nonbinary gender pronouns

Discussing the two twins in conversation is now virtually impossible.
― Οὖτις, Friday, September 13, 2019 8:26 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflagli

can you not use their names

I was reading an "about the author" sort of thing in a book last week, and I kept seeing sentences like "they live with their dog and cat" and it took me forever to realize it was one person and I didn't miss some important piece of domestic information.

xp don't be dense, twins have the same name, that's what makes them twins

can you not use their names

lol I can't even tell them apart, much less remember their names

That being said, on a grammatical level the they/them construction drives me nuts.

no one gives a shit shakey. they/them has been in use as an indefinite pronoun f o r e v e r

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/06/744121321/even-a-grammar-geezer-like-me-can-get-used-to-gender-neutral-pronouns

like as someone who goes by they/them and is a writer, it's not particularly torturous

Earliest citation for singular 'they' is 1375 - https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/200700

Honestly, it really isn't that clumsy and confusing. They is an actual existing pronoun, for one (as opposed to Zhe or Shiz or some of the alternatives). In plenty of other languages (that are common languages) there is a non-masc/non-femme 3rd person singular.

And dude, think about the four decades you have spent talking about people/referring to them, and what I will call the "Chris problem" ... (younger generations might not have this, but I feel like Gen X America, the Chris problem is pretty standard) -- growing up, in your 20s and 30s, how many people did you associate with named Chris? Many. There were always multiple Chris-es. There would often be at least one female Chris, but even assuming all the Chris-es were dudes. How did you verbally distinguish one Chris from another? You did so, right? You came up with ways to refer to the numerous Chris-es in your life without much confusion? ... If you can do that, then you can deal with your they-twin and cis-twin convos.

hm NPR article makes a fair point

xps

Don't understand the controversy as I feel I've always used it in this way - but grew up in a hippy commune so maybe my experience wasn't usual.

obviously each person gets to choose their preferred pronouns but i'm puzzled when people complain about the grammar of "they/them" which feels like a longstanding uncontroversial usage in spoken English including for cis people unless i'm missing something

sorry realise CaAL has just made the same point, was skimming a bit

lol @ "Chris Problem". I suspect for prior generations it might have been the "Jean/Gene Problem"

xp

Is this the reason for the thread? https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a29037895/sam-smith-changes-pronouns/

I have no idea who that is, so no

lol wrongfooted an editor

Smith explained how the decision to change their pronouns are the culmination of their path towards self-acceptance.

I myself enjoy the “challenge”, such as it is

I like using words like themself and theyself, gender neutrality is both serious and fun

otm i was about to say I have used they/them my entire life because I like to be evasive and play coy.

the thing with the twins just ties my head in knots because if you say "they/them" you could be referring to both of them or one of them, and without being able to tell them apart/keep their names straight ... eh I just won't say anything

"You! You ... two!"

xp - as long as you don't refer to them as Thing 1 and Thing 2?

I’ve understood and used “singular they” since I was a very small child, without knowing anything about nonbinary gender - feel like ppl who say it’s confusing are either lying or thick

It is IMO a giant nontroversy

it's def a nontroversy, just an odd language thing. my mind unconsciously/automatically goes to they/them as plural (guess I'm thick, sorry), although obviously as pointed out there's a long history of singular usage in the language.

using the pronouns people tell you are their correct pronouns is p. basic common decency and respect, etc. seems like a noncontroversial no-brainer to me at this point. maybe if you'd asked me in high school or something, i'd have been uptight about grammar and "words mean things, man!" but i feel like that whole line of thinking has been debunked in so many other capacities anyway.

anyway i'm not sure i even understand the challenge ostensibly posed by the twin case. what's an example of a sentence where (1) it's essential that you use a pronoun and not the person's name, (2) you're speaking about them in the third person, (3) it's not immediately clear from context that you're talking about a single person and not the pair of twins?

well, with my kids the sentence "I told them to put their pants back on" could very easily be singular or plural

I kinda get what Shakey is trying to figure out -- the plural/singular confusion -- like I am in a volunteer group with two people who are roommates, one is a woman and one is non-binary, and one of the group's projects involves the house where these two people live. I have to think about phrasing in a way that I wouldn't if "they" obviously referred to both roommates, as opposed to just the singular non-binary roommate.

