https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25371653.
Regarding the "insulting" part, you're probably mistranating it. What would be insulting in many Slavic languages is using the "middle grammatical gender" (rough literal translation) which is equivalent to using "it" to refer to a person in English. If you insist on translating literally, using third person gender neutral (in Slovene and many Slavic languages) is actually a sign of respect and is how talks to their superiors (antiquated in 3rd person, but still the norm in 2nd).
Not that it matters anyways, as we're all talking in English and thus English grammar is the only one that matters. Even if you know for a fact all parties in the conversation speak the other language, if you're using English, the rules of the other language don't matter.
P.S. Re: Latinx: yeah, that's stupid and I'd see it as mildly offensive if directed at me, but that is neither a pronoun nor common practice, so is entirely irrelevant here
Keep in mind that Poles are likely to use a single, male variant of the surname, rather than explain the intricacies of inflection in the Polish language.
Her father as a matter of course got letters from all her leisure activities, school &c addressed to 'Mr. Yuri ----skaia'. - as her last name was ----skaia, obviously his would be, too.
At least for us inflectionally challenged Norwegians.
Hope that helps.
language 2 embeds gender in the word itself.
names are words.
it's a lose-lose situation: native speakers of language 2 will look at what you wrote and cringe or just assume you're ignorant. they won't get the point you're trying to make, null, nada, 0% chance. source: i'm a native speaker of language 2.
You can talk about someone at length without mentioning their gender once.
I have a Slavic last name. I also have female relatives whose last name is, quite officially, the male-suffixed version of mine. I invite you to guess how that might have happened.
This unasked for anti-activism is very unhelpful. You are indistinguishable from people who refuse to use correct pronouns even when they know. You do not speak for me.
In English? No it isn't. You are the one who is "butchering" a language's pronouns by improperly mapping considerations into it from another language here, not vice versa.
I have a Slavic last name, and I speak English fluently and Russian not-so-fluently-anymore.
If you use "оно" to refer to me in Russian because you don't know my gender, it would sound weird to me. (I haven't been to any Russian-speaking countries in a while, but I suspect there hasn't been a shift in Russian to use that pronoun that way while I've been gone.) I personally wouldn't be insulted, but I can easily imagine how somebody might; it would carry a subtext of referring to me as an inanimate object.
If you use "they" to refer to me in English because you don't know my gender, it would not sound weird to me at all. (Though it might have 5-10 years ago, for different reasons.) A much closer (but still imperfect) analogy to using "оно" to refer to me in Russian would be using "it" to refer to me in English, which would sound weird to me.
Hope that helps.
We're talking here about third person pronouns, and the "the plural is the polite version and the singular is the casual version" doesn't extend to those. You wouldn't refer refer to someone in the third person as "они" rather than "он" to be polite.
you wouldn’t do that because Russia is a paradise for homophobia, not because it does not make sense.
“Они” is a valid pronoun for the same thing than now means “them” in woke English.
If non-homophobic circles of Russian-speakers actually use "они" as a gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun, that's news to me. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out that's true. If it is, I would expect that to be a recent development, as in the last decade or so.
But it sounds like you're basing what you're saying on just mapping the English usage to Russian, or basing it on ground principles about what makes sense or doesn't, which is pretty unconvincing. Are you aware of examples of "они" being used this way in the wild by native speakers?
Anyway, whether it expresses politeness is a whole other can of worms, and I would be quite surprised to find out that on top of that in these circles "они" is used to express politeness in place of "он" or "она" (or I guess "оно") the way that "вы" is used to express politeness in place of "ты".
I'm going by the photo on his Twitter account, but it's as valid a guess as any other. If you went by how I look or by my legal name, you would be wrong, and I would be annoyed at someone on a website chastising others for not using what they assumed was correct.
Assumptions are presumptuous and harmful. Everyone is a they/them until otherwise stated. These are extremely useful pronouns.
You're a they/them.
Calm down. You seem to be overly attached to regressive labels. I don't know what drives this in you, but the universe is burning and people just want to be happy. Your life is short; you're going to die and rot away. Is this really something to get worked up over?
