I swear to god /lit/, does anyone know why some academics use the feminine personal pronoun when referring to someone generally?
>Instead of "If one wanted to, they could eat a fat dick"
>They do "If one wanted to, she could eat a fat a dick"
Is it douchey liberalism? For fuck's sake we have gender neutral personal pronouns, use them. Why is this a trend?
because they are warriors fighting for social justice of course, you pig
>>7369653
>Why is this a trend?
Muh oppression, muh patriarchy. The same reason some black people think it's totally okay to be racist towards white people because of history.It's because they're retarded.
>>7369653
>we have gender neutral personal pronouns
we do?
Also I think it depends on which language you grew up with. There's a specific word for that, but it's language based, not universal. You're an idiot, seeing attacks against your dick where there isn't any. It's the same thing with boats and shit. In the uk and us, boats are always female- but not anywhere else.
>>7369653
Yes, it's done for brownie points. If you don't want to draw attention to gendering, then structure your sentence so you don't need a gendered personal pronoun, or say, "they." This makes a much stronger statement than using 50/50 gendered pronouns or exclusively using the feminine. They choose to use the feminine forms to draw attention to their rightthink.
>>7369653
Right?! Feminists are sinking their harpy claws into everything! First Fifa games and now the minds of our academics!
>>7369667
Yes, as in the example I explicitly gave using "they" instead of "she".
Eat a fat dick was a joke; I was going to write "eat ice cream" but it wasn't funny enough for me.
>>7369723
Nope, not being hyperbolic and tin foil hat, just wondering why the usage shifted from the masculine to the feminine where the pressure is to be more gender-equal. Wrapped up in typical 4chan foul-mouthery.
>>7369723
>overreacting this much to a basic observation
feminist detected
>>7369762
God, even when it's someone else playing him, DFW looks skeevy and weird. Why does he always look so fucking stanky?
>>7369761
"They" is grammatically wrong, unless you're one of those trans-people who use it is a singular pronoun.
>>7369653
This is the great problem with all this stuff. Speaking for myself, I don't give a shit about whether a pronoun is male or female or a character is trans/black/gay/whatnot. However, the inescapable knowledge that things were set that way in an attempt to be 'liberal' cheapens the gesture and makes me endemically roll my eyes at it. It's an unfortunate trap.
>in undergrad class
>told that we HAVE to alternate gender pronouns or prefer the feminine or we'll be marked down
I would say personal preference. In resource theories in physics the agent is usually referred to as she. I find it sounds better in this case.
In information theory there are many actors, but if there are 3 usually 2 are female, simply because she sounds so much nicer.
>>7369653
The word for "person" is feminine in my native language.
I usually use feminine pronouns to refer to an unspecified person, when writing in my native language.
Also, a lot of abstract concepts are feminine in romance languages which is like things like "justice" and "freedom" get represented by woman. They just sound feminine to us.
>>7369653
It's just a small detail. If it makes some people happy, why not.
Personally I don't give a shit, my language doesn't have gendered pronouns.
>>7369861
super jelly
>want to introduce a mysterious person. Have to use a grammatically incorrect and mealy mouthed "they" if I don't want to give away their gender.
angry face emoji
>>7369807
>shim
>zog
>nigz
>>7369653
>>7369755
>If one wanted to, they could eat a fat dick
>using "they" instead of "she".
But this is incorrect, "they" is a plural, neuter pronoun while "she" is the singular feminine pronoun.
"One" in the context of your example is singular, so it follows to use a singular pronoun. Either he or she. Unless you want to accept ze, xe, etc., but I'd guess you wouldn't be keen on the idea.
>>7369870
There's at least one book that actually does this until the very end, so the readers don't know the protagonist's gender.
A person I know was offered the task to translate it into Hebrew, but he surrendered immediately, since not only they have gendered pronouns, but also gendered verb conjugation etc. So it is basically impossible to translate to some languages.
>>7369870
>want to introduce a mysterious person. [...]
You can always just avoid using pronouns in this case.
>>7369894
It's only viewed as incorrect by old school grammar nazis. They is acceptable for both singular or plural, or like you said, using "one".
>>7369653
Because the first sentence is grammatically incorrect, and girls like girls. btw "they" is not a proper gender neutral singular pronoun.
>>7369992
maybe, but I'm a very aesthetic person and I think using they as a plural just sounds ham-fisted. With anything else, I can restructure the sentence to make it sound better, but I can't with they. It's a source of actual frustration for me.
>>7369992
It's viewed incorrect by anyone who understands grammar. "One" is singular--"they" is not.
>>7369992
>old school grammar nazis
I think the majority of people, even today, would find the "they" construction strange. At least I do.
One could easily say "One could eat a fat dick if so inclined" to avoid gendering the sentence one way or another.
>>7369992
>>7370045
>>7370046
>>7370054
From A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language
>>7370184
So fucking what.
"I think it sounds weird" is not an argument you can counteract with technicalities.
>>7370184
I suggest you guys consider studying English or gtfo muh /lit/
>>7370194
>muh /lit/
>>7369667
I think German ships are always referred to as female as well.
>>7370201
>>everyone here is American
I'm a dirty Slav. I just study English.
>>7370213
Yeah, but nouns have genders in German, so it's not really a ship thing, but I just looked it up (I'm actually German) and it turns out that they women or animal names, but they wouldn't refer to the ships themselves as "she". The word "ship" has a neutral gender.