Yeah we use singular they/them all the time in life when we dont know the gender,extending it to be also used when we know the person doesnt identify as male or female doesnt seem a lot.

My issue is being a dumbass and using feminine pronouns when referring to the assigned female at birth mon binary people I know which I thankfully dont do very often and they (plural) haven't been too upset about

And I will either use both their names, or "they and female person's name" or "they and she" or "she and they" or "they plural"

here's an example:
my daughter discussing the twins at her school and it not being clear if she was referring to one or both of them when saying that they were upset about something

xp

When we use "you" when addressing two people it is uncertain as to whether we are talking to one or both

the assigned female at birth mon binary people I know which I thankfully dont do very often and they (plural) haven't been too upset about

heh, my non-binary fellow group member was FAAB and gets pissed when they are mis-gendered as "she"

my daughter discussing the twins at her school and it not being clear if she was referring to one or both of them when saying that they were upset about something

You couldn't just ask her "who was upset? was it nb twin or both of them?"

well yeah there's where the conversation went

so? I mean, that's normal? Imagine if she had three friends named Chris, and said, "The Chris-es were mad" ... you might want to know if it was all three or just two of them or ...?

so...

Agree "they" has long been an acceptable gender-neutral pronoun, but there are still situations in which it is ambiguous or confusing (and in which it wouldn't likely previously have been used as a singular). E.g. I was recently with friends who have a non-binary teen and there were a lot of times when I couldn't tell whether the parents were discussing the teen or the teen plus one or more other people (e.g. a friend). A relatively harmless but mildly confusing example: after the parents picked me up at the train I heard them say "They asked us to pick up food for them on the way home." I wrongfully assumed they were referring to the teen having a friend or friends over. I mostly just use the teen's name though and it's basically all good.

When we use "you" when addressing two people it is uncertain as to whether we are talking to one or both

This is why English has words like "youse" and "y'all" (though "y'all" can be singular, thus creating the need for "all y'all").

guys i think we sorted it out!

yes we should all just speak scouse

Which is why we have 'youse' in Scotland, eh Jim?

guys

was this really necessary

(though "y'all" can be singular, thus creating the need for "all y'all").

haha yeah ... all y'all being another good usage to avoid the dudes/guys problem where previously it had been "acceptable" to use in a gender neutral way, but now it's not

this is how I break it down to an extent - trans and non-binary people are some of the most marginalised people in our societies. any accommodation we can make to make their lives easier, however small, should be investigated and employed, notwithstanding the edge cases which may make our lives marginally more ‘difficult’

yeah I agree w that

again I'm not making out like this is a huge problem or unbearable burden, I just a) didn't understand/hadn't thought about why they/them was the most common usage (this was quickly answered in this thread - thx all!) and b) like to puzzle out grammar/language stuff and this came up recently

“I'm intrigued by the pronoun they came up with ("hen" as opposed to "han" or "hon")” doesn’t this make hen faps confusing?

I am pretty good about pronouns and they/them these days, but it is proving very difficult to break myself of "guys". It's really in there as my go-to plural when addressing a group (of any gender).

xp

Oh no, for sure, it's not a hard-and-fast rule but it's usually my fall-back when I'm having to guess a gender on the fly in conversation and the noun itself doesn't end in a decisively gendered way

There's a case to be made that guitars are more abstract than pianos, actually.

best thought of as being related to word ending than to anything else it seems

Fwiw I know it seems odd when your mother tongue is English but it's best not to think about this stuff at all when learning a 'gendered' language. 99.9% of the time it scans as neutral to native speakers, just like in English. Which isn't to say that it can't and doesn't get political in some cases, but when it comes to objects and ideas, 'gender' is all over the place, really – to such an extent that it probably shouldn't be called gender at all (although it is true that 'isme', 'ion' and other such suffixes often give you a clue as to whether said word is masculine or feminine in French).

