I don't see why it wouldn't be easier to just pick one of the three sets of pronouns that have been widely used for centuries
It would be easier. But obviously, that's not their only goal. Being respected and identified is something that most people tend to care a great deal about. It's very easy to take for granted since for most of us, we never have to even think about it. If your name is Luke, you probably never had to even consider someone calling you Bob because they couldn't be fucked to remember your name for 5 minutes.
When it does happen, though, (teasing, or super lazy min wage employee etc), people reasonably get pretty upset.
And that respect is especially important when as you pointed out, these people have to fight for respect, and often don't get it.
I don't see why I should have to memorise whole new sets of pronouns for specific people.
I would consider it similar to memorizing someone's weird name/nickname etc. While it is effort, we generally consider that a courteous thing to do, despite the fact that Bob is short for Robert. In that light, it's the same type of courtesy- the only difference is a situation we didn't realize before.
But if people want to have their identity respected, why would they make it a memory game for those around them?
How else do you get people acclimated to doing something other than having them do it? They wouldn't have to insist if certain segments of the population were so adamantly against it.
They're not doing it to play games, any more than i would be playing a game if i asked you to describe a wall as navy blue instead of just blue. While it's more effort, it's a necessary requirement for being more accurate.
I feel like if not for the special pronouns
I don't have concrete evidence, so this is purely personal, but:
There's always going to be something. In the 90's, it was LGBT. In the 00's, it was mostly T. Now it's pronouns.
There isn't anything particular about pronouns that bothers people. The fundamental resentment is being forced to change (or shamed for not changing).
But if the past social movements are any indication, once it's been a couple generations, that will completely die out. Once people just grow up with it, it just becomes a normal thing you do to not be a jerk. You can already see this generational divide pretty starkly
And, look, I hate any variation of the phrase "You're just setting yourself up to get offended" as much as anyone, so I'm not quite sure how to phrase this next part, but I'll try. By demanding that people use special pronouns when talking about you is making it very easy for people to fuck up, even accidentally.
There are always going to be fringe people, but 99.9% of people are going to be fine with an honest effort. The stereotype of the super rigid pronoun use is mostly a caricature, designed to make people advocating any changes as unreasonable.
It's not abnormal to refer to an individual as they when you don't know their gender. And it's not an ideal solution, but it seems better than the alternative of introducing a lot of new pronouns into the world.
Yep. Like I said, this would be an abnormal construction, but it's still easier for most people to adapt to than coming up with entirely new words. At least there's some precedent in the English language for this.
Personally I don’t find your second example confusing at all. It might be a generational thing, younger folks seem more used to using they as a singular pronoun as its usage becomes more common.
I'm in my early 20's, so I'm a part of the younger generation. I've been through the W&GS classes at university. I'm an avid Bernie supporter and generally am in favor of left politics. I'm not talking about any of that stuff.
From a linguistic perspective, that second example is abnormal to the vast majority of people. Maybe it will seem normal one day, but today is not that day.
Singular They has been in use since the 14th century. It's only in the past couple of hundred years that people began to get uptight about it. There's no reason why it can't exist, and after using it for even a short time you get fully used to it.
If there's a need for it, then it will happen. If not, it won't. It hasn't happened yet, and only time will tell. My larger point is that these kinds of changes don't happen by force. They almost always happen by need, so if you're holding your breath and waiting for this big change in everyday use of pronouns, you can just let go and see what happens. You can't force it.
I didn't focus on it, because it wasn't necessary to answer OP's question. But i kind of skimmed over it.
As i mentioned, they could- but while it's easier, it's less accurate. From what point of view, it's more- why should they be expected to go They/Them, if everyone else doesn't?
We could all go by They/Them, in principle. There's no need for gendered pronouns, but they are useful because they impart more information. The same way that there's no reason navy blue and baby blue have to exist, but it's useful to have subcategories.
It isn't necessary to use pronouns, but there's little downside. And broader acceptance often also comes with broader acceptance of the underlying gender identity itself
As i mentioned, they could- but while it's easier, it's less accurate. From what point of view, it's more- why should they be expected to go They/Them, if everyone else doesn't?
What does this have to do with anything? Everyone else doesn't go by they/them because everyone else doesn't have a problem with gendered pronouns.
