Examples:
We are good friends.
We us need you.
We all need love.

Examples:
You ate their cake. = You ate a cake that belonged to an individual.
You ate all their cakes. = You ate all the cakes that belonged to an individual.
You ate their all cake. = You ate a cake that belonged to a group.
You ate all their all cakes. = You ate all the cakes that belonged to a group.

I cannot imagine that the overlap between "e621 users" and "english-speakers interested in learning about basic pronouns" is very high.

felix_nermix said:
We us

Sounds fake.

"We us" is not a phrase that is used in english at all. The in- or exclusivity of "we" is determined from context, or clarified explicitly.

Also, the last two examples are incorrect. In proper english they'd be "You ate their entire cake" and "You ate all their cakes" respectively. The constructions you made are linguistic nightmares despite being technically grammatically correct.

Thank you all for your opinion.

What is 'clusivity'?

I've had long arguments about how "they" should not be both singular and plural, but the English language doesn't have an alternative for either situation so we should just stick with it and determine the usage from context.

Random said:
What is 'clusivity'?

From Wikipedia:
In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we". Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressee (that is, one of the words for "we" means "you and I and possibly others"), while exclusive "we" specifically excludes the addressee (that is, another word for "we" means "he/she/they and I, but not you"), regardless of who else may be involved.
Read more.]

PheagleAdler said:
I've had long arguments about how "they" should not be both singular and plural, but the English language doesn't have an alternative for either situation so we should just stick with it and determine the usage from context.

Well, "they" has been in use to specify a singular person of indeterminate gender for long enough, it has a variety of dictionary entries associated with that meaning. It certainly isn't the only example of a "special case rule break" in the English language. It just seems to be what people have accepted as natural-sounding.

Personally I don't get this push from certain parties to try and "solve" gendered pronouns in the English language. An estimated 99.8% of people are properly assigned at birth (and this is generously rounding the actual data in favor of incorrect assignments, which in spite of best efforts are still believed to under-report/underestimate transgender and/or gender-dysphoric individuals). I don't want the 0.2% to feel unwelcome or like social pariahs, but it's quite demanding to ask everyone, everywhere to doubt the gender of a 99.8% majority. I think it just means we accept casual misunderstandings and, when corrected, use an individual's preferred pronoun as requested.

What if we drop the H from singular They?

ikdind said:
Well, "they" has been in use to specify a singular person of indeterminate gender for long enough, it has a variety of dictionary entries associated with that meaning. It certainly isn't the only example of a "special case rule break" in the English language. It just seems to be what people have accepted as natural-sounding.

Personally I don't get this push from certain parties to try and "solve" gendered pronouns in the English language. An estimated 99.8% of people are properly assigned at birth (and this is generously rounding the actual data in favor of incorrect assignments, which in spite of best efforts are still believed to under-report/underestimate transgender and/or gender-dysphoric individuals). I don't want the 0.2% to feel unwelcome or like social pariahs, but it's quite demanding to ask everyone, everywhere to doubt the gender of a 99.8% majority. I think it just means we accept casual misunderstandings and, when corrected, use an individual's preferred pronoun as requested.

Back in the 1950s very few (if any) people thought about singular they.
I am not into political correctness. I just want to refer gender-neutrally to people without forcing them to do the same. To me gender is irrelevant for other things than reproduction, medical conditions or physical performance.

ikdind said:
assigned at birth

Please don't call it that, it's an utterly preposterous notion. The doctor isn't declaring "This is what gender the baby will identify as!" They're just saying "This baby has a penis!" or "This baby has a vagina!" That's literally ALL they're declaring when the say "It's a boy/girl."

Jacob said:
Please don't call it that, it's an utterly preposterous notion. The doctor isn't declaring "This is what gender the baby will identify as!" They're just saying "This baby has a penis!" or "This baby has a vagina!" That's literally ALL they're declaring when the say "It's a boy/girl."

except it's much more than that because it assigns an enormous amount of social and cultural consequences that will continue to affect that entire baby's life

iceink said:
except it's much more than that because it assigns an enormous amount of social and cultural consequences that will continue to affect that entire baby's life

Except it really doesn't. The social and cultural expectations come from whether the person was born with a penis, or with a vagina. What the doctor says has fuck-all to do with how society views the child.

Jacob said:
Except it really doesn't. The social and cultural expectations come from whether the person was born with a penis, or with a vagina. What the doctor says has fuck-all to do with how society views the child.

lmao

practically speaking no one knows what genitalia someone has from basic public interactions, they go by what your legal documents say which is what is assigned when a doctor has "assigned at birth"

that's literally what that means

iceink said:
except it's much more than that because it assigns an enormous amount of social and cultural consequences that will continue to affect that entire baby's life

Which is on the people and society that raises them as they grow up, rather than the doctor at birth. A gender is assumed based on sex, in which case they're no more assigned a gender than they're assigned an eye color. If you avoid all gender pronouns, and instead only use the terms "male" and "female" and "they/them" as they grow up, will that change how society treats them and what it expects from them before they can declare their gender identity? Not on its own, I'd say, no. Other societal and cultural changes would be needed before there would be any change in expectations.

