Gender Neutral Pronouns

[surskitty]

Spivak or singular they. :/

 

[goldenquagsire]

Because relatively few people would understand what "e/ey" means. Or rather, they'd probably work out the meaning and think that you were either insane or an idiot for using a seemingly made-up word for no given reason.

 

[opaltiger]

Because relatively few people would understand what "e/ey" means. Or rather, they'd probably work out the meaning and think that you were either insane or an idiot for using a seemingly made-up word for no given reason.

I fail to see how this is different from using any other word the reader doesn't know. Besides, people will assume that any word you use does exist because you used it. So they'll say "oh, this is a pronoun? maybe I should look it up!" and voila, mission accomplished.

 

[Zeph]

Ehm... I'd normally say them/they, but every now and then, he/she/it (Everyone seems to be forgetting hermaphrodites). Or, to be very short, s/he or (s)he.

 

[opaltiger]

(Everyone seems to be forgetting hermaphrodites)

Except you're not meant to use "it" for hermaphrodites (excuse me, intersexual persons).

 

[Zeph]

Except you're not meant to use "it" for hermaphrodites (excuse me, intersexual persons).

Ah. So what are you meant to use?

 

[goldenquagsire]

I fail to see how this is different from using any other word the reader doesn't know. Besides, people will assume that any word you use does exist because you used it. So they'll say "oh, this is a pronoun? maybe I should look it up!" and voila, mission accomplished.

That would apply for literature, or perhaps a feature on the subject of pronouns. However, for other purposes, it would make things easier just to use the accepted standard.

I could replace all instances of "I" in, say, an article about dogs, with "Ioe" (pretending for a moment that I and Ioe are in the same situation as he and e). People could still work out the meaning eventually, or look it up and find out what I'm talking about. Thing is, they wouldn't take me at all seriously after that point.

 

[opaltiger]

Ah. So what are you meant to use?

I think people tend to use zhi/hir and various other spellings.

However, for other purposes, it would make things easier just to use the accepted standard.

There is no accepted standard.

I could replace all instances of "I" in, say, an article about dogs, with "Ioe" (pretending for a moment that I and Ioe are in the same situation as he and e). People could still work out the meaning eventually, or look it up and find out what I'm talking about. Thing is, they wouldn't take me at all seriously after that point.

False analogy. There is a need for gender-neutral pronouns in English; there is no need for an alternate first person singular pronoun.

 

[Cryssie]

I fail to see how this is different from using any other word the reader doesn't know.

Well, it's not every day a new set of pronouns comes along. Adjectives and nouns, sure; there are zillions of those and I commonly look to dictionary.com when I come across an unfamiliar one. But I think the first time I saw a Spivak pronoun, I mistook it for a typo.

Besides, people will assume that any word you use does exist because you used it. So they'll say "oh, this is a pronoun? maybe I should look it up!" and voila, mission accomplished.

Even if they did Google it or something, unless they specifically include the word "pronoun" in their search, "eirself" and "emself" are the only ones that actually return anything Spivak-related on the first page (unless you're counting a mention on a disambiguation page and a small "did you mean" link on a page about Norse mythology).

Personally, I think it's too much to hope that the average person would successfully look this up on the internet, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Negrek]

Uh, I would just use the person's name for "___ enjoys running in the breeze," because if I'm referring to them in the first place I must know at least that, if I somehow know that the person enjoys running in the breeze without knowing what gender he or she is. Or, obviously, if I do know the gender of the person to which the sentence is referring, I'll use the appropriate pronoun.

For formal writing I'll use "he or she" or "his or her;" I'm trying to break the they/their habit. On the internet the lack of a singular gender-neutral pronoun is a bit irritating, but in real life I pretty much always know the gender of the person I'm talking about so it's not something that really bothers me.

 

[Zhorken]

All pronouns should be gender-neutral.

 

[Negrek]

All pronouns should be gender-neutral.

Why? What's the problem with gendered pronouns?

 

[Zhorken]

Gender is no more special or important than any other mundane attribute and it's cleaner to consistently use gender-neutral pronouns instead of separate sets for "male", "female", and "neither/both/unspecific/I don't know/I don't care/whatever".

