How does /lgbt/ fell about "they" as a personal pronoun?
If you're a proponent, do you know anyone who uses them? Is it you? How much do you know about the reasoning behind it? What are your own personal reasons?
It you're an opponent, why? I know there's lots of push back and it has to do with hatred of transtrenders -- but isn't it possible someone has dysphoria with some aspects of their gender and not others?
Discuss.
>>5895964
I think it's dumb, mostly because it doesn't even exist in my language. All pronouns are gendered, and there aren't even gender neutral words. Like, "chair" is a femenine word, "floor" is a masculine word, to give an example
English isn't my first language but it feels "natural" to me, probably because I read a lot of academic stuff. Also it reminds me of German which uses Sie (they) as a polite form of Du (you), so it's not as artificial as it may look to some people.
>>5895964
I use "they" as a singular pronoun in writing when I don't know the gender of the person who it's going to refer to or want to leave it obviously ambiguous. My English teachers in high school hated me for it.
I guess I do it in speech too.
That being said, if I know who it's referring to I need to pick one. I don't care which one it is, but he or she it. Pronouns are a cultural thing because language is a cultural thing. You can't just add pronouns and "they" doesn't really work for me when I know who it is.
It makes me think "no, fuck you, which one do you want me to use?" Maybe if I honestly knew someone personally who did that I would get over this.
The really crazy shit is when they make up shit like ze/xe/bunself. You need to get slapped at that point. Language doesn't work that way.
Like >>5895980 said, making up new gender categories doesn't work in other languages. Do you want special demonstrative pronouns now too? Special conjugations and declensions? No.
>>5895986
>Form of they used for polite you
Interesting.
In older dialects of English, "he" was used when gender was ambiguous, unknown, or irrelevant in the situation.
I personally prefer this system (if we must keep "she" as a pronoun). That way there's a dichotomy:
>Is the subject definitively female?
>Yes = She
>No = He
>>5895964
They is fine, but some monstrosities in my mother tongue (french) or in German that I hate
They use majuscules to emphasis on the feminine mark, for exemple, lehrer (teacher), leherin (female teacher), so they use (lehrerIN, which means males and females teachers)
>>5896003
>être declenché-e par le féminisme grammatical
srsmt
how about no pronouns?
>>5896007
Pardonnez-leur car illes ne savent pas qu'illes font
Que cellelui qui n'a jamais fauté-e lui jette la première pierre
I've got my trans friends using "they" for me right now, feels pretty okay. Slips pretty naturally into conversation.
I draw the line at neo-pronouns -- you can't reasonably expect every new person you meet to modify their lexicon for you -- but "they" has wide enough usage that it mostly goes unnoticed.
>tfw you're maybe nonbinary scum
>>5895964
Proponent, knew several that have used it, now just two.
They were/are various shades of non-binary, questioning, and fluid, and preferred something people were already used to (they) instead of he/she or all the new pronouns.
I use singular "they" gladly, because it's easy and makes these people feel more at ease.
>>5896011
That would make spelling/talking really tedious.
>Saw Mark today. Mark said Mark was going to the store to buy duct tape. Mark needed the duct tape to fix something at Mark's house. Then Mark said goodbye.
>>5895988
Your high school teachers are fucking illiterate, then, because they definitely don't know English better than Chaucer and Shakespeare, who both used singular "they" to be ambiguous about gender.
>>5896001
But anon that implies male is the default gender. Sexist desu.
One pronoun for all like you say, or three of which one is neutral.
>>5896125
Grammatical and actual gender are differents
A car is not female in french
Meh. It is not dehumanizing like 'it' and isn't awkward. It is a bit triggering because they is supposed to be plural, but words change meaning.
>>5896001
Older is the key. Nowadays, "they" is considered proper pronoun when the gender of the person is unknown.
>>5896101
I know. I found out that I apparently picked that up somewhere and that singular they was definitely a thing years later.