You might have a point with intersex babies, where they appear to have both parts and the doctor still needs to say one or the other (can they not say "intersex" or such? I honestly don't know), but that's not what people typically mean. "Assigned at birth" makes it sound like it's an expectation proactively pushed onto them, rather than a descriptor of physical traits that has social baggage associated with it.

Jacob said:
They're just saying "This baby has a penis!" or "This baby has a vagina!" That's literally ALL they're declaring when the say "It's a boy/girl."

Because doctors follow the Tag What You See rule.

Some people seem to automatically reject anything involving respect or inclusion. It really tells you a lot about them.

As a person with a degree in linguistics who also does a lot of professional editing, I resisted the singular 'they' for a long time. However, one needs to also recognize that languages evolve. (That's why we aren't typing in Old or Middle English right now.) Something that hasn't been grammatically singular in the past can develop so that it becomes that way in vernacular usage, and then dictionaries and other more official entities accept it as such. That's what has happened with the singular they in English.

Honestly, if we can accept the use of nonsensical neologisms like 'fleek' and 'vajayjay,' then respecting someone enough to call them 'they' when they request it really shouldn't be so hard. It's just a question of whether you think you can be that respectful of another human being.

Watsit said:
Which is on the people and society that raises them as they grow up, rather than the doctor at birth. A gender is assumed based on sex, in which case they're no more assigned a gender than they're assigned an eye color. If you avoid all gender pronouns, and instead only use the terms "male" and "female" and "they/them" as they grow up, will that change how society treats them and what it expects from them before they can declare their gender identity? Not on its own, I'd say, no. Other societal and cultural changes would be needed before there would be any change in expectations.

You might have a point with intersex babies, where they appear to have both parts and the doctor still needs to say one or the other (can they not say "intersex" or such? I honestly don't know), but that's not what people typically mean. "Assigned at birth" makes it sound like it's an expectation proactively pushed onto them, rather than a descriptor of physical traits that has social baggage associated with it.

No, "assigned at birth" literally means what it says. You trying to split hairs and compartmentalize the distinction between society and doctors *because doctors aren't part of society???* and whether it's an expectation and a descriptor-- as if descriptors cannot *also* imply expectations is irrelevant.

iceink said:
No, "assigned at birth" literally means what it says. You trying to split hairs and compartmentalize the distinction between society and doctors *because doctors aren't part of society???* and whether it's an expectation and a descriptor-- as if descriptors cannot *also* imply expectations is irrelevant.

Doctors care about the health of the patient more than they care about anything else involving them. The proper identification of whether the baby is a biologically healthy female, male, or not is quite important to ensure the baby gets the care it needs as early as possible. And yes, all 3 cases are important because the third one can very easily branch open into a much larger selection of issues that need to properly dealt with. Especially intersex patients need a lot of additional attention because there's a higher chance things might go wrong than with the rather clear cut DNA and RNA expressions with "healthy" males and females.
There are, of course, cases where an intersex baby has been mutilated shortly after birth to push them into either male or female (see wikipedia for a list) but thankfully those cases become less and less common, and hopefully can be prevented entirely in the future.
But as it stands even the biological sex of a person is important to have on file for the patient so things that can crop up before and during puberty are checked for and helped with early, be it phimosis for males or early signs of PCOS for female. Both can have terrible effects on a person's well being if not caught early.

Do doctors assign it by visuals alone? Yes. Is that enough in most cases? Also yes. It makes little sense to have a full DNA check performed if the probability that visuals fail are less than 1%. Maybe once DNA testing becomes much cheaper and quicker it might be worth it, but with the current costs it would place an undue burden on health care costs or the parents who have to pay out of pocket.

NotMeNotYou said:
Doctors care about the health of the patient more than they care about anything else involving them. The proper identification of whether the baby is a biologically healthy female, male, or not is quite important to ensure the baby gets the care it needs as early as possible. And yes, all 3 cases are important because the third one can very easily branch open into a much larger selection of issues that need to properly dealt with. Especially intersex patients need a lot of additional attention because there's a higher chance things might go wrong than with the rather clear cut DNA and RNA expressions with "healthy" males and females.
There are, of course, cases where an intersex baby has been mutilated shortly after birth to push them into either male or female (see wikipedia for a list) but thankfully those cases become less and less common, and hopefully can be prevented entirely in the future.
But as it stands even the biological sex of a person is important to have on file for the patient so things that can crop up before and during puberty are checked for and helped with early, be it phimosis for males or early signs of PCOS for female. Both can have terrible effects on a person's well being if not caught early.