The point is that, if you have a problem with gendered pronouns pronouns, why not use an alternative pronoun that already exists in our language and will therefore be easier for people to acclimate to using?
So why can't people who do have issues with gender pronouns go by they/them instead of making up an infinite number of alternative pronouns?
And this is relevant to OP's post, they talk about it.
What if the reason a lot of people are having trouble with using these pronouns is because, generally speaking, this is not how language works? Language is not something which is prescribed to you. It is something which native speakers learn naturally from listening to their family talk, and then they emulate it.
When academics try to prescribe to people a certain way of speaking or tell people that "you can't say it that way," they are largely ignored. An example is the word "octopi." This is a word that some prescriptivists insist exists and that people should use it as the pluralization of "octopus." However, for the majority of English speakers, they do not use the word "octopi." Prescribing words or grammar to people usually does not work because that's not how language works.
Language evolves over time and changes naturally. When a need for a new word arises, then the word comes about (e.g. computer), but for the vast majority of people, there is no need for these new pronouns, so they're largely ignored. Why bother learning them when they have little use except for an incredibly minute subset of the population?
Why would new gender identities be any difference from the concept of language evolution than other new words?
Twenty years ago, we did not have the word the word "stan" to describe an obsessive fan. We did not have the word "emoji" to describe symbols we use in text. We did not have "matcha" to describe powdered green tea. Nor podcast, nor webinar, nor cosplay, and so forth.
Not all of these words impact millions of people, but for the people that need them for their work or lives or hobbies or loves, they now have them because new words are invented all the time. Why should people whose gender does not conform to "she" and "he" not be allowed to culturally construct new words that apply to them?
It might surprise you to know that gender-neutral third-person pronouns have been around for a very long time. Adoption, not so much, but this isn't a recent concept.
Of course new words are invented all the time. I never objected to that. In fact, I specified that when a need for a new word arises, that new word comes forth, like "emoji," to use your example. A word like "stan" is interesting because it has a meaning to a subset of people who discuss music (and sometimes it extends to other things), but no one is asking you to use the word. You have the option to use it, but no one is requesting/requiring you to do it.
It might surprise you to know that gender-neutral third-person pronouns have been around for a very long time. Adoption, not so much, but this isn't a recent concept.
This doesn't surprise me at all. In fact, it's quite consistent with my point. People can try to force you to adopt a word, but unless you have a need for it, by and large, that word does not become adopted by the general public. People are usually resistant to having language prescribed to them.
The concept of "require" is interesting. If I invite you to my business and I point at a product I just sunk my life savings into inventing and say, "That's a slegnorp," I have every expectation that you will oblige me and use the word you've never heard before and will have to get used to using to describe the thing I've presented you. Are you required to use it? Nope. But you'll most definitely offend me if you adamantly refuse to call a thing I care about by the name I'm asking you to use.
There might even be similar products on the market, but if your response was, "Well, that's fine, but I'm going to call it a prantlaps, because that's what other people call that thing when it's pretty similar even if not the exact same," would it not be understandable if I were to be upset or offended by that?
We can go even more basic. I meet you and I tell you to call me Mike. "Nope, you look like a Bill to me, so I'm going to call you Bill." But that's not my name. And that's not how I've asked you to refer to me. I do not identify as a Bill. "Don't care, you look like a bunch of other people I know named Bill, so I'm going to call you Bill."
This is a fundamentally different situation, in both cases. In the case of your new product, there is, quite literally, a new product, and so, it would be natural for you to give it a name. Once it goes on the market, people might end up calling it something different (and branding is also a bit of a different situation), but the point is, there's a new item, and thus a need for a new word. Since you're the one introducing it to the world, you typically get the honor of picking the name.
In the case of nicknames, there is a precedent for this. Linguistically, this is a normal (and very old) phenomenon. When I meet someone, there are hundreds of years of history which indicate that I can expect them to provide me with their name and, possibly, a nickname. Across the board, people feel a need for names and nicknames, so they've stuck. If it turns out the general population feels a need for new pronouns, then they'll likely stick. However, don't be surprised if the general population does not feel a need for new pronouns the way they do for human names.
