Gender neutral pronoun?

Mar 06, 2009 10:32

www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/03/06/words.language.pc/index.html
(pops, as always)

I'm not really into gender issues but as a female, it's hard not to be reminded sometimes that we are not the "default" gender. For example, we've all heard about people who had pets that they assumed, due to nothing really, were male - they wake up one morning and there are ( Read more... )

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Comments 9

tenthz March 6 2009, 16:12:00 UTC
I have no problem being defaulted as a he or as a man. I think things have been taken too far as usual. Also, I usually make the bizarre assumption that dogs are boys and cats are girls. :-P

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lordxyyndragon March 6 2009, 16:18:11 UTC
I know what you mean about dogs and cats, so true

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chime March 6 2009, 16:53:25 UTC
I don't know if it's actually a word in any dictionaries or not but I've heard and used "masculonormative" regarding our culture (and most)

I'd be in favor of a gender-neutral pronoun, but all of them that I've heard just sound kind of silly when you try to put them into practice.

hir (which has its own pronunciation issues--it's either gonna sound like "here" or just like "her" anyway),
ip (i've never heard that one and it does have the network address issue you mentioned :P),
sie (sounds like 'she', also looks like "she"/"you" in german)

The one I like best, honestly, is "they," although that seems to annoy hardcore prescriptive grammarians everywhere. (Prescriptive grammarians sometimes annoy me, but they seem to have more public clout than linguists.) Admittedly, it might occasionally generate singular/plural confusion. However it'd be no moreso than "you" does in my opinion, and in those rare cases I think s/he would be fine...

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chime March 6 2009, 16:54:46 UTC
When I remember, I try to default to female just to offset what-is-pretty-much-everyone else anyway

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xorus March 6 2009, 18:34:39 UTC
Any novel pronoun that is supposed to be gender-neutral is going to sound artificial and agenda driven.

I think we should just objectify everyone. Refer to people as "it" and "thang", like: "Look at that sweet thang, I'd like to hit it." Totally gender neutral.

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xorus March 6 2009, 18:41:12 UTC
Of course, the inanimate objects we own will still be female.

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marksism March 6 2009, 23:35:31 UTC
bitches be gettin uppity in here

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jellomonkey May 28 2009, 02:52:01 UTC
Everyone loves their mother.

Grammatically incorrect??!!? I'm sorry, didn't people make up languages? If we can add new words like ip and shim and whatever other unpronounceable bullshit someone comes up with, can't we just change the grammar rules? Does it require some kind of constitutional amendment or am I missing something?

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lordxyyndragon May 28 2009, 02:55:23 UTC
I'd love to be able to just say THEIR!

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