Isn’t it even more audacious to think that everyone should start referring to every queer person by their custom pronouns? Neopronouns are already an attempt to bend the language, and I’m just saying that it’s bending that language in the exact wrong direction because it doesn’t address the root cause of the problem, instead just building on top of that.
It’s as audacious as requesting to be referred to by a shortening of your name, or a nickname, or a changed name. To be honest, it’s less audacious than asking that someone use your name instead of some generic identifier.
No language is being bent, in 99.9% of cases the pronouns being used have always existed in English, the remaining 0.1% are the ‘custom pronouns’ you’re thinking of and are an edge case that is effectively a non-issue to accommodate. I have a queer friend group and live in an extremely queer-friendly city and I literally know just one person who prefers a non-standard pronoun and am happy to accommodate that.
Though I’m pretty queer, I somewhat agree? If I could, I’d go back in time and change first names to demarcate gender identity in a consistent way so we could just use they/them, as you say.
That said, none of us can go back in time, and though we may have the same goal, a goal is not a plan. I’ve yet to see a better method than neopronouns of forcing people (who would usually rather not) to think about gender in new ways, and thus allow people to present how they wish under our language restricted social context.
Think of it like tossing in an outlier to more effectively pull the average somewhere. Every xey/xem pulls us closer as a society to giving a shit about this, and that’s the first step to making progress. Even if it seems to be pissing. A buncha people off in the process
Why would we need first names to demarcate gender identity in a consistent way in order to use they/them for everyone? In my native language we have some names that are more ambivalent about gender than others and we’re doing just fine with a single genderless third person singular pronoun.
I suspect that a lot of cis people would be pissed about being referred to as they/them as well, but they can suck it up. I said this in a different comment here, but I can see that being useful with people who are stuck on that he/she framework. But I still think of this as an unnecessary one step back to take two steps forward, when it could just be taking one step forward.
Is it not just as audacious to expect everyone to fit themselves to the pronouns you want to use? How would you feel about others arbitrarily deciding to use a different pronoun for you?
My whole point here has been that pronouns should have nothing to do with gender, so somebody using a different pronoun to refer to me would not affect me beyond mild annoyance at somebody lying about me by spreading information about my gender if the gendered pronoun isn’t the right one. On the other hand a pronoun that doesn’t carry information about gender can’t misgender a person.
Isn’t it even more audacious to think that everyone should start referring to every queer person by their custom pronouns? Neopronouns are already an attempt to bend the language, and I’m just saying that it’s bending that language in the exact wrong direction because it doesn’t address the root cause of the problem, instead just building on top of that.
It’s as audacious as requesting to be referred to by a shortening of your name, or a nickname, or a changed name. To be honest, it’s less audacious than asking that someone use your name instead of some generic identifier.
No language is being bent, in 99.9% of cases the pronouns being used have always existed in English, the remaining 0.1% are the ‘custom pronouns’ you’re thinking of and are an edge case that is effectively a non-issue to accommodate. I have a queer friend group and live in an extremely queer-friendly city and I literally know just one person who prefers a non-standard pronoun and am happy to accommodate that.
Well that’s disappointing.
Though I’m pretty queer, I somewhat agree? If I could, I’d go back in time and change first names to demarcate gender identity in a consistent way so we could just use they/them, as you say.
That said, none of us can go back in time, and though we may have the same goal, a goal is not a plan. I’ve yet to see a better method than neopronouns of forcing people (who would usually rather not) to think about gender in new ways, and thus allow people to present how they wish under our language restricted social context.
Think of it like tossing in an outlier to more effectively pull the average somewhere. Every xey/xem pulls us closer as a society to giving a shit about this, and that’s the first step to making progress. Even if it seems to be pissing. A buncha people off in the process
Why would we need first names to demarcate gender identity in a consistent way in order to use they/them for everyone? In my native language we have some names that are more ambivalent about gender than others and we’re doing just fine with a single genderless third person singular pronoun.
I suspect that a lot of cis people would be pissed about being referred to as they/them as well, but they can suck it up. I said this in a different comment here, but I can see that being useful with people who are stuck on that he/she framework. But I still think of this as an unnecessary one step back to take two steps forward, when it could just be taking one step forward.
Is it not just as audacious to expect everyone to fit themselves to the pronouns you want to use? How would you feel about others arbitrarily deciding to use a different pronoun for you?
My whole point here has been that pronouns should have nothing to do with gender, so somebody using a different pronoun to refer to me would not affect me beyond mild annoyance at somebody lying about me by spreading information about my gender if the gendered pronoun isn’t the right one. On the other hand a pronoun that doesn’t carry information about gender can’t misgender a person.