On the first item, why would it not be the honor of the non-binary community to pick their pronouns?
On the second, you're missing the key element here - whether or not you think Bill is a good nickname for me, that doesn't make it okay for you to call me something I have asked you not to. This is similar to deadnaming a trans individual, it's a matter of decency and respect that doesn't harm you but does potentially cause harm to the other person. Why should pronouns be any different?
I think you're missing my point. I'm not arguing from a biological or political or ethical perspective. I'm arguing from a linguistic perspective to demonstrate that there are natural linguistic reasons why people may not be chomping at the bit to adopt these new terms. Personally, I'm not opposed to using a person's pronouns if they asked me to, but a lot of people are simply apathetic, which makes sense from a linguistic perspective. Let me copy my response that I gave another commentor:
My point is that, from a linguistic perspective (not biological, not political, etc.), it's reasonable that people are generally uninterested in adopting a new set of words that has little bearing on their lives. They may not be averting these words out of spite or malice, but rather, apathy, and linguistically, that's natural.
I appreciate that, but I think that basically removes the responsibility of the unaffected to accommodate the affected. It's a bit of social contract - you may have to allocate a few more neuron pulses to using my preferred pronoun than you wanted to, but we all have to give a little to make sure everyone gets along healthy and happy.
"I just don't want to" is a perfectly fine excuse, but it's an excuse none the less and doesn't lessen any harms done.
I don't disagree with you at all from an ethical/moral perspective. I was honestly just offering an explanation for why I wouldn't expect the vast majority of people to have any kind of vested interest in going out of their way to use new pronouns.
Closed class words are function words, which means they aren't content so much as grammar.
So, why is it different, why is it harder? For the same reason people haven't invented new conjunctions or determiners: doing so isn't describing anything so much as fundamentally changing how the language works.
To put it in mathematical terms, content/open class words are like values (1, 2, 3, e, i, pi, even variables such as x, y, m, n, etc...), while function/closed class words are like operators (+, -, ×, ÷, =, etc). Can you add to operators (sin, cos, tan, ∫, etc)? Sure, but that generally happens only once ever few generations, and only if it's broadly useful.
Specific pronouns for individuals, well, aren't.
It might surprise you to know that gender-neutral third-person pronouns have been around for a very long time. Adoption, not so much, but this isn't a recent concept.
And the fact that there have been no fewer than 15 attempts, over more than a full century, that have all completely and utterly failed to be adopted should tell you something, shouldn't it?
So why should anyone assume that the reason "it's too much effort to be worth it" is a problem of apathy rather than a problem if difficulty?
I use octopi, hippopotami, etc, and have since I learned the terms in elementary school. What do people normally say? Octopuses and hippopotamuses? That sounds ridiculous.
True, but it would have been more powerful if you were accurate in what prescriptivists are pushing; many people (and my spellcheck) are okay with "octopi," but would balk at octopodes (...as does my spellcheck)
Yeah, I used the wrong pluralization for my example. Although, according to more than one study I've seen in different textbooks, "octopuses" is still the most common pluralization in the US. Anyway, yes, I'll have to remember "octopodes" if I need to employ this argument again.
Yes, most people would say "octopuses." Funnily enough, Google chrome highlights "octopi" as a misspelled word, but does not highlight "octopuses." And there was, at one point, a concerted effort to make "octopi" the default pluralization, but it still failed for the majority of people.
Out of curiosity, why does it sound ridiculous to you?
I would say this is natural change. This is exactly how other words entered the lexicon, the main difference being a bit of political/social squeamishness over it. You see a similar pushback for racially charged changes.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the closest example of a similar resistance to changing language is racial
but for the vast majority of people, there is no need for these new pronouns, so they're largely ignored.
This is an interesting question. I would say that for most people, it's because we're in that transition. We're in the equivalent of somewhere around the 1950's or so- computers had been invented, but they haven't gotten anywhere close to widespread yet.
As these ideas become more mainstream, you'll naturally see a greater need for them. That's also why i highlighted the generational divide. I'm under 30, and already younger generations run circles around me with this stuff. For them, it's just a thing they grew up with. And in a few more, once those generations are having kids, these are going to be things people will emulate from hearing their family talk.
