4 ms·

I’ve absolutely met people especially with limited language skills who get confused and frustrated by all these complicated concepts they’re expected to underst

I’ve absolutely met people especially with limited language skills who get confused and frustrated by all these complicated concepts they’re expected to understand to simply not be accused of being hateful. Not to be too Orwellian, but I’ve often wondered why nobody say, talks about removing gendered pronouns altogether in formal speech instead of adding 50 new ones for instance. People seem to only talk about adding new words and concepts.

reb 4y ago
Yep, turns out people of all sorts can be assholes, even to folks who are making a good faith effort to navigate a changing world. That said, I think your Orwellian concerns might reflect your personal media consumption more than the state of our changing world. People do talk about removing gendered pronouns (see: nonbinary people), and the vast majority of transgender people are attempting to assimilate into the existing man/woman gender model rather than pushing a complex system of new words and concepts. As I'm sure you're aware, both of those approaches have proven controversial and generated quite a bit of backlash, sometimes violently so. Not everyone is cut out for a world filled with people who don't think like them. Unfortunately that's the world we live in, so we all get to figure out what to do about it.
layer8 4y ago
Humans favor adding over subtracting in problem solving: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26727878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26727878
l3uwin 4y ago
nonbinary people have been begging peiple to use non-gendered language. the singular they, 'my friend', y'all, fam etc... are all wonderful substitutes for a gendered pronoun.
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
  That makes no sense. An enby is saying they don't have gender, not that gender doesn't exist. In fact, if you don't use gender words for everyone else you're sort of throwing shade at them. That sounds like a liberal feminist from ~20 years ago, trying to remove words that they think are used to oppress people. Like the people who invented Latinx.
robotresearcher 4y ago
> I’ve often wondered why nobody say, talks about removing gendered pronouns altogether in formal speech instead of adding 50 new ones for instance. 'They' instead of 'he/she' is one of the things people actually use, and it's exactly dropping the gendered pronoun in favor of an existing neutral pronoun. It's strictly simpler and smaller language. My teenage kids use this construction a lot and I'm getting used to it.
- int_19h 4y ago
  It is, but some people specifically insist on "he" and "she" and will get offended if you use "they". In one such case, when I asked why "they" is inappropriate since it is by definition inclusive of all genders, the question itself was declared highly offensive and "erasing".
  - andelink 4y ago
    This floors me. Can I ask the context in which this person was offended by the use of “they?” Was it a work setting? Tell me more about this person
    - int_19h 4y ago
      It was a conversation in a private setting with several participants, some of whom were trans. It started as a broad conversation about which pronouns should be properly used when. When we got to "they", one of the participants brought up a common pattern whereby people will use "he" or "she" consistently to refer to cis people whose gender they know, but "they" when they need to refer to trans people (with known more specific pronouns) in the context where they can't get away with misgendering. We all agreed that this is rude, but then I asked whether it would be problematic if the person used "they" consistently, without discriminating. That's when it blew up.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - 4y ago

reb 4y ago

Yep, turns out people of all sorts can be assholes, even to folks who are making a good faith effort to navigate a changing world. That said, I think your Orwellian concerns might reflect your personal media consumption more than the state of our changing world. People do talk about removing gendered pronouns (see: nonbinary people), and the vast majority of transgender people are attempting to assimilate into the existing man/woman gender model rather than pushing a complex system of new words and concepts. As I'm sure you're aware, both of those approaches have proven controversial and generated quite a bit of backlash, sometimes violently so. Not everyone is cut out for a world filled with people who don't think like them. Unfortunately that's the world we live in, so we all get to figure out what to do about it.

layer8 4y ago

Humans favor adding over subtracting in problem solving: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26727878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26727878

l3uwin 4y ago

nonbinary people have been begging peiple to use non-gendered language. the singular they, 'my friend', y'all, fam etc... are all wonderful substitutes for a gendered pronoun.

LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
That makes no sense. An enby is saying they don't have gender, not that gender doesn't exist. In fact, if you don't use gender words for everyone else you're sort of throwing shade at them. That sounds like a liberal feminist from ~20 years ago, trying to remove words that they think are used to oppress people. Like the people who invented Latinx.

robotresearcher 4y ago

> I’ve often wondered why nobody say, talks about removing gendered pronouns altogether in formal speech instead of adding 50 new ones for instance. 'They' instead of 'he/she' is one of the things people actually use, and it's exactly dropping the gendered pronoun in favor of an existing neutral pronoun. It's strictly simpler and smaller language. My teenage kids use this construction a lot and I'm getting used to it.

int_19h 4y ago
It is, but some people specifically insist on "he" and "she" and will get offended if you use "they". In one such case, when I asked why "they" is inappropriate since it is by definition inclusive of all genders, the question itself was declared highly offensive and "erasing".
- andelink 4y ago
  This floors me. Can I ask the context in which this person was offended by the use of “they?” Was it a work setting? Tell me more about this person
  - int_19h 4y ago
    It was a conversation in a private setting with several participants, some of whom were trans. It started as a broad conversation about which pronouns should be properly used when. When we got to "they", one of the participants brought up a common pattern whereby people will use "he" or "she" consistently to refer to cis people whose gender they know, but "they" when they need to refer to trans people (with known more specific pronouns) in the context where they can't get away with misgendering. We all agreed that this is rude, but then I asked whether it would be problematic if the person used "they" consistently, without discriminating. That's when it blew up.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- 4y ago