In the future, when our descendants are all uploaded to computers or replaced by an AI overlord, people will be all sorts of genders. They won't be bound by yesterday's norms. Would you be a stuffy gender policeperson, or will you just let people be who they are?
While it's true that pronoun usage in English is a relatively unimportant problem compared to lots of other existing problems in the world, it's worth noting that the person who seems to be the most emotionally invested in that problem here is you. You might accurately feel that using "they/them" this way is forced on you in other situations, but that's not what happened here. In this conversation, you observed "them" being used that way; you didn't get told that you have a moral or ethical obligation to use it that way. That a pretty important distinction.
You're the one that's being high and mighty and trying to impose a standard on somebody else's use of language here, not vice versa.
Also, until just now, the "1% of the population" that you are talking about (which I presume is trans people) wasn't even directly relevant. You're right that part of the cultural shift towards greater use of gender-neutral pronouns is socially driven by trying to make trans people's lives easier, but you could easily have the more or less the same conversation and not have trans people in mind at all. That shift is also socially driven by just trying to leave gender out of the picture when it's irrelevant. That's an aspiration that one might reasonably have even if one doesn't give a shit about trans people.
The thing you're upset about in the first place wasn't a case of someone using "them" because it was a preferred pronoun or whatever. It was case of using "them" as a gender neutral singular second-person pronoun because they didn't bother to do the legwork to work out the gender of the person they were referring to.
> What harm is it to use singular "they"?
That's not what the OP is saying. Because of course there's no harm in any pronoun. But there is societal harm in acting high and mighty about how saying "they" is somehow making a better world and then acting like a prat when called on it.
> regressive labels. ... people will be all sorts of genders. They won't be bound by yesterday's norms.
No, modern twitter activism is just making a bunch of crap up, and this over-concern on properly labelling everyone's gender expression just harms actual transexual people with actual body dysmorphia.
What people who harp on pronouns miss is that pronouns are not used to refer to someone's gender but their sex. I can see your sexual characteristics from across the room, and referring to them is a good way to narrow down who I'm talking about. "That's her there, the tall one in the red dress". Nobody is going to say "That's zir, the one who is only sexually interested when they're romantically attracted to someone, and whose gender expression varies with the weather." Not only is it a bunch of totally irrelevant and inappropriate discussion for most settings, but it's invisible and thus worthless in a referential sense.
The pronoun warriors are invariably not sexually dysmorphic, they're just deconstructing their parent's mores. They're today's goths, not some miraculous new human evolution. If they manage to do something new and valuable - if for instance Harry Styles actually looked good in a dress - all they'd end up doing is expanding the normal dress code for men, they wouldn't actually be creating a new identity. And this isn't helpful because society explores these things (copying elements of one sex's traditional styles in the other sex's new style, etc) via fashion designers and manages to do it without attacking each other's moral character and making queer/intersex people into political pawns.
> It seems like you dislike trans folk. I'm not sure what they did to hurt you, but I suspect your fears and hate are the result of conditioning.
If they had displayed any hate, and they did not, it would have been caused by conditioning from vocal jerks, not from trans people living their lives.
> Would you be a stuffy gender policeperson, or will you just let people be who they are?
Okay, in what way are people not already 100% allowed to express their gender? (In the USA, Canada, etc...)
To someone in the Q-adjacent community who has been through Tumbler and Twitter, you're incredibly transparent. Everything you say is divisive, rude, harmful because it distracts from actual problems, and because it makes this nonsense seem important. You're clearly a justice warrior, not someone who works for justice.
> You've got a lot of fear and anger. Reflect on it. Let it go.
And you're doing this in the name of a community who was doing just fine on their own. Trust people to speak for themselves. Don't pick fights in their name.
Since the LGBTQ institutions have been taken over by the woke they've pushed gendered nonsense and the public isn't blind. Mental breakdowns over pronouns, putting men in women's prisons, etc. Your behavior here is part of a pattern that has reduced LGB acceptance over the last few years, and while Trans acceptance is superficially up, it's at the cost of hateful wars against transexuals, for instance.
