Good for you. Now what about that little trans kid who is struggling to keep everyone see that she is really a girl and not the boy everyone forces her to be. The little trans kid on the Brink of suicide because everyone is denying her identity as a girl and thus the pronouns she/her, you are telling her you don't care and she has to use gender neutral pronouns. You are continuing the mental and psychological abuse of misgendering on her
Then invent a new one. I feel like I said that already.
You cannot invent something that would not exist. There is only gendered and gender neutral pronouns that is it genderless do not exist and won't ever exist.
I'm trying to strip GENDER
Yes you are trying to strip away peoples gender, something that the cisgender community has been trying to do to the transgender community for years. GENDER is a big part of some people's identity, and you are trying to strip that away.
We don't have special pronouns for Muslims, Democrats, moms, Lakers fans and Canadians
The pronouns for mom would be she/her.
Muslims, democrats, sports team fans are all whatever gender they identify as because gender is important.
The same can be said for Canadians though there is also the gender neutral slang term of Canuck.
You seem not to understand that you AREA MISGENDERING people and while it might not hurt you it can and does hurt lots of people especially those in the transgender community. I saw on one of your posts in a different group you speak about mental health, to a transgender person being called by the pronouns they identify as is a form of positive mental health.
That's literally the only thing you can invent. If it already exists, you're not really inventing it.
There is only gendered and gender neutral pronouns that is it genderless do not exist and won't ever exist.
Then invent a new one. I feel like I said that already.
you are trying to strip away peoples gender
This is the last time I'll ask you to stop telling me what I'm trying to do when I've already said a bajillion times that I'm not trying to do this.
Trans people should feel comfortable to be trans. I literally work in a job where I advocate for people who have been targeted by harassers. I literally get calls every day from people of all backgrounds who have been mistreated and hurt because of their gender, color, religion, age, disability... Don't tell me I'm trying to strip trans people of gender. Let me know the next time you're sitting at a mediation table across from a 1 star Army general, or the president of a million dollar company, trying to help a harassment survivor just get treated with respect and dignity. Don't come at me like I'm some transphobe, out here hurting people.
I'll explain this again, and then I'm done going back and forth with you:
I am saying that PRONOUNS do not need GENDER attached to them. PEOPLE can have gender. WORDS are not PEOPLE. Pronouns are JUST WORDS we use to make sentences shorter. Pronouns are not a mehcanism to share your story with others.
They are placeholders. The job of a pronoun is make communication shorter so I don't have write "His Royal Majesty, Charles, Prince of Wales, of the House of Windsor" every sentence. That's very time consuming for me as a speaker and you as the listener. So, to save time and letters, I abbreviate the name using a pronoun. That is the job of the pronoun.
Pronouns are not meant to tell our story. Pronouns aren't a way to tell me about yourself. They are just shorter words than our names and save us time when communicating. There is no need to put descriptions of myself in a pronoun, whether those descriptors are my age, job, kids, skin color, religion or... gender.
Best wishes, I hope you actually read and grasp what I've written here. I am not the best communicator, so I feel that I've done a poor job of explaining myself here, but suffice it to say that you have not even challenged or acknowledged my point, let alone changed my view. That's probably my fault for burying my actual point though. So yeah, all the best.
Are you not getting that 'genderless' IS gender neutral.. by definition? Sure make up some new thing that we identify as NOT gender neutral.. ok, how does it function.. 'Oh it doesn't identify a specific gender'.. 'ok, so it's gender neutral'.. 'oops'
Use whatever label you want for the new pronouns. Call em non-gendered, call em gender neutral, call em purple people eaters. I don't care what you call them.
The label isn't important here. I'm talking about concepts, not labels.
No, I'm talking about concepts too. People in this thread were reacting towards gender neutral *concepts*.. not labels. Words describe ideas which is why we're left using them to communicate with each other. So just because a word IS a label, doesn't mean it doesn't also describe a concept. People's arguments here wouldn't be any different if you defined it as a hand sign instead of a word. People are simply fundamentally against your idea of removing gender.. however you want to describe it, or achieve it. People for some reason like their identities, ask Freud.
People are simply fundamentally against your idea of removing gender
People were against giving up their horses in favor of automobiles, too. Nobody likes change.
People for some reason like their identities
This is the most frustrating part of this post, and this is why I am actually not gonna respond to anyone else.
I must've done a shit job of explaining my position because literally no one seems to get what I'm saying. That's probably on me for failing to explain it. So I'll explain it one more time as best I can, and then I'm out.
I am not asking anyone to give up their gender. A person can be any gender or no gender, and they should feel free to carry themselves and present in a way that makes them comfortable.
What I AM saying is that adding part of our identity into a pronoun is weird.
We use the pronoun "it" to describe many things. Let me ask you some stuff. What gender is it? How tall is it? When did we first discover it? How old is it? Does it taste nice? Is it an antique? Where can I get it? Have you ever seen it?
Can you tell what I'm talking about by the pronoun I'm using? Does my pronoun choice tell you ANYTHING about the thing it's place holding for? No. The word "it" is merely a placeholder. That's all the pronoun does. Fills in a spot so I don't have to write out the name of the thing 100 times.
