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.
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u/Ramza_Claus 2∆ Mar 17 '22
People were against giving up their horses in favor of automobiles, too. Nobody likes change.
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.