Though at least English isn't gross enough to assign every noun an arbitrary gender.

Original spivak is tastier than chop-off-the-"th" spivak.

 

[Butterfree]

I generally dislike Spivak pronouns because so few people use them that they are very jarring when they are used.

I do pretty much any of the other options, though, depending on the situation. I'm generally more inclined to use singular "their" than "they" although I do use both, often in combination with "he or she" rather than filling the rest of the sentence with "he or she" and "his or her" every time it appears ("He or she may then rearrange their cards as they see fit"); this has the advantage of specifying the person to be singular before singular "they" is used, removing the possible ambiguity. Then when writing "he or she" would be decidedly awkward and the context is not right for "they", I must say I just tend to go with "he", while viewing it not as actually assuming the person is male but as literally a gender-neutral pronoun that happens to look the same as the male pronoun, which I honestly don't personally have any problem with, despite being a feminist.

I'm generally against the whole idea that language can discriminate, really. I'm a woman, and I don't feel at all excluded when I read a sentence using "he" for a person of ambiguous gender because it's really just a lingual tradition that we don't have to view as having anything to do with masculinity at all; I'm also an atheist, but I'm not offended when somebody wishes me a merry Christmas. Language should be viewed as an imperfect tool that gets a person's meaning across, not as something that can be offensive in itself when there is no offensive intention behind it. "A teacher must teach his student" means that people who are teachers must teach their students; "Merry Christmas" generally means that you hope the person you're talking to has a pleasant day and/or upcoming days during a public holiday and has very little to do with religion.

 

[Negrek]

It's less efficient and leads to ambiguity, though. Take the sentence "Tom and Jen were fighting yesterday--he got mad at her for forgetting to lock the door again." There's not a lot of ambiguity in that. But compare to (just using "it" as a gender-neutral pronoun for the moment) "Tom and Jen were fighting yesterday--it got mad at it for forgetting to lock the door again." This sentence is one letter shorter than the preceding, but conveys much less information. Yes, you could replace the pronouns with the people's names in that situation, but that would sound awkward (at least by current convention) and the point of pronouns is to circumvent the need for that sort of thing.

Gendered nouns are a different story because they don't actually differentiate in that way.

Edit: This being in reply to Zhorken's post, obviously.

 

[#1 bro]

I use they. "OH IT'S GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT". who gives a shit. I wouldn't use they as a singular third person pronoun in an essay or something, but in regular speech it's perfectly acceptable and everyone understands what you're talking about when you use it.

and oh my god I hate it when people insist on using e/ey/eir (Spivak, I guess it's called). I mean, "Spivak" would be great if it was widely accepted, but it's not.

 

[Shiny Grimer]

I included 'one' because I thought there were people who used it. I know I sometimes use one. You know, "One can choose to do this/that". I don't really use it for anything other than that. As for they, some people would say 'they enjoy running' meaning a single person, which is why I included it as well.

The reason that I would like a gender neutral pronoun is because 'his or her' is long and unwieldly. I really just want a short thing that looks like a pronoun and refers to something that has an unspecified gender. Like, "I read in the news that some firefighter lost (possesive pronoun) ax." There are other cases that I can't recall at the moment. I do tend to use "his/her", his or her, or (s)he, but they don't flow well with the sentence. How in the world would you pronounce (s)he, anyway? I'm guessing that it's impossible.

I like 'hu' because I think people are less likely to mistake it for a typo than 'e' or 'ey'. I could be wrong, of course. Either way, spivak or hu are the only gender neutral pronouns I'd use, simply because things like 'sie' and 'ou' look nothing at all like pronouns and I'd probably have a much tougher time recognizing them as pronouns if I saw them in text as opposed to others.

 

[Valerunner]

He.

I consider it gender-neutral instead of masculine, really.

 

[Old Catch]

I accidentally clicked 'she' but I use 'he' usually.

 

[Eevee]

Having "he" be both ambiguous and masculine rather defeats the purpose of having gendered pronouns in the first place. It could be any of the three, or it could be just one? Why not just use "he" for everything, then?

I generally dislike Spivak pronouns because so few people use them that they are very jarring when they are used.

Solution: use them!