I know an ~60yo MTF who was savagely attacked online, under their actual name, for saying that they were tranSEXual because they knew they were biologically male and wanted to be a woman. They were told their language was hateful and they were "killing us!" even though they nearly lost their job, and were being bullied in a way that actually causes people to kill themselves. This is an actual person who spent the last four decades living as the other sex, fighting actual discrimination back in the day, and the mob wanted to cut them down for not toeing the woke line.
The effect of this allyship is similar to Portland, where white Antifa activists are using BLM as an excuse to riot. There's a 'funny' video of a black officer saying he's been racially insulted more during the BLM riots than in their entire career before that. He continues to say that every time a black person tried to speak to him - to ask about his actual views and rational for being an officer - that white BLMers come and physically block their interaction. The rioters don't want anyone to find a middle ground and solve anything because they're using black people to justify their anarchist cosplay. "Oregon Public Broadcasting reports Wednesday that black members of Portland’s Black Lives Matter movement are tired of their anti-racism demonstrations being hijacked by the mostly white “Antifa” anarchists and are working to separate the two movements as protests continue."
Similarly, I've never seen the pronoun police display actual concern for anything other than their ability to control people.
Reflect. Stop. Thanks.
To my eyes, in this thread, the person who is harping on pronouns the most, seems to be closest to having a mental breakdown over them, who can most accurately be described as "pronoun police", and who shows the greatest explicit tendency to control others' use of pronouns, is also the person who in the first place corrected an in-the-wild usage of singular "them" to "him".
Like, can we step back and look at the thread and say that yeah, sometimes maybe it's the people who are pushing back against singular "they" that are blowing the thing out of proportion?
> I've never seen the pronoun police display actual concern for anything other than their ability to control people.
If you're open to a real example, the "pronoun police" at my workplace suggest that when writing about hiring candidates, we use singular "they" instead of "he" or "she", in order not to call too much attention to the gender of that person when those evaluations are read by decision makers. The intent is to reduce any possible gender bias in hiring.
This to me reads like an actual concern for something other than one's ability to control people, namely a concern for being more objective and unbiased in hiring decisions. (Or at least, if you want to be cynical about it, for seeming more objective and unbiased in hiring decisions.)
Don't you see the issue of people claiming to fight for others, but really just stirring up trouble?
I'm honestly interested because I see many communities attacked and turned into a hollow shell, leaving the original members as the primary enemies. Transexuals are literally hated on Twitter despite being the group who fought for the freedom that the current justice warriors are using against them. And people like yourself, who seem to sincerely be trying to help, are helping the attackers. What about the transgender message to you justifies death threats and insane hatred of transexuals? Because that's what you're supporting if you back these pronoun bullies. All anyone different needs is just for everyone to let them be. Fighting in their name is directly counterproductive.
Real LGBTQ+(everything) people don't want to force the public to do anything, they simply want to be equals! Everyone who fights for this "must use pronouns" or "must say 'cis'", etc, fight must hate actual LGBTQ people or they wouldn't try to pick a fight for them. Do you and everyone else not understand how hard it is without people making it harder?
I mean, it is a way for you (the generic you, but also the personal you) to virtue signal. But do you really think this justifies the damage?
How, and why? This stuff is crazy!
> What people who harp on pronouns miss is that pronouns are not used to refer to someone's gender but their sex. I can see your sexual characteristics from across the room, and referring to them is a good way to narrow down who I'm talking about.
The thing you see about someone when you look at them from across the room isn't their biological sex, if anything it's their gender presentation. This chunk of youtube video (https://youtu.be/9bbINLWtMKI?t=548) talks more or less about that.
Ultimately the rift comes down to lying. Do we have to deny truth to be kind? I say no, and I'll leave this rough paraphrasing of Blair. "Am I male, yes. Of course. I'm a transwoman and I wouldn't be trans if I already was female. Do I wish I wasn't, yes. But am I offended, no?"
As for Contrapoint's "seeing gender", that's just simply not the case. For one thing, I grew up when boys were allowed to like pink, so most of people's signifiers don't stand out to me.
I'm super behind being sensitive, but if you're six inches taller than the others, have a beard, or breasts, etc, those are sex linked traits. Not size entirely of course, but often enough that the 10% male is larger than the 90% female. It's gaslighting to assume we can't differentiate between the sexes.