They were very stuck in their ways. One old teacher even insisted neither "african american" nor "black" was the proper term to refer to someone who was black, it was "negro". Needless to say, everyone in the class was too shocked to argue with her.
>>5896130
But language flavors how we think, no?
>>5896280
The influence is very minimal, and mainly due to other factors than simple words.
If you're sexist, you'll have a sexist mindest, even if the words to be sexist didn't really existed. Case in point with the racist appropriation of "cuck".
>>5896081
It'd be clear as fuck though.
>>5895964
You don't get to pick your own pronouns, people do that for you.
>>5896421
Nah, it would cause dyslexia and many people would either drop the names all together or invent diminutives, or refer to them by small words about what they are.
Every language with pronouns have single-syllabe pronouns. Latin don't have pronouns for everything (I think) but uses a very complex set of cases.
>>5895964
I don't mind it, and would use it for people if they ask me to. Don't know anyone who uses it, though - I don't live in an English-speaking country.
>>5895964
gender identity is a joke and expecting all of society to cater to how you personally feel that day is absurd
males and females are objectively different and he/she functions as a way to identify who you're talking about
"they" is vague and is only useful to spare people's precious little feelings, which I don't care about. grow up and pick a pronoun to use, you're not so special in the head that you need a different word used to refer to you
>>5896728
I ask close friends to use they/them pronouns for me. I don't ask the entirety of society to do the same because I'm not out to the entire society. I know I'm still medically one gender. I know doctors and strangers are going to address be based on whats in my pants. I just ask that people who know me call me "they" because, well, they know me.
>>5895980
Same here. Using 'they' may make sense in English, but not in my language, because we have a masculine 'they' and a feminine 'they'
I have a few nonbinary friends who use they. I'm mtf and when I met them a year ago I still had the mindset that gender was binary and the only non-cis people were mtfs and ftms, but I still used their preferred pronouns and didn't make a big deal of it because they were my friends and I'm respectful. I actually acclimated to it really quickly and the more I thought about it and spent time with them the clearer it became to me that there's some kind of spectrum and some people exist who don't fall evenly into one end or the other. I've never met a nonbinary person who asked me to use a pronoun I hadn't heard of before, but I wouldn't hesitate because it's no skin off my nose and it would improve their life a little bit. I can't see any adult reason not to do something like that for someone.
Pic unrelated just cool
>>5896821
Oh also, I've always guessed that one of the reasons English speakers feel awkward about using a singular they is that they need to conjugate verbs differently for it than for he/she; i.e. "he/she goes" vs "they go". I'm pretty sure it's the same with most European languages, but I grew up speaking Norwegian, which tends to use the same ending for verbs regardless of the subject pronoun, i.e. "han/hun går" vs "de går" (translations of previous examples). That's probably partially why it doesn't bother me as much
*when I'm speaking Norwegian I use hen now instead of de for this purpose; hen is the gender neutral analog to he/she that Swedish recently acquired and it's easy to transplant into Norwegian
>>5896442
i second that
>>5896001
Holy shit I thought I was the only one.
I use it if I'm not sure of a person's gender. If I need to talk to them at length or want to get to know them I ask. I know trans people and they all prefer he/she based on their identity. They seems impersonal, although I don't know any people who prefer it.
Xe is so horrid and foreign that I couldn't imagine anyone preferring it. It's purposefully dehumanizing and offputting
>>5895964
>If you're a proponent, do you know anyone who uses them?
Yes a couple people
>Is it you?
Nope
>How much do you know about the reasoning behind it?
It seems like some people just aren't comfortable with or feel like they fit into either female or male social expectations or whatever and identifying as neither makes them feel more comfortable.
>What are your own personal reasons?
I honestly just don't care, it's not that hard to say they instead of he or she, anyone who says otherwise it's really just saying "I'm too lazy to care about your personal comfort." If something doesn't affect me at all and makes someone else happy then I say why not just do it. There are way too many people who just want to rain on other people's parades for no reason other than the fact that they're miserable people
>>5896844
Fellow Norwegian here. I could essentially have written both posts myself. I don't read the nonbinary people as anything else anymore.