Do doctors assign it by visuals alone? Yes. Is that enough in most cases? Also yes. It makes little sense to have a full DNA check performed if the probability that visuals fail are less than 1%. Maybe once DNA testing becomes much cheaper and quicker it might be worth it, but with the current costs it would place an undue burden on health care costs or the parents who have to pay out of pocket.

who was talking about dna testing and shit? youre way off in the weeds

anyways it's not always the case that doctors are motivated by the health of their patient, since not losing their job is a factor that makes them accept protocol that in some cases would have them involuntarily assign a gender to someone who does not want it, let's not gloss over that, unless your motivation to this line of reasoning is to debate the tired question of "why should i care about people who suffer"

Felix: You can pretty much just use 'they', with some practice and thought. It does require the use of somewhat different idioms and sentence ordering. There are often also opportunities to use the persons name instead. People generally like it when you say their name, so I'm trying to do that more, myself.

iceink said:
who was talking about dna testing and shit? youre way off in the weeds

anyways it's not always the case that doctors are motivated by the health of their patient, since not losing their job is a factor that makes them accept protocol that in some cases would have them involuntarily assign a gender to someone who does not want it, let's not gloss over that, unless your motivation to this line of reasoning is to debate the tired question of "why should i care about people who suffer"

I very much care that other people shouldn't suffer needlessly. But the matter of the fact is that a doctor has a requirement to properly identify the sex of a person so it can be kept on file in case a medical emergency arises, or simply to ensure they stay healthy. The fact that that information might be abused by others is not the fault of the medical sector, which appears to be what you were trying argue.

Of course, if you weren't arguing that a person's biological sex isn't important for medical treatment throughout that person's life, I'd love to hear what exactly your argument consisted of, because then I'd obviously misunderstood you.

savageorange said:
People generally like it when you say their name, so I'm trying to do that more, myself.

A bit of a caveat emptor on this, if I may. I work in customer service, and I hate it when people I've never met look at my nametag and call me by my first name like we've been friends our whole lives. It can actually feel manipulative, like they're doing it because they want something rather than just to be friendly. Many of my colleagues have noticed this, as well, and some of us have actually removed our first names from our name badges because of it.

The idea that people like hearing their names was promoted by Dale Carnegie in his 1936 book "How to Win Friends & Influence People," but times have obviously changed quite a bit since then.

NotMeNotYou said:
I very much care that other people shouldn't suffer needlessly. But the matter of the fact is that a doctor has a requirement to properly identify the sex of a person so it can be kept on file in case a medical emergency arises, or simply to ensure they stay healthy. The fact that that information might be abused by others is not the fault of the medical sector, which appears to be what you were trying argue.

maybe you care, anyone can make the claim they do anyway

how do you know it is not their fault? it being a 'requirement' doesn't necessarily mean that they are not at fault. Is it a systematic issue when police are 'required' to profile someone based on a structure of institutional racism? are police at fault? is our society? is it our laws? our culture? is it a little bit of all these things at once?

just because there is no specific cause to blame for the problem at hand does not mean there isn't a problem

I mean, if I don't know a person and they haven't actively told me their name, it seems weird to do that, so I agree there. And also don't overuse it even if you do know the person, that's manipulative too. It makes most sense in non-1on1 situations where you actually might need to indicate who you're speaking to, or in reference to a third party.

savageorange said:
I mean, if I don't know a person and they haven't actively told me their name, it seems weird to do that, so I agree there. And also don't overuse it even if you do know the person, that's manipulative too. It makes most sense in non-1on1 situations where you actually might need to indicate who you're speaking to, or in reference to a third party.

Well put! I totally agree with this. Good advice for @felix_nermix and other ESL speakers!

iceink said:
just because there is no specific cause to blame for the problem at hand does not mean there isn't a problem

But if you don't know the cause why point a finger specifically at people who, in the majority, have a very clear reason and interest in doing so for the benefit of the person it affects? A biological female will never suffer from phimosis because they have no foreskin that could prevent cleaning of the glans and cause a life threatening infection. A biological male will never suffer from PCOS due to the testicles not having any ovum that can turn into cysts. Breast cancer is much more likely in biological females than it is in males, thanks to the different hormones.

Of course the biological gender isn't relevant for many medical situations like general viral infections, but there are many areas where this knowledge is important in an unbiased way.

Also, I'm aware that there are doctors who will try to push their views onto the patient and won't listen to them, but thankfully those aren't that common, and can usually be avoided. Assholes sadly exist in every profession, but that doesn't mean every practitioner is one.

NotMeNotYou said:
But if you don't know the cause why point a finger specifically at people who, in the majority, have a very clear reason and interest in doing so for the benefit of the person it affects? A biological female will never suffer from phimosis because they have no foreskin that could prevent cleaning of the glans and cause a life threatening infection. A biological male will never suffer from PCOS due to the testicles not having any ovum that can turn into cysts. Breast cancer is much more likely in biological females than it is in males, thanks to the different hormones.

Of course the biological gender isn't relevant for many medical situations like general viral infections, but there are many areas where this knowledge is important in an unbiased way.

