Gender Neutral Pronouns

[Shiny Grimer]

What's your opinion on gender neutral pronouns?

I personally like the idea of GNP. Some people say that it's feminist mind control or something, but I don't like the idea that man is the all-inclusive category and woman is just a subset of man. In addition, sometimes I want to refer to both genders at the same time, but not in the plural.
A teacher must teach _____ student.

A teacher must teach 'their' student? Ugh. That's probably grammatically incorrect. A teacher must teach his student. Male teacher. A teacher must teach her student. Female teacher. A teacher must teach one's student. One? That just doesn't sound like it's referring to the teacher.

This is a case in which I would use a GNP. The only ones I would use are hu and spivak pronouns.

So, what do you use, what would you use, and what do you think?

 

[goldenquagsire]

Regarding the "men is an all-inclusive category" debate, these days I see most people use "she" in situations where gender is either unknown or irrelevant (i.e. "The inquisitive reader would think to herself why I'm rambling on about canaries for fifteen pages.") Personally, I'm more fond of "one", and rearranging the sentance to work around it (i.e. "One would wonder why I'm rambling on about canaries for fifteen pages."), or if neccessary, "she".

If those invented GNPs catch on in language, then I'll probably use them. Nevertheless, while "one" and "she" are still the dominant pseudo-GNPs, I will use them to avoid confusion.

And as for my opinion? English is a poorly-constructed language that lacks several advantages of other languages. A proper GNP would be quite helpful, but creating one artificially seems a little... bland, somehow. It also reeks of the irritating waves of political correctness that have been slowly seeping into the mainstream, determined to attack perfectly harmless terminology that has little to no relation to actual discrimination.

 

[Harlequin]

I don't use she. I find that just as "bad" as using "he."

 

[Tailsy]

'They enjoys' is never grammatically correct. That poll is invalid as one of the options simply doesn't work.

I usually just use 'he'. I don't even /care/. D:

 

[goldenquagsire]

I don't use she. I find that just as "bad" as using "he."

Well, it makes more sense. To me, "she" has always had the connotation that the "s" was optional to the reader.

In any case, who cares? It's just a grammatical quirk that happens to favour one gender depending on which method you choose. If that's the kind of discrimination that you consider serious enough to warrant more than a few moments' thought, then you really need to pick your battles better.

 

[Murkrow]

I just use 'they'.

'They enjoy running'

 

[Music Dragon]

'They enjoys' is never grammatically incorrect. That poll is invalid as one of the options simply doesn't work.

You mean "correct", not "incorrect", right? Otherwise there's something seriously wrong with me.

I don't use she. I find that just as "bad" as using "he."

In Swedish, the word "human" is, in certain contexts, a feminine word (although very few people actually care). So you could argue that "she" could refer to any human being, not necessarily a male!

... But, well, that's only in Sweden. And even then it's kind of far-fetched.

Aww.

Even so! I don't see why the pronoun you use should matter. It's not like you're being sexist just because you're using "he" instead of a gender-neutral pronoun; that would be like saying that anyone who wears white instead of black is racist. The important thing isn't what pronoun you're using, the important thing is that people can easily understand what you're saying.

 

[Time Psyduck]

I recall that New Scientist had an artical about how 'yo' was being used by people in this situation.

Not that I've heard it used, however.

The problem is likley that in order to get a point across you need to use words everyone can understan, this making it difficult for new words to gain usage.

 

[Cryssie]

I currently lean towards singular they/their. Yeah, it can make wording a bit more awkward and even ambiguous at times, but that's English for you.

These invented GNPs seem like a good idea in theory, but whenever I encounter them in the context of a sentence, I find it a bit distracting, and I'm pretty sure that most people I know (offline, at least) would have to stop and ask me what I meant by "eirself" exactly. Singular they/their/whatever just sounds so much more natural as things stand. It'd take a conscious effort to make the switch, and then - ironically, I think - it would probably throw a momentary spanner into the clarity of the conversation whenever I used it.

If there was one set of gender-neutral pronouns in common enough usage that they didn't sound so odd and jarring to me any more (Spivak seems to be getting there), I'd probably happily start using them.

Really, though, all this over the little topic of gender. Equality is great and all, but this is just a matter of semantics, isn't it?

EDIT: Thought I'd mention that the reason I still use singular they and such and not always him or her isn't because I find him/her sexist, I just find singular they more natural when the gender in question isn't known. Habit, I suppose. I can't remember a time when I've ever had to clarify "oh, I mean just one person, not several," so why not?

 

[Dannichu]

She, or, more often, s/he.

 

[Murkrow]

Does anyone ever use 'it'?

 

[opaltiger]

Spivak.

 

[Murkrow]

Isn't Spivak generally just they/their/them without the th?

It's so much easier just to say...
they/them/their/etc.

 

[opaltiger]

But that is ambiguous. Also the reason I don't use the male form; I'm not particularly fond of ambiguity in languages. In German, the pronoun "sie" is both second person feminine, second person plural, and second person polite form. "Ihr" is third person plural and the possessive form of all the above. It gets confusing.

Thus I think it makes a lot of sense for a language to have a set of gendered pronouns, a set of ungendered pronouns, and a set of gender-neutral pronouns.

 

[Eevee]

original spivak, which is for some reason not in this poll: e enjoys running in the breeze

 

[opaltiger]

Edited the poll so it makes a little more sense.

 

[Arylett Charnoa]

They. If I don't know a person's gender, I'll call them they. Their. Them.

They enjoy running in the breeze.

 

[Keltena]

I say 'they.'

 

[spaekle]

Lately I've been trying to start using Spivak, but I use 'they' quite a bit too.

I'm personally all for a gender-neutral pronoun. I really hate how a person's sex/gender has to be brought into every little thing, even when you're just talking about something they did the other day. :\

 

[opaltiger]

Though it's regrettable that English has no distinct gender-neutral pronoun, the use of Spivak pronouns seems like needless vigilantism at the cost of good writing.

Why at the cost of good writing?

opal, why didn't you remove 'One' from the poll?

Because someone had voted for it and I didn't want to influence the poll results.