I tried. I got nothing. Enlighten me you mewling quim, what words can men no longer get away with calling women?
And by the way…im making a joke before someone swoops in and “Shows how i cant get away with that”
Yes, I guess we don’t say “Mrs Spouse Name” all the time. Did this change proceed or follow changes in how society respects women? Even with this evolution of language, have we had a woman President? Are women’s reproductive rights universally respected? Only 5% of CEOs are women. Women doctors are regularly referred to as nurses by patients. There’s a huge amount of sexual harassment in the workplace even today. Huge percentages of women have reported they have been sexually assaulted and do not expect justice. There is a large gap in pay and achievement between women and men. But at least we don’t say “Mrs Spouse Name”.
I think I can make roughly the same point with respect to how Black people are actually treated in America despite the evolution of our language.
Let’s go ahead and use silly new pronouns with a bunch of unnecessary accents, and let’s get it adopted. Let’s do this and wait 30 years and see that’s it has amounted to nothing.
Shrug, to those of us who grew up with those languages there is no memorization of gender. We just learn the word.
I know that. That wasn’t my point.
So, just to be clear, are you saying:
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Things have never improved for disadvantaged groups.
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Language never has any role to play in the development or reflection of societal attitudes and institutions.
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The impact that an individual might feel when confronted with exclusionary language should always be ignored.
Because at least one of those things is obviously wrong. Disparaging, exclusionary, and discriminatory language is part of the institutional structure of maintaining and perpetuating discriminatory power structures.
The N-word isn’t the most vile word in American English just by coincidence. It’s because it’s part and parcel of a bloody, murderous social system that used physical and intellectual violence to maintain the social hierarchy.
And studies have shown that the difference between words like “fireman” and “firefighter” play a role in whether young girls can envision themselves in a role and whether society at large can envision it.
I asked the local baseball team their pronouns.
First base is Who, second base is They. Pat, the batter, hit a pop fly. Second base caught it, and threw it to first base. I missed the play, so I asked what happened.
“Who made the catch?”
“No, they made the catch.”
“Who?”
“No, they!”
“Who’s they?”
“No - Who’s who!”
“What the fuck!”
“THIRD BASE!”
Regards,
Shodan
Oh no. They will change some words, but not others, and in some places, but not in others… quite a few of the inconsistencies come from the partial successes of spelling reforms and/or hypercorrections (people thinking that something was being “spelled wrong” because they misunderstood it or attributed the wrong origin to it).
I agree there is some relationship between the terms we use to describe or refer to minority groups and society accommodating and including these groups. I doubt a top-down change in language is what drives this relationship. If I were to guess why this relationship exists, it might be because of empathy. Those who empathize with trans people are more willing to change their language, change institutional norms, and end discriminatory practices. But among these changes made in support of this disadvantaged group or some other disadvantaged group, language is the least consequential. The language will change as a result of attitudes, it won’t change attitudes.
Itfaiyeci is Turkish for firefighter. Itfaiye is the fire department and the suffix -ci means a worker at the fire department. It’s completely gender neutral. I doubt 1% of firefighters are female in Turkey.
Is this what you think this thread is about? Is this what you believe the issue of language and vocabulary is generally about?
I think the thread is about dispensing with gendered language/pronouns in English. One component of that is to ask: “What’s the point?”. So that’s what I am addressing.
When an argument is directed to a proposition that hasn’t been made, that’s generally known as a straw man. There’s a reason that this is considered a criticism of an argument style.
Ok, I’ll take that as you can’t answer the question.
Could you clarify? I’m not seeing the straw man you’re seeing, which may mean I and others aren’t clear on the OP.
This seems like a strawman given that I can’t find anyone proposing a top-down directed change in language, and that the thread is about why not dispense with gendered language, in other words “are there advantages to keeping gendered language”, rather than “are there advantages to removing gendered language.” If the thread were about the latter, then a natural question would be how to achieve this and what benefits it would bring, but it isn’t, as far as I can tell.
This is what I’m identifying as a straw man.
This is my mistake. I didn’t realize there were people in this world who have this much enthusiasm over the mechanics of the English language with an emphasis on pronouns. I was trying to fit this into the larger political context, probably because of the specific types of terms, but I think I get it now. It doesn’t matter the point, it only matters whether there is any English-specific impediment to adopting genderless pronouns. That’s the entire scope of the thread. Please forgive my intrusion.
Got it. Yeah, that’s a straw man.
Language nerds are a thing. 
–Pleonast, short for “pleonastic pronoun”
Right, pretty much. And so far, no one so far as I have noticed has made the case that a gendered pronoun system (and that includes a system that accounts for genders other than male and female) is better than a system that doesn’t reference gender at all.