It's mostly the way we talk about human beings that matters (cue Heidegger arguing that 'Mädchen' aka 'young girl' or 'maiden' is grammatically neutral in German because she isn't a fully-fledged human yet), and that's where pushback becomes une nécessité. In 19th century France, 'madame le maire' meant the mayor's wife; then the female mayor; now 'la' maire is quite common and 'mairesse' is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged in Quebec. This incidentally reminds me of an exchange I had with LL a while back: she balked at my use of the term 'poetess' in English, whereas in French quite a few (although not all) women poets would insist on being described as such (and tbf this is also the case in certain English-speaking feminist circles). Conversely, I'm still uncomfortable with the widespread use of 'female' in English because it just sounds… zoological?

Anyhow, this is all too simplistic, no doubt, but I think it's best to focus on how we describe each other regardless of language, in which case I'd like to add that French (to say nothing of Romanian) is indeed fucking terrible at expressing the experiences of nonbinary people, and at some point it will have to evolve.

My favourite is "sénatrice" as in news stories about "Sénateur Bernie Sanders et Sénatrice Elizabeth Warren".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pronouns🕸

The same thing holds for second-person pronouns as well.

just want to insert this: taiwanese singer jolin tsai did a massively popular pro-trans/genderqueer song last year, which contains this lyric:

你是你或者妳，都行

which translates beautifully to:

“you‘re you (male) or you (female), both are okay”

so, using these specific second-person gendered pronouns (which are common in taiwan) to make a point which sounds nongendered but has a pretty clear meaning.

why is listing multiple pronouns the norm

like, is anyone she/him or they/her

is anyone she/him

zooey deschanel and m. ward

some people do want to indicate that they can be called both gendered and neutral pronouns, I don't think anyone's pronominal gender varies based on part of speech. listing two or more declensions is useful if you use neopronouns

i deserved that xp

like, is anyone she/him or they/her

― mookieproof

i've seen the latter, yes

zooey d and m ward more like shee/it amirite

all my friends are they/she's

'call me anything except 'he''

Japanese has a wonderful array of gendered and no gendered pronouns which can be used in all kinds of ways to indicate gender, position relative to others in the conversation, mood and other things.

In the first person you have the masculine and slightly thuggish 「俺、Ore」、「僕、boku」which is used casually by men and boys and has been a somewhat tomboyish signifier for girls but I hear more and more young women using it. 「私、watashi」is pretty neutral but also not often used in spite of the fact it is the one generally taught to foreigners learning the language.

https://people.umass.edu/partee/MGU_2009/papers/Ponamareva.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/opinion/sunday/pronouns-quakers.html

The Quakers thus declared themselves to be, like God, “no respecter of persons.” So they thee-ed and thou-ed their fellow human beings without distinction as a form of egalitarian social protest. And like today’s proponents of gender-inclusive pronouns, they faced ridicule and persecution as a result.

But there is also an important difference between the Quakers and today’s pronoun protesters. While modern activists argue that equality demands displays of equal respect toward others, the Quakers demonstrated conscientious disrespect toward everyone. Theirs was an equality of extreme humility and universally low status. Even the famously tolerant founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, couldn’t stand the Quakers and complained of the “familiarity, anger, scorn and contempt” inherent in their use of “thee” and “thou.”

zooey d and m ward more like shee/it amirite
― Famous Anus (rip van wanko)

there should be a godwin's law analogue: anyone criticizing the use of singular "they" will reflexively use singular "they" somewhere in their comment. it's uncanny how often it works

are there gender neutral terms for mother/father brother/sister aunt/uncle other than 'parent' 'sibling'?

I like parent, sibling, nibling. I call my two gn siblings "my sibs" with a certain amount of enthusiasm.

what's a nibling? personal pronouns are important because everyone needs to use them; i don't really see words for familial relations in the same need category at all. they show a relationship. if you want to sever your relationship, that's up to you. one cannot sever one's pronominal relationship to oneself.

