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.

[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]

I keep saying we should bring back the dual.

Seconded!

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

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Thou're fired.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

ROFL *snork*

[ewx.livejournal.com]

For the sake of simplicity, verbs would be the same in the dual as the plural; I love, wit love, we love, thou lovest, yit love, you love.

[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.

[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 :)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Also *witselves/*yitselves, by analogy with existing regular construction.

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

Ngfh.

Thou art. Thou'rt.

cartesiandaemon: what do you dislike about singular "they", out of interest? Is that the information-lost thing?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Oh, heavens, yes. Duh.

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

I really like the du/Sie distinction in German, actually - it means I can relax about whether or not I'm being polite enough. That said, I did get very twitchy when an esteemed German professor of Chemistry airily said that I was to call him and his wife by nicknames and "du" - before I'd even been properly introduced to them, no less! - though they were friends of good family friends...

e: and, obviously, there's the really nice stage at which you decide you know each other well enough for "du".

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

Well, rah for people who say "duh" about having their use of the archaic second person corrected, sez I :D

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I even got it right in the other comment above, so I think I can plausibly claim brainfart rather than iggerance.

[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]

:) I think people I know (or at any rate, I) like knowing things so much they're very careful to emphasise they made a stupid mistake, not an ignorant one :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I really like the du/Sie distinction in German, actually

I don't know enough, do you mean, the German system is better than other formal/informal systems or about formal/informal systems in general?

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

Ah. I picked German simply because it's the one I know well. So I think that's formal/informal systems in general (though in European languages at least there seems to be the distinction between familiarity and formality...)

[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.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see; thank you that does make sense.

It didn't occur to me, as I didn't know if using "Sie/du" freed you from wondering what name to use, etc. Although I guess it does show you're being polite from the get-go whatever you say.

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

Or rude, as the case may be ;)

(That is, AFAIK (though I'm open to correction), German does both formality and familiarity: "du" is used to friends, family and children, but it would be really rather improper to address e.g. a shop assistant or a junior member of staff using it without going through the formalities first...)

[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...