Also, I'm aware that there are doctors who will try to push their views onto the patient and won't listen to them, but thankfully those aren't that common, and can usually be avoided. Assholes sadly exist in every profession, but that doesn't mean every practitioner is one.

because i was responding to someone who was oversimplifying what "assigned at birth" literally means

terms like "amab" and "afab" literally do not affect people with phimosis, cancer, cysts or whatever else in a negative way, but trying to erase these terms does affect trans and non-binary people in a super big negative way

get the message, chief?

Never heard of amab or afab before.

Doctors are specifying the sex of the child. People are offended by the terms male and female. Some see them as improper, bad words and others see them as degrading. Go up to nearly any women and use female instead of girl, women, or lady and you'll been seen as a creep by both her and society. So using male/female is out. Boy/Girl is a proxy for a young male/female. However now people are viewing them as gendered terms, so today people are getting offended by it. There's no longer any terms you can use today which don't offend someone. (Whatever happened to having tough skin or shrugging off the little things?)

Personally, I think gender should be dropped from the language. (What happened to being an individual instead of joing a group and acting like that group?) But then we'll slowly develop words for some commonly noticed things and those common things will be more related to one sex or another and we'll eventually have gender back in the language. In light of that, at least use new words instead of repurposing existing ones. Sure languages evolve, but we can at least try to smartly evolve it. Reusing existing words in uncommon ways dilutes their meaning and harms the language. Adding new words just means learning a couple new words and has no impact on the others.

In terms of "assigned at birth", I don't see anything better. Mandated at birth? Inspected at birth? Labeled at birth? Born as? Assigned means someone else determined the value, which may or may not be correct, and can be changed at a later date without regard to if it was correct or not in the first place.

I'm just looking at the wall of text and once again thanking that my language doesn't have gender specific pronounces, so I can just go ahead and skip everything.

iceink said:
they go by what your legal documents say

Which are based on whether you have a penis or a vagina, until you are old enough to decide your gender identity, after which point they are based on whether you tell the officials writing your records that you are male, or tell them that you are female. Again, what the doctor says when you are born has fuck-all to do with it.

iceink said:
assign a gender to someone who does not want it

A baby's brain is not developed enough for it to want/not want ANYTHING, beyond wanting for basic needs and some mental stimulation. Straight out of the womb is WAY too fuckin' early for it to have any sort of gender identity, yet. Hell, some kids don't even give a shit about any of that until they're, like, five or six at least. As for where DNA comes into things, a DNA mutation is the only way intersex babies are born. Which, by the way, is the ONLY time the doctor's actions have any impact whatsoever on the baby's future gender: If they come out a form of intersex where one set of genitalia doesn't work properly, or didn't fully form, or both (which is MOST of the time a baby's born intersex, by the way), the doctor will recommend that the faulty genitalia be removed, because they're never going to serve any functional purpose, and they will only cause problems later on down the line.

iceink said:
institutional racism

SJW's sure like to bang on about that, but I have yet to hear of a single one of them providing credible evidence it actually exists in western culture. So, show me some citation or fuck off with that.

iceink said:
because i was responding to someone who was oversimplifying what "assigned at birth" literally means

Kinda' hard to over-simplify something that is literally meaningless bullshit. Again, neither the doctor, nor the hospital is ASSIGNING anything. They're just declaring what ghouly bits the baby has.

Jacob said:
SJW's sure like to bang on about that, but I have yet to hear of a single one of them providing credible evidence it actually exists in western culture. So, show me some citation or fuck off with that.

ok boomer

Kinda' hard to over-simplify something that is literally meaningless bullshit. Again, neither the doctor, nor the hospital is ASSIGNING anything. They're just declaring what ghouly bits the baby has.

you already said this and I explained why you're wrong: the marker on the id of the baby is also assigned, which sets them up for a life of specific social/cultural expectations, if you're just going to repeat yourself over and over I won't keep engaging on this

iceink said:
ok boomer

you already said this and I explained why you're wrong: the marker on the id of the baby is also assigned, which sets them up for a life of specific social/cultural expectations, if you're just going to repeat yourself over and over I won't keep engaging on this

Mmm. Deflection tactics. 'bout what I expected. But, whatever, I'm so done with this conversation.

Use dude, dude. It is gender neutral and everyone is a dude anyway. That dude is crazy but those dudes are cool yet you ate those dudes cake. Who needs the he she they we bullshit, we've got this dude!

By the way holy shit this chat is balls to follow.

What was the point in this thread?

The point in this thread was 'how to talk about people without specifying gender'.
I think there were about 6 posts actually on that topic.. less if you leave out the posts which responded -- or postured at -- both the offtopic discussion and the ontopic one.

At least part of the whole issue is that english doesn't really have a good way of distinguishing male/female *sex*, from male/female *gender*.

The former is a medical setting arising from a pretty specific genetic setup, barring unusual events.

The latter is a creation of the culture a given individual lives in.

I've sometimes wondered whether a lot of the arguments could be solved by simply having the scientific community come up with unique terms.