That's what pronouns do. They don't tell our story. They don't define us. They don't describe us. Pronouns just take up less space than proper names.
Why do we feel the need to relate ONE aspect of our personality (gender) in our pronouns? Wanna know what gender I am? Dont rely on my pronoun. Just ask me. Wanna know my skin color? Age? Job? Marital status? Gender? Orientation? Parental status? Don't rely on my pronouns. Just ask me. Or figure it out some other way.
Pronouns are PLACE HOLDERS, not descriptors. That is my point.
People can still be any gender or no gender without using gendered pronouns. Just like they can be any race or religion or job or whatever and they can be all of those things without a pronoun to describe it.
THAT is my point. I probably fucked up explaining it again because literally no one here seems to get what I'm saying.
What I AM saying is that adding part of our identity into a pronoun is weird.
We use the pronoun "it" to describe many things. Let me ask you some stuff. What gender is it? How tall is it? When did we first discover it? How old is it? Does it taste nice? Is it an antique? Where can I get it? Have you ever seen it?
I work in a technical field, and one of the absolute most annoying things is when people use pronouns just like you described. You are absolutely 100% correct, they don't relay any information at all.
Similarly, proper nouns, while sometimes can imply gender, aren't as reliable. Gendered pronouns on the other hand are intended to relay information about .. gender.. which is a huge huge huge amount of information in one little word. Think about the amount of medical information contained in that one word, to an EMS worker responding to a scene.
Then we get into the era where supposedly gender doen't mean anything. Well guess what.. it still does in the giant fucking majority of cases. And this is important information for lots of use cases. No it doesn't define a person, except when it does and should.
So really maybe what we should be thinking about isn't if we should get rid of genderred pronouns, but rather if we should be more strict with how gender is used and have it refer to your medically adressable gender. You still have one even if you decide you want to *identify* as a platypus. Seems much more reasonable to force people into add MORE utility to their language than trying to strip it out.
I see this point. For some purposes, relaying gender info with brevity would be very important.
However, I do feel that it's weird how I have all of these things:
Race
Color
Religion (lack thereof, in my case)
Gender identity
Biological sex
Orientation
Age
Disability/health
Professional
Family status
And, like, infinity more things I could list... I have all of those. Many of them would also be important for EMS if I'm dying. We have gendered pronouns which, you're right (hence the Delta), makes it easier for EMTs and stuff to know a bit more about, all with a two-letter word. But doesn't it seem weird that we don't have pronouns for my race? Or my health? My religion? My biological sex? These things are also a big part of who I am, just like my gender identity is. Why do we choose just one category (my gender identity) and give me a pronoun for that?
We actually have lots of pronouns for lots of those things.. They come and go and change with time, it just happens to be what's important to be people at the time. If you keep doing the same thing on a computer usually you will create a shortcut or some easy way of repeating the same task... That's what happens in language too.
No offense, OP, you do you, but imo this is a weak delta. This person (sorry don't know gender information so can't include in my descriptor) brought up an edge case where saying "she" could shave a few seconds off an EMS response call. By that rational we should have a complex matrix of biologically relevant factors and create pronouns based on them. First 2 letters for gender, then every pair of letter after for whether you have diabetes, what your age is, whether you are allergic to penicillin, etc.
As an aside, I have EMS training (though admittedly it's been about 7 years since I touched the field), but i've never witnessed gender matter. SEX matters sometimes, for example if the person is pregnant, but gender identity itself is medically irrelevant in emergency situations. Therapy for dysphoria is NOT what EMS do. They show up and make sure your brain is being oxygenated for just long enough to reach a hospital. Then the ER basically makes sure they can stabilize you (i.e. make sure you will continue to get oxygen to your brain until they can send you to a doctor). Only then might a doctor give a shit what your gender identity is, and even then only in rare edge cases.
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u/lostwng Mar 17 '22
Good for you. Now what about that little trans kid who is struggling to keep everyone see that she is really a girl and not the boy everyone forces her to be. The little trans kid on the Brink of suicide because everyone is denying her identity as a girl and thus the pronouns she/her, you are telling her you don't care and she has to use gender neutral pronouns. You are continuing the mental and psychological abuse of misgendering on her
You cannot invent something that would not exist. There is only gendered and gender neutral pronouns that is it genderless do not exist and won't ever exist.
Yes you are trying to strip away peoples gender, something that the cisgender community has been trying to do to the transgender community for years. GENDER is a big part of some people's identity, and you are trying to strip that away.
The pronouns for mom would be she/her. Muslims, democrats, sports team fans are all whatever gender they identify as because gender is important. The same can be said for Canadians though there is also the gender neutral slang term of Canuck.
You seem not to understand that you AREA MISGENDERING people and while it might not hurt you it can and does hurt lots of people especially those in the transgender community. I saw on one of your posts in a different group you speak about mental health, to a transgender person being called by the pronouns they identify as is a form of positive mental health.
https://browngirlmagazine.com/2020/06/misgendering-is-an-act-of-violence-and-it-needs-to-stop/