Jesus, what was the phrase you used? "Straight to ideological slander"?
> I'm super behind being sensitive, but if you're six inches taller than the others, have a beard, or breasts, etc, those are sex linked traits.
So if you were talking to me and saw someone who looks like Blair White across the room, and wanted to single that person out, do you think you'd spot that person's biological sex and say "him over there" to me rather than "her over there"?
And I didn't lead with it, I used it to explain why I found your reference to be less than compelling.
> So if you were talking to me and saw someone who looks like Blair White across the room, and wanted to single that person out, do you think you'd spot that person's biological sex and say "him over there" to me rather than "her over there"?
You and I are already talking about Blair so I'd say 'He'. But If I thought it might be ambiguous I wouldn't use either. Like I wouldn't use a shirt-color if I couldn't see it clearly, or thought that you couldn't.
And I won't use people's chosen pronouns but I don't pick fights either so I'd sidestep the issue in their home or at their event.
But if you mean, would I spot Blair if I didn't know them? Ehh, I dunno.
Do you think this means I'm reading their gender expression? Doesn't that implicitly assume that there are only two gender expressions then, such that I'm being fooled into seeing the other one? This whole angle feels like it'd be labelled regressive, and it brings up the question of how one would be expected to recognize 'Moon Gender' at all.
It feels like it'd be simpler to just say that I would be mistaken about their sex.
> But if you mean, would I spot Blair if I didn't know them?
That's more or less what I mean, but also, would you, on top of that, expect me to spot the same thing?
> Do you think this means I'm reading their gender expression?
I don't think that logically follows, and I certainly don't think I'm going to convince you of that.
I think I have a chance of convincing you that the argument you gave in the paragraph starting with "What people who harp on pronouns miss is" in the comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25379317 is a bad argument for the claim that pronouns (should?) refer to biological sex rather than gender. So I'm shooting for that. (But not for convincing you that the conclusion is wrong.)
I think the Blaire White across a room scenario suggests that pronouns are more useful in a referential sense if they're used in a way that aligns with gender presentation (assuming a person's gender presentation falls neatly into male or female) than if they're used in a way that aligns with biological sex, in the case where those things differ. So if you're really just optimizing for referential usefulness when you're using "he" and "she", I don't think "biological sex" is where you're going to land. I think you're going to land closer to "gender", and even closer to "gender presentation". These things align for most people, so usually it doesn't matter, but in the cases where it matters I expect "biological sex" to be less referentially useful pretty often.
I also don't think the Blaire White scenario is unusual. I know a handful of trans people in person, and the same applies to them, i.e. if you were to point someone who looks like one of them out of a room and use a pronoun to help me know which person you're talking about, the pronoun that matches their gender identity would do a better job than the pronoun that matches their biological sex.
I also don't think it's just me, i.e. I don't think most people are much more prone to 'seeing' someone's true biological sex in this kind of scenario than I am.
> Doesn't that implicitly assume that there are only two gender expressions then?
Sort of. I think "that thing that you see and also expect me to see that makes you choose which of 'he' or 'she' you would use if you want to be referentially useful when pointing out a person across the room" doesn't quite capture what "gender presentation" is either. (Hence the hedge with "if anything" in my earlier comment.) I just think that thing lines up with "gender presentation" a lot better than it lines up with "biological sex" in the cases where those differ.
> It brings up the question of how one would be expected to recognize 'Moon Gender' at all.
Taking it seriously, in real life, for people with Moon Gender (or whatever outside-the-binary gender identity you want to substitute)? I don't think one is expected to just recognize it based on presentation. Hence, the practice of being explicit about preferred pronouns in circles that care about about this.
I think we should have defined what we think of as gender expression. I think it's stuff like affectations, hair styles, makeup, "gendered" clothing (dresses), etc.
Harry Styles wore a dress recently to much acclaim. He was lauded for expanding the male repertoire.
> I also don't think it's just me, i.e. I don't think most people are much more prone to 'seeing' someone's true biological sex in this kind of scenario than I am.
I saw a man, in a dress. And I think that's what everyone saw.