I say the scientific community, because we sure can't get Joes Shmo to change the gender words consistently.

lmao, this thread! I wonder if I chose a random-ass linguistic topic... Noun classes? Ergativity? Use of "habitual be" in AAVE? if I could create this much drama. lol

Random said:
At least part of the whole issue is that english doesn't really have a good way of distinguishing male/female *sex*, from male/female *gender*.

The former is a medical setting arising from a pretty specific genetic setup, barring unusual events.

The latter is a creation of the culture a given individual lives in.

I've sometimes wondered whether a lot of the arguments could be solved by simply having the scientific community come up with unique terms.

I say the scientific community, because we sure can't get Joes Shmo to change the gender words consistently.

I'm pretty sure there's no language which cleanly divides "sex" from "gender", it's just that the English-speaking world mostly reserves gender-specific (sex-specific?) pronouns for living entities with a sex, the exception being the anthropomorphism of objects, such as when a someone refers to a prized possession using "she". ("She weighs one-hundred-fifty kilograms and fires two-hundred-dollar custom-tooled cartridges at ten thousand rounds per minute. [...] Oh my god, who touched Sasha? WHO TOUCHED MY GUN?!")

Edit: Also, I find it amazing how this thread exploded simply out of my use of the expression "assigned at birth." The fact that this was such a controversial thing to say is kinda why I think people hate talking about this stuff.

I wonder where English first started to differentiate between "sex" and "gender", anyways. I'd always thought the term "gender" came into popularity simply because we Americans are prudes and didn't want to talk about "sex". If true, it makes me wonder what other verbal landmines are going to explode into social justice issues later on, because we insist on inventing new terms to satisfy social squeamishness.

There are cultures in which three genders are recognized. These third genders can even have their own duties and privileges unique to them. American Indians call them "two-spirits".

Random said:
At least part of the whole issue is that english doesn't really have a good way of distinguishing male/female *sex*, from male/female *gender*.

Nor has it an option for a "sentient it" pronoun beyond they. Perhaps we could "steal" something from some Native Americans were our mainstream culture not so ignorant of the possibility.

Gonna be hilarious when this exceptionally-tiny, liberal, millennial gender-fad rolls over and we get to look back at all this stuff. You get called by what's between your legs because that's literally what the words "he" and "she" denote to.

Shishigumi said:
Gonna be hilarious when this exceptionally-tiny, liberal, millennial gender-fad rolls over and we get to look back at all this stuff. You get called by what's between your legs because that's literally what the words "he" and "she" denote to.

gonna be hilarious when everyone starts making sure to check inside yer pants before they call you a 'he' or a 'she' cuz that's a thing people do

Grab her by the pussy

Yo what's the pronoun for "I have no idea" and word for unknown genitalia?

Grab idk by the idk to get your pronouns right.

BirdOfGrain said:
Grab her by the pussy

Yo what's the pronoun for "I have no idea" and word for unknown genitalia?

Grab idk by the idk to get your pronouns right.

Grab et by the genitals.
Grab tey by the genitals.
Grab them by the genitals.

To me there are three types of genders:
Genetic gender: What your genes say you are.
Physiological gender: What is in between your legs.
Psychological gender: What you think you are.

Gunna be hilarious when people realize that language is usage, and any attempt at rigidly defining things in absolute terms is a fundamental misunderstanding of how language works.

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/268

People insisting that "male = penis" and "female = vagina" to me are pretending to be like Frege and Carnap in the comic here. Trying to come up with some rigid definition that puts things into neat and tidy boxes, while at the same time totally ignoring usage and thus running into situations where they fail to actually effectively communicate. I tend to side much more with Wittgenstein.

However, I say that people are pretending to be like Frege and Carnap. Because in reality, I don't think what the "gender = genitals" (or chromosomes, or whatever other characteristic) people are actually trying to do is come up with clear scientific usage... Instead, I think the act of saying these things is just their way of expressing a distaste for transgender individuals. It's performative bigotry.

Let's try out a Wittgenstein-style language thought experiment, shall we?

Imagine someone bumped you in the street, and you realize they've stolen your wallet. You also recognize them, and know they are a MTF transgender woman. In short, they present as a woman.

Now in this circumstance, which of these calls would be more effective at getting your wallet back? "Thief! Stop that woman!" or "Thief! Stop that man!"? Obviously the former.

You see? Language is use, nerds. She ain't a man.

Clawdragons said:
People insisting that "male = penis" and "female = vagina" to me are pretending to be like Frege and Carnap in the comic here.

[...]

I don't think what the "gender = genitals" (or chromosomes, or whatever other characteristic) people are actually trying to do is come up with clear scientific usage...

I thought "male" and "female" were widely regarded to refer to (physical) sex, rather than gender identity? Most of the debate in this thread has been over whether a doctor "assigns a gender" by declaring a baby to be a boy or girl as short-hand for a male-bodied baby or a female-bodied baby respectively (as the latter would come off as too cold or impersonal).

iceink said:
because i was responding to someone who was oversimplifying what "assigned at birth" literally means

terms like "amab" and "afab" literally do not affect people with phimosis, cancer, cysts or whatever else in a negative way, but trying to erase these terms does affect trans and non-binary people in a super big negative way

get the message, chief?