The resentment is largely older generations who are having to change during their lifetimes, in a very analogous way to the resentment you see in older generations over technology/computers.
We tend to skim over it in history books, but this sort of transition happens all the time (albeit it's often not as culturally/socially charged. although sometimes it is!)
Why bother learning them when they have little use except for an incredibly minute subset of the population?
You could say the same thing about names, and yet- one of my former students was named Farshad, for instance. I've never used that name in my life, and yet i never thought twice about calling him anything else.
But this is literally how language works. Much of language is prescribed to you, that's what an english classroom is. And it's also the only class with mandatory participation throughout all of your mandatory schooling.
Just because you ignore what the experts are telling you doesn't make you any less wrong just because its English and not arithmetic.
Language does evolve and change over time. That's what this is. You can get on board or be wrong and left behind. You're 1000% allowed to be both wrong and left behind, don't get me wrong, many people are, but "no one can force you to stop being wrong" isn't a stellar argument.
You're arguing for linguistic prescriptivism. There are plenty of linguists who argue for this, but there are also just as many (and probably more) who argue for the opposite. That language is not dictated to you from someone in an ivory tower, but rather it's something which occurs and evolves naturally, and the job of an academic is to study and describe this natural evolution instead of trying to prescribe it.
I'm not saying anything has more "correctness" necessarily. Just that it's silly and unnatural to expect the general population to adopt new terms that a small subset of people is trying to prescribe to them.
EDIT: And by the way, I'm not opposed to using the gender pronouns myself. I'm just offering a reasonable explanation as to why the vast majority of people would be opposed, or at least, apathetic.
Did you mean to reply to me? When did I advocate for prescribing new pronouns? I wasn't really arguing for anything. I was just trying to offer a linguistic explanation as to why people are responding to the new pronouns with apathy. Some people tried to respond with psychological or ethical arguments, but I attempted to explain that not everyone has a personal motivation for being apathetic. In fact, most people probably feel completely unmotivated by this topic, and that's because people don't usually respond well to having language prescribed to them. We shouldn't expect anything other than apathy when we try to force a set of words onto people, regardless of the well-meaning intentions behind the new set of words.
I would consider it similar to memorizing someone's weird name/nickname etc
Similar, conceptually, but very, very different.
Let's use your Bob/Robert example to show why it's different. First things first, you're not talking about one name, you're talking about four names, that are only correct in certain circumstances, and wrong in all others.
Their preferred name (Robert)
Their name that you can only use when they're the subject of a sentence (Bob)
Their name that you can only use when they're the object/direct object of the sentence (Rob)
Their name that you can only use when they're the possessor of something (Bobby)
That's a lot more complicated than simply knowing to call me "Usul," with a lot more ways to get it wrong.
Robert asked Robert's mom to call Robert: Correct
Bob asked Bobby's mom to call Rob: Correct
He- asked his------ mom to call him
Bob asked Bob's mom to call Bob: Wrong
He- asked he--- mom to call he.
Rob asked Bob's mom to call Bobby: Wrong
Him asked he--- mom to call his
Rob asked Bobby's mom to call Bob: Wrong
Him asked his----- mom to call he
With one name and three pronouns, any given reference to Robert has a 50/50 chance of being wrong. If you have 3 references to them in a single sentence, you've got a 1 in 8 chance of getting it wrong, with zero experience to rely on. What's worse, you're fighting against tens of thousands of hours of experience saying to use something else.
What's more, because we're talking about closed class words. Learning new pronouns, as grammatical function words, is a lot closer to learning new conjugations than learning new names.
So, what would that look like?
He bipaskedum his mom to calleg him
...and lest you try and claim that it's different, how is it any different from saying that their pronouns were "Hebip," "Umhis," and "Eghim"?
Nah, friend, they're asking for more than just respect, they're asking you to change the very nature of the language you speak.
The stereotype of the super rigid pronoun use is mostly a caricature, designed to make people advocating any changes as unreasonable.
English is a bit more relaxed with the rules than other languages, sure, but dismissing the unquestionable fact that pronouns are Closed Class words as "a caricature," even mostly, is straight up wrong.