LL, many relationship-showing words are inherently gendered, e.g. niece, nephew, aunt, uncle. There is no standard non-gendered equivalent for these words, so it's impossible to reflect a relationship without gendering a person who is simply not of that gender.

"Nibling" is an ungendered niece/nephew child-of-siblings word.

Have heard a few for siblings-of-parent but don't much like any of them. Any other suggestions?

the siblings of your parents are your 0th cousins once removed. (your siblings are your 0th cousins.)

oooooh duh
i forgot about that bc i don't have siblings and my aunts/uncles are not a part of my life bc we haven't spoken in years

silly mistake
nevermind! sorry

your siblings are your 0th cousins

whoa

they's all kin

Huh, I didn't know the current usage of 'sibling' was so recent.

1903, modern revival of Old English sibling (“relative, a relation, kinsman”), equivalent to sib +‎ -ling. Compare Middle English sib, sibbe (“relative; kinsman”), German Sippe. The term apparently meant merely kin or relative until the 20th century when its necessity for the study of genetics led to its specialized use. For example, the OED has a 1903 citation in which "sibling" must be defined for those who don't know the intended meaning.

The word 'sib' or 'sibling' is coming into use in genetics in the English-speaking world, as an equivalent of the convenient German term 'Geschwister' [E.&C. Paul, "Human Heredity," 1930]

Iceland came up with an official patronym for nonbinary folks this year (-bur):

https://www.icelandreview.com/news/icelandic-names-will-no-longer-be-gendered/

so parents still have to petition to give a girl a "boy" name and vice versa unless they identify the child as gender-neutral? weird progressive/regressive juxtaposition there.

No, all first names are available to everyone now irrespective of gender "claimed" on birth certificate, but your choice on your birth certificate determines the suffix you must use for your surname (-son, -dottir, or -bur).

"Nibling" is an ungendered niece/nephew child-of-siblings word.

I feel like it's a significant enough thing to have a non-gendered term for, but Nibling makes me think of gifs of cute rodents eating carrots, or cute rodents eating carrots in Viking helmets singing Wagner

Family words are so confusing for me — tbh I wish we could all just go by our first names instead of foregrounding the family relation. Pronouns are necessary syntactically but to constantly refer to someone as their familial relation is different and not syntactically necessary.

https://twt-thumbs.washtimes.com/media/image/2018/10/12/election_2018_utah_senate_fact_check_24824_c0-233-5568-3479_s885x516.jpg?9568f5f5f6044ba51ec7d024630fbd9c34c30ce5

well said, friend

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/05/teens-argentina-are-leading-charge-gender-neutral-language/

In Spanish, a language in which all nouns are assigned a gender, the word for soldiers is masculine: “Los soldados de Perón.”

The lyrics Mira sang were different: “Les soldades.”

To most Spanish speakers, the “e” in both words would sound jarring — and grammatically incorrect.

But here, teenagers are rewriting the rules of the language to eliminate gender. In classrooms and daily conversations, young people are changing the way they speak and write — replacing the masculine “o” or the feminine “a” with the gender-neutral “e” in certain words — in order to change what they see as a deeply gendered culture.

this whole entry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Universal_Friend

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n13/amia-srinivasan/he-she-one-they-ho-hus-hum-ita

Ethics requires that we embrace a practice of naming that makes people’s passage through the world more bearable. But ethics is not exhausted by such a practice. A true ethical relation requires that we see the other, just as we see ourselves, as ultimately beyond names and categories: not because (as liberals like to say) we are ‘all human’ or ‘all persons’, but because each of us exists, finally, beyond the reach of mere words. We all know this instinctively in our own case: that feeling of exceeding, bursting beyond, all the words that can be truly applied to us. What does it take for us recognise that this is true, too, of everyone else: of him and her, of them, of you?

Reading this now..

is this ... meta-woke?

It's a very good essay on language and politics and better than Sharkey's concern trolling.

I was just kidding, it seemed like an overreach to start with pronouns and blast through to “why is language dealing with the ineffable anyway?” Spose I’d better read it now.