I've had to look up what "amab" and "afab" mean, and I think I get it now. The whole spiel about how society treats people because of the assigned gender based on bodily configuration definitely does more harm than good, and I'm rather glad that my (very young) niece is granted a lot of freedom to develop where her heart and interests take her. I've also ensured that the last gift I gave her (a 3DS) was filled with games suited to her age and interests, and not based on what her birth certificate says.

While there's a lot of good the determination of biological sex does for medical treatments and thus general well-being, the reality is that this tool is being abused by other people.

Clawdragons said:
Let's try out a Wittgenstein-style language thought experiment, shall we?

Imagine someone bumped you in the street, and you realize they've stolen your wallet. You also recognize them, and know they are a MTF transgender woman. In short, they present as a woman.

Now in this circumstance, which of these calls would be more effective at getting your wallet back? "Thief! Stop that woman!" or "Thief! Stop that man!"? Obviously the former.

You see? Language is use, nerds. She ain't a man.

So, why is your example using "woman" and "man" and not "female" and "male" as was part of issue?
Personally I know of nobody who would refer to another person on the street as "female" or "male" unless it's medical, thus to me it appears you're the person trying to call a hot dog a sandwich.

Of course, I'm not a native english speaker and my interactions with english speaking people is purely online, so it's entirely possible I'm missing something here that'd be obvious to others.

NotMeNotYou said:
So, why is your example using "woman" and "man" and not "female" and "male" as was part of issue?
Personally I know of nobody who would refer to another person on the street as "female" or "male" unless it's medical, thus to me it appears you're the person trying to call a hot dog a sandwich.

Of course, I'm not a native english speaker and my interactions with english speaking people is purely online, so it's entirely possible I'm missing something here that'd be obvious to others.

Because I was responding primarily to Shishigami. I should probably have quoted them, but when I started writing that post his message and Iceink's reply were the most recent messages posted, and had my post been located right there it would have been clear from context who I was responding to, I think (the first sentence of my post parallels theirs for this reason).

Didn't expect or notice so many messages had gotten posted in between. That's my bad.

Regarding "male" and "female" I would say that generally "woman", "she" and "female" tend to go together, and "man", "he" and "male" tend to go together. The first are typically nouns, the second are pronouns, the third are, at least as usually used when referencing humans, adjectives.

When referencing other species, male and female are more acceptable as nouns, and also just more relatively commonly used in general. We have so many other words to specify gender for humans that those get used less.

However, the idea that someone could be a woman but not female, or a man but not male, is not a take I've ever heard anyone express before. As far as my experience with the English language goes, if someone is considered a woman, then "female" would be the appropriate adjective to use.

Clawdragons said:
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/268

[...]

Let's try out a Wittgenstein-style language thought experiment, shall we?

Imagine someone bumped you in the street, and you realize they've stolen your wallet. You also recognize them, and know they are a MTF transgender woman. In short, they present as a woman.

Now in this circumstance, which of these calls would be more effective at getting your wallet back? "Thief! Stop that woman!" or "Thief! Stop that man!"? Obviously the former.

You see? Language is use, nerds. She ain't a man.

Also, this methodology of determining language is rather flawed in this context. By this reasoning, "Thief! Stop that woman!" would be correct only if the transwoman effectively passes off as a woman to the people around her. Otherwise if she looks more like a typical man and people are confused about who you're talking about, the transwoman would in fact not be a woman because people don't make that correlation (i.e. the hotdog is not a sandwich because people don't what you're talking about). Which is preposterous. As a corollary, if someone walks up to you, picks your pocket, then runs off through a mostly idle crowd, you could yell "Thief! Stop that snarflblat!" and given the context of a single person running away after an exclamation of a theft, people would know who you're referring to. Does that make the person a "snarflblat" because you effectively communicated your meaning regardless?

While there is some truth in what the comic is trying to say, it excludes the fact that this kind of thing is highly dependent on the time, place, and person you're communicating with, so no lasting information can be derived that way. If it could, transwomen would still be men and gay people would still be pedos, because that's what people in large part correlated. Instead, people like Frege and Carnap thought about it, considered "do gay people fit the definition of a pedo?", "do transwomen fit the definition of a man?", and "what do we mean by these terms?", and after studying it came to a different conclusion than the majority of society. What was once widely thought to be the case actually wasn't and never was; people were just wrong.

Wow, didn't mean to get into such a diatribe. I just found it to be an interesting thing to think over, and give my thoughts about. I'll shut up now.

Watsit said:
Otherwise if she looks more like a typical man and people are confused about who you're talking about, the transwoman would in fact not be a woman because people
don't make that correlation [...] Which is preposterous.

Contingently being a woman might be weird, but it's not that weird.
Suppose that the thief "passes". Then you have the situation which 'Are Traps Gay?' makes fun of: 'being a woman' in those circumstances in which social perception is mainly relevant, and not physical evidence.. and 'being a man' in the remaining circumstances.