My support group has one "de/dem" and one "hen" in it. I think "de/dem" sounds better, but since that set of pronouns has- and used to have other uses, importing "hen" is probably the more pragmatic solution.
>>5896001
And there are even OLDER examples of folks using singular they. Is Shakespeare old enough for you?
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.html
"wahhh, cater to my feelings": the thread
newsflash, nobody cares about your self identification, stop forcing people to care by imposing your new conventions onto everyone
>>5896773
It doesn't make sense in English either.
They is plural.
"They is over there"
"How is they"
"It's they birthday"
"What is they doing"
Sounds like a nigger talking. Maybe that's how they came up with it, gotta be inclusive of the black folk.
>>5895986
No one asked you kraut. Shouldn't you be prepping Ahmed right now?
>>5897309
>ebin meme about invaded yurop
>>5897305
Idiot, you would keep the conjugaison, don't make you look more stupid than you are
"The stranger is here. They talked to me about you."
>>5897305
> doesn't make sense in English either.
>They is plural.
So it follows the same conjugation as "you"
>"They is over there"
You/they are
>"How is they"
How are you/they
>"It's they birthday"
THEIR
>"What is they doing"
What are you/they
Learn they/their/theirs, idiot. Follows the same rules as you/your/yours.
>>5897374
Singular they has existed in English for centuries. Or do you still use 'thee' and 'thou'?
>grammatically incorrect
Get out
>>5897410
How dense are you?
I never said singular words have not existed, I said "they" is not a singular word.
>>5897420
Singular they, you illiterate fuck, has been around since the 14th century.
>>5897420
Also, keep scrolling.
>>5897121
>>5896139
While I understand that singular they exists, and I use it often in speech, I'm still unsure if it grammatically correct to use it for a defined person.
E.g. "I said hello to my agendered friend JaneJohn. They said hello back." "I know JaneJohn; they're a great xyz"
Since JaneJohn is a defined person, it just seems very clunky in context to have "they" tied to a set individual. A third pronoun (or just abolition of "she" entirely) would work best.
>>5897374
You don't get to rule over the English language dude
Singular they exist, just like singular "Sie" in german, or singular "vous" in french, or singular "вы" in Russian
It is documented and not grammatically correct, and it's definitively less weird than "em called" or "xir is called JaneJohn"
>>5895964
Honestly I don't get this whole "pronoun" nonsense.
If you identify as guy you're a "he" if you identify as girl you're a "she" why do people want to make it so complicated?
>>5897612
because some people identify as both and some of us don't identify as either of them.
>>5897622
Also the issue on how to address of group of people/a person whom you don't know the gender of.
>>5897606
How about we toss all that pronoun trash in the garbage and realism that you are either a he or she?
How about if you don't pick one of those two options, I am just going to call you whichever sex I think you look like?
>>5897622
You mean the special snowflake retards?
Fuck off back to Tumblr. You're male or female, period.
>>5897667
I'm not a nb myself, I just think "they" is the nicest alternative, it also work when you're talking about an unknown person.
>>5897667
But what if you change your appearance so that people genuinely can't tell, and that's how you're comfortable, and you get weird looks in either bathroom?
>>5897696
Then I will just guess. If I'm wrong, politely correct it and I will switch what I say.
If you're the type to demand some other pronoun than he or she, you you get super pissy and sperg out that I got it wrong, I do not want to be talking to you anyway.
>>5897764
personally i only correct people i want to befriend and professors
they guess and i correct them if there needs to be consistency, otherwise i don't care to because at this point it causes unnecessary friction
>>5895964
SJW Bullshit.
>>5895986
I always considered "sie" as in "haben ie" to be kind of like two distinct words in those contexts.
but german is my second language oh well
I support everyone's identities, but i do confess it confuses me when someone says they are nonbinary and gay
what does that mean? do you only like other nonbinary people? bc 'gay' means same gender attraction
>>5897674
This. Better "they" than the meme pronouns.