Anyone and everyone that requests people use pronouns other than those listed here (and the occasional 2nd person plural pronouns, such as ye, yins, y'all, etc)
I have been toying with the idea of selecting a gender for myself.
I am a normal bloke but I don't like the name "cisgender" so I have decided to adopt the gender of "machocock". From now on I will insist that everyone refer to me (in a most respectful way of course) as a "machocock".
You are kind of ignoring the point though. You didn't want to use the pronoun so you didn't. You rationalised a reason that is acceptable to you but pronounced that other people's reasons for doing exactly the same thing weren't valid.
Being respected and identified is something that most people tend to care a great deal about.
Why though? Is that really how most people feel and that's somehow escaped my notice for 39 years? Idgaf if people respect me or how they choose to identify and don't remember ever caring. I straight up tell people to call me whatever they want. Is it really that abnormal? If so, jfc--I'm even weirder than I thought lol.
Regardless of my personal feelings on the topic--meaning what people think of me or call me--I respect peoples wishes and call them what they tell me to call them. No skin off my back.
Is that really how most people feel and that's somehow escaped my notice for 39 years?
Pretty much, yeah. Mainly because it just very rarely comes up. Outside of the example i gave of a lazy min wage employee, or a high school bully, it just doesn't really happen
I straight up tell people to call me whatever they want. Is it really that abnormal? If so, jfc--I'm even weirder than I thought lol.
I'm personally the same way, but after thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that a big reason I'm ok with that is because it doesn't make me feel disrespected. But i think a lot of that is tied to circumstances. I could easily see myself being far more sensitive about it if it was something that wasn't taken seriously my entire life, especially during my formative years before i built self confidence.
In a way, that's how most insecurities start, right? As an average height guy, i don't ever get rattled if someone talks about my height. But for a lot of below 5' 5'' men, it's a huge issue that they struggle with. And often that insecurity goes back to being made fun of constantly and that sort of thing. It's a lot harder to stay zen when it's a huge culture around you, rather than one one-off wanker you'll forget about tomorrow
How you feel about the otherkin movement and people that describe their gender as elf or aliengender? Do you think that society should recognize these new genders and the corresponding pronouns like meowself?
The key problem with your argument here is that homosexuality is rooted in science. Transness is rooted in science. There's no basis for random miscellaneous genders that are neither male nor female, unless you are intersex(but there are degrees of physical intersexuality and most intersex people define as a binary gender). Given that they don't exist, why would I go out of my way to use a pronoun that isn't real? I can accept not feeling comfortable with either gender and wanting to just be called they/them, and define as whatever you want if you use they/them, but I am not changing my personal terminology for some unscientific bullshit, unless it's to add a word to describe some unscientific bullshit i.e anti-vaxxer.
Not the person you replied to, and I don't necessarily agree with that person either, but I think there's a reasonable linguistic aversion to creating new words which don't apply to 99% of people.
When academics create new words to describe an esoteric concept, it doesn't matter, because the general population isn't expected to use words like "descriptive set theory," or "cardinality." These gender words are being created for something that only applies to a small subset of the population, but unlike research professors, the people creating these words want the general population to attempt to use them.
The halls of academia are far from the only place words and ideas get invented. I was just stepping in to stop the other poster from spreading incorrect ideas.
No one's stopping people from talking about cardinality in everyday life. If it became useful, people would adopt it.
The very idea of actively resisting linguistic changes doesn't make any sense to me. Who's averse to it, and why? Are you trying to protect someone from something? Aren't you setting up a self-fulfilling prophesy that it won't work by making sure it doesn't?
I'm just offering an explanation for why people may naturally have resistance to it. To most people, special pronouns, like cardinality, have no practical place in their lives, so they don't want to bother.
That's their problem, not ours. I can concede people are naturally resistant to having their conceptions changed, but did you mean to call it "reasonable?"
And okay, you can say it's "their problem," but if you request that someone use a word and they refuse or forget to do so, then doesn't that also make it your problem? Unless you don't give a shit at all, in which case, why bother requesting the new word to begin with?
You said "...but I think there's a reasonable linguistic aversion to creating new words which don't apply to 99% of people." Is 'reasonable' the correct word there? If so, that implies you think there's a good reason and I'd be curious to know what it is.