>>7370241
Its 'die Bismarck' for example. Or 'die Köln'.
This has started to be used in STEM books too. It's fucking ridiculous to be reading a computer science book and see the "she" used in the context of an anecdotal explanation that uses a character.
It's just ... prolly 95% of the people who are reading this book are male. Why the fuck are you making me conscious of my gender like this?
>>7370280
To remove you from your ideological biases.
>>7370285
Fuck off. You're the cunts with ideological bias.
>>7370285
The main thing it's doing is making me think the author is saying silly nonsense.
...also, I'm plenty lefty gender aware. Plenty STEM people are conservative af tho - guarantee you this is won't get through to them (cause they're literally mildly autistic).
>>7370257
I don't think it's that tho. German is an all fucked up language when it comes to pronouns. Besides, neither of those names are Women. Köln is a city and Bismarck was a famous prussian statesmen in the late 1800s.
>>7370299
I know mein Freund, but both of those are well known WWII ships and you would say something like: Ich habe auf der Bismarck angeheuert.
>hurr durr 'they' is a SINGULAR pronoun
you lot sit at the very apex of all that is absolutly insufferable pedantry. worse even than the patience-testing pseuds who defend stupid shit like "don't end a clause with a proposition", because using 'they' as a gender-neutral singular pronoun is a genuinely useful linguistic innovation - if you refuse to use it as such, you're turning your back on an obviously useful grammatical device for no obvious reason. it's in popular use. it can only get more popular. get used to it.
>>7370289
amen desu
>be me
>STEM guy who is artistically minded and actually aware of social issues
>look around at my peers
>cry
>>7370331
Many other languages don't have a gender-neutral singular pronoun.
>>7370338
Just remember: those people will be your coworkers.
Want a promotion? Want a new job? THOSE are the people you're gonna need to impress. Part of it is being good, but that's only part of the picture; the rest basically boils down to fitting in with those peopletters such that they find you likable.
>>7370194
Language is alive, suck it linguistic prescriptivists
>>7370351
The worst thing is their sense of humour. It's abysmal. Truly. I feel like I'm living in some low-budget remake of The Big Bang Theory every time I step into the lab. Why do scientists have to be so lame?
>>7369773
No it isn't. Singular "they" has been used for centuries. Chaucer and Shakespeare used it. Don't give me that Strunk and White pleb shit (their book is strictly for hack writers).
Wait'll the patriarchy gets a load of this...
>refers to student reading book as female
consider yourself smashed 8^)
>>7369807
>ignore rules
>lose marginal points
Who gives a fuck. A few points won't matter, since your whole fucking grade barely matters. Also stop taking garbage classes at keked schools.
>>7370370
+1 Strunk and White created a bogeyman and really tricked a lot of people into believing this sort of shit. Did more harm than good imo.
>>7369653
I like the dehumanizing "it" as a replacement for pronouns. "Sally could run away if its legs weren't broken" nice rite
>>7369653
The singular "they" still isn't accepted (which, imo, is long overdue), so they're forced into using a singular pronoun. "He" is archaic, "he/she" is awkward, and "s/he" is ugly. Sometimes they'll choose to alternate between he/she, but sometimes they'll just go for "she", as a sort of offset to the historic popularity of "he". Almost everything pre-~1980--and even a lot of the stuff after that--just uses the singular "he", so there's a movement to make the new stuff use "he" so that new readers are exposed to more of a balance of he/she.
The "she" thing should be seen so offensively, it's just an attempt to give women equal representation, it's not like the writers are actually excluding men from the equation like how pre-~1980 writers excluded women.
>>7370409
It doesn't help women in any meaningful sense, its slacktivism and an annoyance
In OP's example the appropriate word is neither "he" nor "she" nor "they," but "one."
"If one wanted to, one could eat a fat dick."
Non native English speaker here. I used to think she was the standard so I used it extensively before the 'they' PC wave struck. For that matter, when I studied English this they thing wasn't taught -- the fact that Shakespeare used it alone wouldn't mean it's been in continued use since whenever.
Your language sucks for this matter BTW. In any decent fucking language, you'd have a DECENT (no they doesn't count) neutral pronoun, such as German's man, or you'd be able to omit it as in Spanish.
>>7372137
>your language sucks
Lol the most popular language on the planet sucks? Enjoy your third world poverty language then and don't try to learn ours and butcher it with your sucky accent.
>>7372145
Enjoy being offended on a hair trigger, you insecure fuckhead.
>>7372145
it isn't the most popular language because it's good, you know. i prefer german over english any day
>>7370045
>I'm a very aesthetic person
(same problem here, though. "they" jusy doesn't always fit)
who else uses male pronouns and doesnt give a fuck
I go full dinosaur when I write my essays
(a nonsense passage I have made up as an example):
"The reader may object, but he may not imagine that Mr. Poète cares; for the poet is a man of vigour and devotion, and his mistress is life; he disdains the objection of the common man, he will suffer any worldly pangs for his love."
People use it because nobody's got time to be targeted by SJW's for no goddamn reason, the ridiculousness of which has become an in-joke in some scholarly communities. It's just a modified version Pascal's wager.
Because Australians saying "she'll be alright" is the best thing and should be expanded to other formulations.
