Gender neutral pronouns

[jack]

I'm sure you all know the history of Gender neutral pronouns. And most think the question is mostly settled, although not agree in favour of what :)

However, it occurs to me some reluctance might come from the fact that although I have a little voice in my head saying "Women and men are the same. Gender neutral is good" I have a great big klaxon blaring "ALL INFORMATION IS GOOD! LEARN THINGS! BE INFORMED! COMMUNICATE FULLY! INF. ORM. ATION. GOOD." :)

That is, apart from not being aesthetically fond of most of the choices of gender-neutral pronouns, I'm not fond that that word choice is deliberately less informative. If you're talking about a genuinely neutral (eg. hypothetical) or ambiguous person, or you don't know, there's no information lost, but I still only use the pronouns where I have good reason.

But today a friend made another reference to the concept of "Geek as gender" and something occurred to me so obvious I couldn't believe it hadn't before.

What if we had two or more pronouns that drew *different* demarcations? We already have special pronouns for royalty and gods. ("Her Royal Highness's" etc and "His" etc).

You could adopt the archaic second-person model and have "te" (pronounced with a long e), "tis" and "ter" and "ve", "vis" and "ver" for intimate acquaintances and others. Or for social acquiantances and work acquaintances.

Or have different pronouns for different groups people can adopt as whatever they feel like identifying as in a certain concept. (Of course, you shouldn't identify solely as one thing, but most people are happy to identify as one thing but others as well.) Perhaps two sets would be most common ("he" and "she" or some other division), but that someone would borrow the Sindarin or Quenya pronouns from Tolkien and use them when affectionately referring to people from the Tolkien society.

Of course, now we near the Chinese problem of having too many, and having to decide when meeting someone whether to use the very formal or the extremely formal version of their pronoun.

But on the other hand, it seems more positive, as choosing to use such a pronoun doesn't sound like "my gender isn't important to me" but "this other aspect of our acquaintance is more important". And if you have a good reason to use other pronouns, it's not so jarring when someone does.

I'm afraid I haven't thought this out in detail, but I thought it was a lovely idea.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I keep saying we should bring back the dual. And of course thou as singular/familiar you could come back into modern usage at the same time. I propose:

Subject   Singular         Dual      Plural
1st       I                *wit      we
2nd       (thou)           *yit      you (ye)
3rd       he/she/it                  they

Object    Singular         Dual      Plural
1st       me               *uns      us
2nd       (thee)           *ins      you
3rd       him/her/it                 them

where () = currently archaic but that shouldn't stop anyone and * = currently doesn't exist at all and nor should that. The "s" at the end of *uns and *ins would be the same sound as at the end of "us", i.e. not a z sound.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Furthermore:

Subject   Singular         Dual      Plural
1st       my               *unser    our
2nd       (thy)            *inser    your
3rd       his/her/its                their

Object    Singular         Dual      Plural
1st       mine             *unsers   ours
2nd       (thine)          *insers   yours
3rd       his/hers/its               theirs

i.e. not a z sound

[ewx.livejournal.com]

...although obviously if it takes off and goes the other way I'd have no choice but to defer to common usage.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I keep saying we should bring back the dual.

Seconded!

(Whoops, do you see what my subconscious did there?)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Although I've a feeling there's less use for distinctions in "you" even if they're traditional. I'm not sure why, maybe:

* It doesn't help the gender pronoun thing
* The person you're talking to *knows* how well they know you :)

[gerald_duck]

"Ye" isn't used for the subject; it's the vocative. Compare "you are people" with "ye holy angels bright". "Ye are people" and "you holy angels bright" are both, strictly speaking, incorrect.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Myself, I obscure my gender because it matters to me that that information not matter in how I am perceived, except to medical professionals interacting with me in their professional capacity, and to some of my partners [ not all of them; I have had it said to me in so many words that my gender is entirely immaterial to how someone came to be attracted to me. ]

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought of you as soon as I wrote this post. (And think it really interesting.) But I'm not sure if that makes you like this idea more or less (or if it matters).

[pm215]

It's already fairly common to hear people using "myself, yourself" as formal/polite versions of "me, you"...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course. That's interesitng. I hadn't thoguht further than "they're wrong", but that is a new (potentially useful) usage.

[d37373.livejournal.com]

Information is good. Gender-neutral terms convey information, and as such should be encouraged &em; if everyone used the terms properly, there's more information carried (3 choices rather than 2).

I do like the idea of using an orthogonal set, as long as I can have the full grid of possibilities without thinking too hard. Or were you looking for a replacement?

Also, the most useful axis I can come up with runs from intimate to official, passing polite and respectful along the way. Age is another potential discriminator, but I think less useful and so it can probably be left as an attribute.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

if everyone used the terms properly, there's more information carried (3 choices rather than 2)

What do you think is properly? I realised I confused a few different things when I was writing the post.

* Some way to refer to hypothetical people without the baggage of "generic he"
* Some way to refer to specific people whose gender we don't know or is unassigned
* Lots of people think it would be good if gender-neutral pronouns were used more widely or all the time, eg. that in responding to an lj comment, you could just use a neutral pronoun to refer to the author without feeling the need to check gender.

But I don't really feel there's very much more information conveyed, either the neutral pronoun replaces a more cumbersome previous expression of uncertainty, or replaces a previously gendered pronoun, when you lose some information and gain only that the neutral pronoun *was* used.

I admit I was thinking in terms of a neutral pronoun being used by default.

I do like the idea of using an orthogonal set, as long as I can have the full grid of possibilities without thinking too hard. Or were you looking for a replacement?