The difference between Harry and a transwoman is - intent, which is invisible. I only know Harry isn't trans because the article told me.
> I just think that thing lines up with "gender presentation" a lot better than it lines up with "biological sex" in the cases where those differ.
I would have agreed. Ten years ago nobody was going out of their way to queer everything. If a man wore a dress they either lost a bet or wanted to be seen as female. But now, in a world where nothing signifies sex, how can I read your gender expression?
But now a dress isn't part of gender expression anymore and is simply a garment. I guess we're expected to just move the bar and say that because Harry wasn't wearing a dress and lipstick he's a guy not a transwomen but that feels fleeting.
> I don't think one is expected to just recognize [Moon Gender] based on presentation. Hence, the practice of being explicit about preferred pronouns in circles that care about about this.
But that makes a mockery of the entire idea of gender expression. Now it's just people demanding special labels again.
The whole ideology is pushed as a unit and lives and dies as a unit. Either gender expression is a thing, and there are a finite but large set of them, and sex doesn't exist as a binary, and trans babies are real, etc, or it's not.
I sometimes try to have proper conversation, but these days try to make sure I'm not dealing with some form of alt-right bandwagon trolling by checking comment histories. Every single HexagonalKitten comment so far has been about how others get all upset about things, and, of course, 'immigration issues'.
It's not that I have an issue discussing these topics, but at some point I do feel I have to use some quick heuristics to weed out the trolls or 'culture wars' group-thinkers.
As far as group thinker goes, lol. I'm in the 5% side, against he 95% braying mob who dox and torment people all the time. This used to just be common sense, for instance that you can't medicate children to be the other sex, and now people insist that up is down. I'm saying what I said ten years ago, and barring an actual change in human biology, what I'll be saying in another ten years.
But since you brought up immigration issues, do you expect to see an alt-right person (such as you seem to believe I am) saying that race is not an issue? That immigration shouldn't be stopped? Where does that fit in your categorization? Could you describe what a moderate, liberal, Parisian view would be, such that you could judge mine against it?
It's good to know when you're conversing with people who prefer fires that don't shed light.
I am, and I like that. Like the example of hiring musicians after a blind listening. Kind of the whole schtick of that music show where the hosts spin around only after listening to the artist. fwiw, that's actually not considered progressive anymore because it amplifies the homogeneity of choice. Because of this or that factor, many cellists are one sex, or the QA department skews heavily towards one demographic. Without active HR grooming you don't get those SV pleasing diversity numbers where you have a numerical microcosm of the country. But yes, the idea of a meritocracy and blind hiring is always refreshing.
> To my eyes, in this thread, the person who is harping on pronouns the most, seems to be closest to having a mental breakdown over them, who can most accurately be described as "pronoun police", and who shows the greatest explicit tendency to control others' use of pronouns, is also the person who in the first place corrected an in-the-wild usage of singular "them" to "him".
Have you cared for groups of children? Like all bullies, SJWs try to make the victim appear the aggressor. As a current example, Letitia Wright got taken in by pseudo-science, but people attacked her (viciously!) for retweeting it even though she had been victimized by the "hoax". "You're pushing a message that KILLS PEOPLE! F you, cword", and so forth. Presumably if they found anyone taken in by Letitia's post they'd attack them too. Simply put, none of this is what you'd do to actually fix a problem, or if you actually cared about people.
In our case, look at how the person who used "them" responded to the criticism. They went straight to trying to ideological slander.
>> It seems like you dislike trans folk. I'm not sure what they did to hurt you, but I suspect your fears and hate are the result of conditioning.
Accusations of transphobia. That's not the kind of allyship that anyone needs. In fact, that's almost exactly how a troll who wanted to make people hate each other would act.
Yes, this is obviously a non-problem, but by their own rules, the OP assumed someone's pronouns. And when called on this they didn't respond reasonably but lashed out with essentially accusations of hate. If they intend to be helpful they should check themselves before they wreck their allies.
But I also think if you look past that and strip the junk away, there's a kernel of truth to it which is worth keeping.