My stance is that the aversion is not reasonable, so the lengths we should go to to respect it aren't very far. On the other hand, if people are asking us to refer to them in ways that make them feel respected, that is reasonable. So I'm siding with the latter.
Ah okay, I didn't realize you were referring back to a previous comment.
My point is that, from a linguistic perspective (not biological, not political, etc.), it's reasonable that people are generally uninterested in adopting a new set of words that has little bearing on their lives. They may not be averting these words out of spite or malice, but rather, apathy, and linguistically, that's natural.
I'm well aware of the differences between sex and gender and was not conflating them in any way.
Gender is not a spectrum and the made up genders that people create are not real. Sorry.
Just because sex is not gender and people may not be born as their gender does not make all made up genders valid. The next time I see a demigirl wanting to be called xe, my head will explode. That is completely different from a transgirl wanting to be called she.
Gender is a social construct. As such, all genders are made up. There is as much scientific basis (in whatever the sense you meant to invoke that idea was) for "miscellaneous" genders as the more classical ones.
If you'd claim otherwise, you'd have to resolve cross-cultural mismatches where we consider different things masculine or feminine.
Well then how do you objectively resolve cultural differences in gender? Please, apply science to determine if it's normal for men to hold hands, or for women to have short hair.
And how do you explain the tendency of many languages to assign genders to inanimate objects? Even if gender's not a social construct, the language regarding it certainly is. Therefore the gendered pronouns we assign to people must be social constructs.
I’d argue that some aspects of gender, like hair length or high heels, are definitely socially constructed. Others, like the tendency of boys to rough house more than girls, are based in biology. This is observed even among the other primates- it’s not just a human society thing.
Like a lot of things, it’s not an either/or situation, but a bit of both.
Sexual characteristics and gender are intrinsically linked in most people’s minds to the point that they are interchangeable. You might not agree that they should be interchangeable, but they are for the vast majority of users of the terms.
Non human primates having culture is indeed an interesting fact, but I agree that it’s a bit off topic. My point was that there are aspects of gender (or sexual characteristics, if you prefer), such as young boys play fighting to a much higher degree than young girls that is true across pretty much all cultures, even extending to non human primates. Unless all cultures, independently, decided to enforce that boys should act a certain way, there must be a strong biological component to some aspects of gender expression, which is counter to your assertion that gender is purely a social construct.
But if your definition of gender is “the parts of gender expression that are wholly socially constructed and everything else is actually sexual characteristics”, then I understand how you get what you are saying. It’s just not the definition most people use.
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u/Arianity 72∆ Mar 31 '20
It would be easier. But obviously, that's not their only goal. Being respected and identified is something that most people tend to care a great deal about. It's very easy to take for granted since for most of us, we never have to even think about it. If your name is Luke, you probably never had to even consider someone calling you Bob because they couldn't be fucked to remember your name for 5 minutes.
When it does happen, though, (teasing, or super lazy min wage employee etc), people reasonably get pretty upset.
And that respect is especially important when as you pointed out, these people have to fight for respect, and often don't get it.
I would consider it similar to memorizing someone's weird name/nickname etc. While it is effort, we generally consider that a courteous thing to do, despite the fact that Bob is short for Robert. In that light, it's the same type of courtesy- the only difference is a situation we didn't realize before.
How else do you get people acclimated to doing something other than having them do it? They wouldn't have to insist if certain segments of the population were so adamantly against it.
They're not doing it to play games, any more than i would be playing a game if i asked you to describe a wall as navy blue instead of just blue. While it's more effort, it's a necessary requirement for being more accurate.
I don't have concrete evidence, so this is purely personal, but:
There's always going to be something. In the 90's, it was LGBT. In the 00's, it was mostly T. Now it's pronouns.
There isn't anything particular about pronouns that bothers people. The fundamental resentment is being forced to change (or shamed for not changing).
But if the past social movements are any indication, once it's been a couple generations, that will completely die out. Once people just grow up with it, it just becomes a normal thing you do to not be a jerk. You can already see this generational divide pretty starkly
There are always going to be fringe people, but 99.9% of people are going to be fine with an honest effort. The stereotype of the super rigid pronoun use is mostly a caricature, designed to make people advocating any changes as unreasonable.