I don’t work for the AP. You pay my bills I’m pretty flexible.
The benefit of a written format is that we can go back up and see exactly what I said.
My quote-fu is weak but I wasn’t responding only to your sentiments.
So do you agree or disagree that a poster who calls everyone “he” or “she” in 95% of cases, but if another says “I am trans and identify as female, I use she/her pronouns” then the first poster is a jerk if they insist on referring to that poster only as “they” rather than “she”?
You know… In a written format like this board, I suppose it’s reasonable to ask people to take the time to use the correct pronouns. But in real life, talking with or about friends, I often use a name for a trans person when I would use a pronoun for a cis person with an obvious gender. It seems safer than having the wrong pronoun fall out of my mouth. And… yeah, maybe some of you are better at implementation than I am, but it’s not that rare for the wrong word to fall out of my mouth in any context, and this is a situation where I risk really offending someone I care about.
I think my friend put up with me because I’m old and I’m trying.
This is a huge key point. If you misgender someone by accident (which I have done plenty of times), someone will correct you, you can apologize, and move on with your life.
The problem is when a certain vocal minority instead screams “I DON’T HAVE TO RESPECT YOU AS A PERSON AND YOU CANNOT MAKE ME”.
Accidents happen. And I don’t think we need concern ourselves with anything but the written word on this board, for the purposes of this thread.
Just to follow this pronoun hijack for a moment–
I fully support policies that support transpeople’s identities and attempts to be accepted in society and fight discrimination and its effects, the same as any group that has been discriminated against.
However, this whole issue highlights to me the utter ridiculousness of grammatical gender in English and other languages. Some people on the boards have mocked me for doing this, but whenever I can and remember to, I publicly use non-gendered pronouns (E, es, em, emself) not just for transgender people, but for everyone.
I think eliminating grammatical gender wouldn’t just help transgender people, but would be good for all of us and for language in general.
Agreeing with this; but noting that I very often use “they” on these boards and in similar situations because I can’t remember people’s genders any more than I can remember where they’re located (side hijack, people, please do add location to your profile so it shows at your atavar, sometimes it adds really useful context.)
I don’t know whether these boards can be set up so that those to whom it matters can make their pronouns visible – I have seen that on some other boards.
I would say that if they’ve got reason to know which ones you prefer, then yes. If they don’t, then you can mention it but “admonish” is too strong. Especially on a message board: even if you have an apparently gendered online name and even if you’ve mentioned it in some previous post, the person misgendering you may not have read or may have forgotten that post, and names can be misleading: they may be trying to be polite. But even in person, in some social circles use of the gender neutral may be considered more polite unless other instructions have been given.
If there’s reason to think that the person knows you prefer gender specific pronouns for yourself, and they’re deliberately using neutral ones instead, then yes I’d say you can get legitimately ticked off at that.
I’m rooting for the honorific, “Mx”, to catch on, for the same reasons.
I think we should just drop honorifics altogether. All of them. Especially for ones relating to public offices. Just using someone’s name should be honorific enough.
+1. There is no way for someone to lose my respect faster than insisting that someone calling them by their name instead of a honorific is “disrespectful”.
It’s marginal. But since celebrities push and want to be considered sexy, then is is mostly recognizing their efforts.
E, es, em, emself?
There are literally billions of people, including more than 1.2 billion English Speaking persons, who won’t understand what you’re talking about.
Using made up words does not facilitate communication.
As opposed to the rest of the Queen’s English, which God gave to Moses at the top of Mount Sinai and which all red-blooded Americans have used ever since.
I’m not so bothered by people who choose to go by titles so much as I’m bothered by a third person instructing me that I need to use a title with someone else’s name. Back off, Nosy Nellie.
#AllWordsAreMadeUp
Like internet, email, blog, television, telephone, telegraph?
Meh, it’s a perfectly cromulent argument.
Sorry, are you guys defending random people making up their own words and just going ahead and using them in casual conversation?