Namely, the pushback against singular "they" here is grounded as pushback against some perceived nominally-pro-trans movement. (That's what "1% of the population" refers to, yeah?) A good chunk of the criticism presented is criticism of the kind of people who call for singular "they" and not actually criticism of singular "they". It's not just about the grammar, and probably wasn't in the first place, as evidenced by the fact that we're talking about trans people now somehow.
If you're willing to toss "SJW" and "bully" around, I think it's not out of line for me to scrunch up my nose and throw out a "reactionary" when I see that.
All I said was that we don't have to speak like we don't know that someone is a man or woman with a high degree of certainty, based on a name. Bending over backwards to neuter someone's pronoun on a 1% chance is silly.
I guess that makes me a grammatical nitpicker if you can only oversimplify it. And sure, attribute it however you like, but I don't speak in vagaries when something is specific and known. And it counters an accurate use of the English language, for some political purpose.
I'm against the dumbing down of discourse at the hands of people who are riding the latest bandwagon, and on other people's behalf no less.
Finally, about your example of obscuring during someone's hiring candidacy by calling him/her "they". That is ridiculous to the extreme. I guess that's what happens when you buy into the idea that your world is dominated by evil bias, and everyone around you is repeating that mantra.
As far as I can tell, the content of your first comment in this thread was
> The site is the work of a guy, "him", and "his" work. We don't have to guess and say "them" and "their" work.
This, to me, indicates that you want the previous person to say "him" and "his" where they said "them" and "their". Even in this post you're displaying a negative opinion about the use of singular "they", and expressing that you want others to stop using singular "they" this way. Am I wrong?
Like, if you referred to Dominique McLean with "he", and someone said to you "We know that person prefers they/them pronouns, we don't have to guess based on appearances and say 'he'," would you not characterize them as dictating that you have to use certain language?
> I don't speak in vagaries when something is specific and known.
I hope you do. (And I'm pretty sure you do.) Omitting information that is specific, known, and irrelevant is a basic part of communicating well. Not every failure to bring up something that is specific and known constitutes "dumbing down of discourse".
Rules for thee, and not me. That's bad enough, but when someone is speaking for an entire population and using language like hate and shame they aren't helping anyone.
As far as I can tell, the rules they're suggesting for singular "they" is that "they/them" can always refer to anybody in the singular, irrespective of their gender. (Maybe unless the person you're referring to indicates a preference otherwise.)
Like, maybe this is inconsistent with some set of standard SJW rules that you have in mind. But even if so, I don't see any reason in this conversation to assume that the person you're criticizing is attached to that standard set. (I also don't think there is a standard set at this point.)
I'm not Christian. I'm not religious. I'm not Republican. I'm not disliking trans people. I'm not afraid of any such issues. All wrong. Yet you were happy to assume all that?
What I don't like is people who take on for themselves the cloak of righteous moral positioning on behalf of others, and force others to conform to their thinking because they believe they're right. Or worse, believe they're better.
"They" is not singular. You know the person is a man. You want to neuter everyone's speech to fit your worldview for the benefit of a 1%.
Strong opinions do not equal anger. And not everything in the world should be solved by just "can't we all get along and let people do what they feel is good". Opinions and attitudes such as you're showing are deserving of objection and being opinionated in the opposite direction.
Why on Earth are you trying to dictate someone else's pronouns?
Language is hard, so I understand the need for compromise. “Zee” could be used to avoid gender centric labeling while maintaining language clarity.
Actual-historically, from 1375, not so much.
https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Usage
> They with a singular antecedent goes back to the Middle English of the 14th century... and has remained in common use for centuries...
What I said is correct. Prior to about 4-5 years ago you did not find people using they in the singular, hence "in common use".
It is grammatically plural, but it has been accepted for semantically singular use since long before the Victorian effort to impose Latin-inspired rules on English usage which failed to eradicate it despite intense effort. (Victorian prescriptivism did have some good effects — regularized spelling FTW — but trying to eradicate clear and useful usages like singular “they” was one of its less-well-considered, but fortunately also less-successful, efforts.)
Nothing in what you wrote contradicts what I stated. The man on the street thinks they is plural, and nearly all writing treats it that way. Historical examples excepted.