It should not be inferred from this that I agree with Clawdragons line of argument -- I don't. I just think both you and Clawdragons didn't carry the idea of contextual definition to its logical conclusion.

(I perceive people in general as terribly confused about permanence of identity and 'is X Y?', but that's another topic. I'll just say that permanent identity is a convenient simplification, but I have reason to doubt that words or people actually work that way.)

Language evolves following culture, not vice versa.

Clawstripe said:
Nor has it an option for a "sentient it" pronoun beyond they.

Singular "They" dates back to the 1300s though, the complaint about it being "improper" is an invention of 19th century grammarians who preferred using "he".

Freeneko said:
Singular "They" dates back to the 1300s though, the complaint about it being "improper" is an invention of 19th century grammarians who preferred using "he".

Exactly, the language evolved. We no longer use it as singular just like we no longer use gay to mean happy and calling someone an engineer no longer means they* work with train engines. Trying to pull back the old meaning of they is like trying to force back the meaning of other words that changed. We shouldn't do. We should be moving forward, not backways.

*Crap, I just sort-of used a singlar they. I think we should just all agree that English sucks and leave it at that or switch to one of the engineered languages which don't have these issues.

mrox said:
Exactly, the language evolved. We no longer use it as singular just like we no longer use gay to mean happy and calling someone an engineer no longer means they* work with train engines. Trying to pull back the old meaning of they is like trying to force back the meaning of other words that changed. We shouldn't do. We should be moving forward, not backways.

There's nothing saying a word can't regain a previous meaning. Evolution isn't a forward set of "improvements", it's more just a change in response to circumstance. If circumstances dictate it, there's no reason a previously lost trait can't re-emerge if necessary.

mrox said:
Exactly, the language evolved. We no longer use it as singular

But we never stopped using Singular They, its usage continued through the 19th century and became even more common in the 20th. The only context where it's considered incorrect is in some formal writing guides, which base that standard off of 19th century grammar prescriptivists who were trying to force rules on the English language, and now that practise is slowly fading as well. The only reasons people take issue with Singular They is from a wrongheaded grammatical perspective, or from discomfort with "gender neutrality". Singular They is perfectly reasonable and understood by any speaker of the English language.

What pronoun will you use with an ambiguously looking neutered genderqueer with Klinefelter syndrome?

felix_nermix said:
What pronoun will you use with an ambiguously looking neutered genderqueer with Klinefelter syndrome?

The one they specify when you ask them what pronouns they prefer, of course. :)

felix_nermix said:
What pronoun will you use with an ambiguously looking neutered genderqueer with Klinefelter syndrome?

Ignoring the fact that this is obvious bait, the easy answer is "They" until otherwise informed. Just like any other person you'd ever meet.

This thread seems to have went off topic pretty badly.. after reading through it i'm still left wondering what its point was? Was it commentary, suggestions, a set of demands, what?

Shishigumi said:
Gonna be hilarious when this exceptionally-tiny, liberal, millennial gender-fad rolls over and we get to look back at all this stuff. You get called by what's between your legs because that's literally what the words "he" and "she" denote to.

Pretty much have to agree.. It's the same with media and entertainment in general.. This era is going to have a lot to answer for to past and future generations, in art, literature, creativity and basic artistic freedom. I personally think this will be looked back at as a sort of artistic dark age in many ways.

Drkfce0 said:
This thread seems to have went off topic pretty badly.. after reading through it i'm still left wondering what its point was?

Not much...

Drkfce0 said:
This thread seems to have went off topic pretty badly..

Hooray derailment, choo choo!

Drkfce0 said:
This era is going to have a lot to answer for to past and future generations, in art, literature, creativity and basic artistic freedom.

What I find hilarious is that this assumes future generations judge us for our values in exactly the same way our generation is judging the values of its cultural history, which is ironically exactly how we got to this point where we have to make amends for modern wrongs by shallowly adopting ridiculous cultural inversions that only end up highlighting why things were wrong in the first place.

And I guess that's how I see attempts to artificially popularize new uses for old pronouns, to say nothing of the various novel, genderless pronouns that have been proposed. Like I said before, I don't want to hurt people who are mistakenly referred to by the wrong pronoun. But I also think the underlying problem is the people who refuse to use the proper pronoun once it is known, and I don't think that can be addressed through new, artificial linguistics.

Something about gender activist language feels really Orwellian and forced.

Languages evolve naturally over time, you change them with generations not a hammer.

0p3nV01D5 said:
... you change them with generations not a hammer.

I don't think asking for people to be conscious of something and respect it equates to a hammer, does it?

CCoyote said:
I don't think asking for people to be conscious of something and respect it equates to a hammer, does it?

It does when you constantly beat them over the head with it in the most disrespectful manner possible. Why do you think no one takes any -ism or -phobe seriously anymore? Hint: its not because they own up to it, its because its been shouted out so much even for tiny inconsequential stuff that literally has nothing to do with -ism or -phobia that its lost its meaning.