I don't quite follow but I was (not entirely seriously) envisaging many different pronouns assigning people to different groups, and you could pick whichever seemed most appropriate, maybe "he" or "she" in some contexts but never in others.

Also, the most useful axis I can come up with runs from intimate to official, passing polite and respectful along the way. Age is another potential discriminator, but I think less useful and so it can probably be left as an attribute.

Yes, agreed. Although formal isn't *that* necessary, it's generally clear from context, but it's somewhat useful, and an idea people are familiar with.

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

"Geek as gender"? Sounds like twaddle to me; a separate grammatical category for people who call themselves geeks would be wasteful [*], and, well, geeks don't have different dangly bits, unless you count RS-232 cables...

(S)

[*] Though it might explain some of the more incomprehensible PuTTY bug reports...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

*shrug* It's not something I know any more about, but something I heard once, and was linked (http://lettersfromgehenna.blogspot.com/2007/12/sexes-and-genders-and-bears-oh-my.html#c7994946997607960483) from j4's post, and said *something* to me.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I think it fits very well for those of us who meet people online, become attracted to them by virtue of them being intelligent and articulate and neophilic and such traits, and to whom the question of a person's chromosomal or physiological configuration is a much lower priority in whether one fancies them or not. It comes with a degree of consciously rejecting the notion that dangly bits, or socialisation associated with configuration of dangly bits, actually matters. My own preference for being a singular "they" is a specific rejection of the notion that that particular datapoint about me is actually relevant to who I am in the vast majority of interpersonal interactions.

[liv]

Geek is not analogous to male or female in terms of giving information about dangly bits. It's analogous to woman or man or butch or camp or any number of other terms that are used to refer to gender, rather than sex. Now, if you don't believe in the concept that gender is a separate thing from sex, you are bound to find it twaddle, and I doubt I shall be able to convince you otherwise.

But I would point out to you that you don't know what dangly bits are possessed by most of the people you interact with; when you decide whether to call someone "he" or "she", you don't look in their pants (at least I hope not!) You look at their behaviour and dress and body language and all kinds of other cues which are to do with gender, and are only partially correlated with dangly bits.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

"What if we had two or more pronouns that drew *different* demarcations?"

Take this further - all short, common words could be given variant forms to convey extra nuance. There's a balance between comprehensibility and cramming in as much information as possible, of course, but we can put it where we like.

Personally, one nuance I find very useful is if vs. iff (meaning 'if and only if'). I'd love it to have easy way of making that distinction in speech.

Similarly with other conjunctions. Imagine if there were variant forms of 'because' to distinguish between proximate and ultimate causes, for instance.

While we're at it, I'd like some particles to indicate "I'm generalising; I know there are exceptions" or "This list of things isn't exhaustive" (the last of which I'd use just about here)

All of these would be much more useful than constantly repeating the sex of people you're talking about.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

one nuance I find very useful is if vs. iff (meaning 'if and only if'). I'd love it to have easy way of making that distinction in speech

I do make a distinction there. I pronounce "if" as /Iv/ and "iff" as /If/. Until I took phonetics classes as part of my undergrad degree, I never noticed that pronouncing "if" as /Iv/ was unusual, idiolectal even. I thought everyone did it. (Now, of course, I notice that other people don't!)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

There's a balance between comprehensibility and cramming in as much information as possible, of course, but we can put it where we like.

Exactly. What great ideas.

Or perhaps, I don't want to have to learn new declensions to be able to talk, but I want the option to be there.

if vs. iff

Mathematicians often notice this. I think most of the time I say "if" to mean any of the normal meanings of "if" (which can be subtly different, I don't normally specify), but if I mean "iff" I say "iffff" or "if and only if" or "exactly when", etc.

Similarly, I use "or" in normal English either to mean "inclusive or" or "exclusive or" or "and" depending on context, but sometimes say "xor" if I want to disambiguate.

"I'm generalising; I know there are exceptions"

My god! I want this so much. To be frank, that could just be the default declension, and you could preface any sentence that's actually literally true and peer reviewed with something :)

[gerald_duck]

I say something close to "ifuf" for "iff".

Similarly, I wish "xor" (which I pronounce as "ksor" rather than "ex-or") were accepted in general language.

The particle to indicate "I'm generalising; I know there are exceptions" is possibly "-ish"? (-8

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The one I want English to have is a clear distinction between "I am talking about something I consider a possibility" and "I am talking about something I am absolutely sure is counterfactual"; an optative mode.

[liv]

While I have a great deal of sympathy for the klaxon in your head, gender neutral pronouns are not actually deliberately obscuring information. If you're talking about a hypothetical person, there is no information about their gender. Any information that might be implied by using "he" is in fact wrong, and wrong information is worse than no information. If you're talking about a actual person, who chooses to present as neither male nor female, you are conveying extra information, namely this fact about hir, not removing information. Again, saying "he" would be actively wrong in this case. Insisting on referring to everyone with gender-neutral pronouns, even the ones who are quite standardly male or female, would be deliberately less informative, but there aren't in fact very many people who want to do that.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're right. And definitely agreed that generic he is a big lose.

I think (a) that I was thinking more of cases where the information might be available and (b) the klaxon is so loud it sometimes supersedes the relevant bit of my brain and spills out into adjacent regions thinking about something different but related :)

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

I think 'they' for 'he/she' doesn't bother me because random uses of plural for singular don't bother me. In fact, I found a plural for dingular that's used to address gods in Phoenician, so I quite like the idea at the moment :)

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

dingular!

(S)