and don't want to be referred to by an offensive gender neutral pronoun when their gender is anything but gender neutral. It is absurd and insensitive to refer to things as neutral when they have a gender For example my gender is zygort bilop and the pronoun is zula. Referring to me as gender neutral is the ultimate offense. I mean you don't go around calling African Americans the n-word right? It's the same thing when you call me a "he," "she" or "it."

Sohcahtoa82 7y ago
sigh Imagine how much more productive conversations about gender identity and pronouns could be if we didn't have trolls.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  Wait you are accusing me of trolling? That's offensive. I'm offended.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  It seems like I'm trolling but within the rules of gender identity what I am doing is absolutely valid. Unless you can prove that I'm trolling definitively you can't accuse me of anything. The fact that you believe I'm trolling puts the whole argument of gender identity into question. If I'm trolling, how do you know the whole movement isn't trolling? The ambiguity possibly illustrates the absurdity of the whole argument. Maybe a better way of thinking of productivity is thinking about the pointlessness of this debate. You are more productive if you don't care for this trivial stuff. But I wouldn't know, I'm too busy getting offended when people don't address me by my made up gender.

Kye 7y ago

That's the most reasonable explanation. Some of the reactions here are beyond absurd and make no sense except if they feel overwhelmed. I can at least empathize with that. Too much too fast can be hard to deal with. Sometimes I forget I've spent a lot of time in a LGBTQ+-heavy community where this sort of basic respect for self-identity has been the norm for years. I think a lot of folks screaming bloody murder today will accept it once they acclimate and realize the requests were nothing extraordinary. People who are used to he and she based on appearance and they when you don't know may need some time. They'll get there.

happytoexplain 7y ago

I not only sympathize, but completely agree with that point of view. However, the idea that the hate-driven portion of the blowback might be so small as to be negligible seems unrealistic to me, almost regardless of the forum.