"I'm just asking for respect"

a) you have to earn that. You start out at 0 respect.
b) if your behaviour and arguments are shitty, you earn disrespect and mockery instead.

Consciousness that you are raising an issue is one thing. People will only respect that issue if you can show it deserves respect.

Ignorant linguistic revisionism is not something deserving of respect. Nor is the act of demanding respect, which is a performative contradiction.

United_Gamers said:
It does when you constantly beat them over the head with it in the most disrespectful manner possible.

Can we agree that there are people in every group who behave disrespectfully, and that no one is at their best when they're stressed, depressed, or angry? But even at that, a few tactless people don't nullify the idea itself?

savageorange said:
a) you have to earn that. You start out at 0 respect.

In my opinion that's a pretty terrible philosophy to live by. I prefer to respect people by default and take it away when someone proves they don't deserve it.

CCoyote said:
In my opinion that's a pretty terrible philosophy to live by. I prefer to respect people by default and take it away when someone proves they don't deserve it.

You might prefer to live by another philosophy, but I don't agree that you can actually do so. Respect appears to me to be largely involuntary, so my statement that it starts at 0 is a descriptive claim.

Things like the principle of charity to my mind are in a different category (people may have a point and should be treated as people, even if you think they are terrible people) -- intellectual practices.

savageorange said:
Respect appears to me to be largely involuntary, so my statement that it starts at 0 is a descriptive claim.

I disagree with your conclusion. Anecdotal evidence really doesn't carry any objective weight when it can be cherry-picked so easily. Respecting others is a choice. Not respecting others is also a choice.

CCoyote said:
Can we agree that there are people in every group who behave disrespectfully, and that no one is at their best when they're stressed, depressed, or angry? But even at that, a few tactless people don't nullify the idea itself?

Yes I am sure you and I could agree on that point, We can even agree on point 2 although I still think you are responsible for you actions, and that stress and anger are not justification period.

On that last point I have trouble trying to agree, because generally I would BUT being a Trans person and having been chased OUT of the LGBT community because I do not agree with everything being done especially in regards to children(That is for an ENTIRELY different discussion.) I have trouble agreeing.

CCoyote said:
In my opinion that's a pretty terrible philosophy to live by.

I disagree. I had been trying to reason out why, but everything I put is just basically word salad and I can't concentrate my thoughts(Wonder why its only like really late as of writing this BUT I still try)

But essentially starting out with 0 respect for someone you just meet doesn't mean you disrespect them it just means they haven't done anything yet for you go beyond (Or below) casual courtesy.

@CCoyote:

Then the obvious question is, "what does 'respecting others' consist of, to your mind?"

Because AFAIK the usual meaning of 'respect' refers to an attitude or disposition (which are not directly chooseable), not to an act (which nearly everybody will acknowledge as a chooseable thing). Isn't that the case?

(ie. I can act respectful, I can exercise the principle of charity for example, I can speak politely. It seems seriously incorrect to conclude from that that I respect the person I was talking to.

For example, if you have just met a person, saying that you are treating them respectfully, or as a human being of equal value, is one thing, but it would be pretty weird to say that you respected them [a person whom you obviously knew nothing of])

United_Gamers said:
On that last point I have trouble trying to agree, because generally I would BUT being a Trans person and having been chased OUT of the LGBT community because I do not agree with everything being done especially in regards to children(That is for an ENTIRELY different discussion.) I have trouble agreeing.

This illustrates IMO one reason why it's a problem to define respect in terms of actions, because of course there is then the question of 'who defines the standard of these actions?' and the answer to that is, whoever is willing to seize power and enforce it. Which is fine (perhaps) for traffic laws, murder, and theft, but terrible for fuzzy aspects of human interaction.

The tendency of those optimized for dictatorial behaviour (sociopaths) to fill leadership roles of social activist organizations is a serious problem. How many people in the organization are functionally thugs, and does the organization incentivize this?

It doesn't seem quite right to say that the ordinary ground level people have no responsibility in this. How hard are they working to hold their leaders accountable?

But essentially starting out with 0 respect for someone you just meet doesn't mean you disrespect them it just means they haven't done anything yet for you go beyond (Or below) casual courtesy.

+1. Courtesy is courtesy, Respect has at least an element of reputation. The level of respectful behaviour I reflexively give to you is a measure of how much I respect you. Conversely the level of reflexive disrespectful behaviour -> measure of how much I disrespect you.

felix_nermix said:
Clusivity and gender neutrality

I couldn't careless about that BS. I use regular pronouns during discussions, he/she when talking about people and if i can't tell WTF you are i'll refer to you as "it".

BirdOfGrain said:
Grab her by the pussy

Yo what's the pronoun for "I have no idea" and word for unknown genitalia?

Grab idk by the idk to get your pronouns right.

felix_nermix said:
Grab et by the genitals.
Grab tey by the genitals.
Grab them by the genitals.

"Grab it by the front hole" is the correct term.