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Gender-Neutral Terms?

Gender Neutral Term?

  • Total voters
    27
kyeugh

kyeugh

onion witch
Pronoun
she/her
What is your pronoun for gender-neutral? Personally, I always though, "he," was gender-neutral, but apparently not.
 
I always thought "they" was the universal English gender neutral term.
 
I dunno, I'm getting used to saying Ey/eir/em
are those gender neutral? still kinda new to them but "they" sounds weird now so
 
'They' unless someone feels strongly otherwise or unless it's a formal paper; in the first case I go with whatever they want, and in the second I use the clunky old 'one'.
 
They verbally; e while typing. Sometimes 'they' while typing as well.
 
I "it" p much everything and sometimes people complain and then I forget what they wanted and use "it" again.

but, well, "it" isn't even gender-neutral, really, is more neuter.

I, uh, probably need to work on that.

anecdotal: thus far I have managed to everyone which has graded my essays that "it" is a perfectly cromulent 3s pronoun for a thing with neither natural nor grammatical gender assigned (e.g. "each person ought to bring its own lunch") and at one point there was a standardised-testing essay question where the protagonist had a blank gender, probably intentionally, and I needed a reflexive so I just used "itself" and then proceeded to call it "it" through the rest of the response and didn't get any points off for that.

use of "it" for things with overt natural gender gets margin notes about "antecedent?" once in a while, so I proofread essaythings to make sure I'm don't "it" things with sufficiently overt natural gender that I'd get complained at about it. this is p much the only time I "mechanical error" marks, though.

p sure I picked up the "it" when someone decided to start marking points off for singular "they" -- really, that is bloody stupid, singular they is perfectly cromulent and has a long history -- and, uh, habits die hard but stay dead or something, idek.

it's generally been easier to appease the sort of people who complain about singular they with, can we just drop the derogatory connotations from it, than to actually get them to accept an actual neutral singular personal pronoun.

but screw that, grammatical gender is bloody stupid most of the time anyway, I'd be significantly happier if "it" shifted from neuter toward neutral, or if "they" lost its number -- I mean, I'd prefer the former, because number is actually occasionally a meaningful distinction, but.

I mean, actually producing a new useful pronoun would be great, too, but, well, "they" is vaguely acceptable and at least has general acceptance, albeit incomplete.

tl;dr I "it" everything we all knew that
 
"They" normally, "one" and many plurals while essay writing.

They needs more acceptance as part of formal writing because once upon a time it was.
 
i use 'they' because it's grammatically standard in australia to do so (it's gradually replacing 'he/she' and things like that). I probably would use e/ey if more people knew about it but i prefer being brief and it is really exhausting to have to explain what e/ey is.

but honestly how is 'he' gender-neutral i don't get it
 
Lyra Heartstrings said:
"They".
Click to expand...

'they' has an established history in being gender-neutral!
'he' is neutral only in a 'male is default' sense so it's not even relevant here


It's funny how often people say 'there should just be a gender-neutral pronoun why don't we just create one!' when people have been doing that for a good while ... I mean, why is ey not useful? What stops the ones we have from being useful other than that they're still not good enough for you, or something? (this isn't particularly directed at anyone! just. quit complaining about english not having a true singular gender-neutral pronoun and just use one!)

that said, 'they' remains fine and it feels natural for me to use. I'm pretty sure I've never been criticised for using it even in formal writing.
 
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Minish said:
that said, 'they' remains fine and it feels natural for me to use. I'm pretty sure I've never been criticised for using it even in formal writing.
Click to expand...

I often use "they" in formal writing and get corrected for doing so. I've even had professors tell me to use he/she instead. :/

"They" is certainly less problematic and most people use it in everyday speech anyway. I don't see why we can't all just use it.
 
Used to be 'they' exclusively, but since e(y) is so commonplace on tcod it's been seeping into my brain more and more.
 
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