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Moderated Using wrong pronouns= violence??

angrysoba said:
But really I doubt that singular gender-neutral he is anywhere near as common as using they. In fact I would think it is only through an act of will that it is used in certain kinds of formal writing or by those who had been taught it was proper. Pretty much everyone uses third person singular they. This thread itself is littered with examples by at least one person who is adamant about not using it.
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Fair point. When we are talking about a news story and it's actors, which do you use, the sex specific or the singular they? Assuming threads where the actors gender ID is not specified.
 
mumblethrax said:
I don't see why you think those occasions are highly infrequent. They're frequent enough that tastemakers have noticed the hole they leave in the English lexicon and have been trying to plug it for centuries. "The UPS driver must have stopped by, they left a package for you."

In any case, everyone seems to think the rule in English is that you can only use singular they when you don't know the gender of the antecedent. This isn't the case.

The very first known instance of singular they in the English language corpus, from 1375:

Hastely hiȝed eche...þei neyȝþed so neiȝh...þere william & his worþi lef were liand i-fere. / Each man hurried...till they drew near...where William and his darling were lying together

Shakespeare, in A Comedy of Errors:

There's not a man I meet but doth salute me
As if I were their well-acquainted friend

Sean Lennon, using woke they to say he doesn't want to date transwomen:

Any girl who is interested must simply be born female and between the ages of 18 and 45. They must have an IQ above 130 and they must be honest.

The actual restriction is that you can't use it with specific antecedents. Which is why "Dave came over last night and they drank all my beer" sounds weird to many/most of us. Because Dave is a particular person.
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It seems that in the three uses you cite, the subject is one (representatively) of many. Kind of slipping back and forth between the individual and the group.

ETA: for the UPS thing, I wouldn't conflate them that way. It would be "UPS must have stopped by. They left a parcel", or "the mailman was here. He left a bunch of bills. Bastard."
 
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Thermal said:
It seems that in the three uses you cite, the subject is one (representatively) of many. Kind of slipping back and forth between the individual and the group.
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Doesn’t really matter. They’re syntactically singular in every case (Each man is, not each man are).
 
mumblethrax said:
Doesn’t really matter. They’re syntactically singular in every case (Each man is, not each man are).
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That's what kind of irks me. If "they" was being used in the singular, as in "they is", it would at least be consistent. "Are" is plural, as in "the men are, the gogo dancers are, etc. But "is" gets shied away from for no reason other than it doesn't sound right. Sounding right hardly seems a good standard when reapplying pronouns for uses other than their intent.
 
Upchurch said:
...I haven’t seen anything that indicates that is what the author of the article was referring to...
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Just to reiterate, I went back and double checked the article referenced in the OP.

Hercules56 said:
According to the website of the University of Colorado at Boulder, Center for Inclusion and Social Change's website, the intentional use of the "wrong" gender pronoun to identify someone can be seen not only as an act of oppression, but an act of violence.

https://www.colorado.edu/cisc/pride-office/lgbtq-resources/pronouns

I'm not sure how anyone came to the conclusion that words can be an act of violence, but this is very dangerous, as acts of violence are often grounds to be expelled from college and indeed arrested and charged with the crime. Worse, one is legally allowed to use physical force to defend themselves against acts of violence. Is that what we are getting at here? Call somebody a he instead of a she, and the target of the wrong pronoun can hit the person in self-defense??

This really is an attack on speech in a way that is totally out of control. Speech that makes people offended or uncomfortable may not be right, but it is certainly not an act of violence.

This needs to stop.
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All this moral panic is coming from a single line in the article. I know it's from this particular line, because the word "violence" is only used once. It is not even the main thesis of the article. Here is the sentence:
Choosing to ignore or disrespect someone’s pronouns is not only an act of oppression but can also be considered an act of violence.
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Not that intentionally mis-gendering is necessarily an act of violence, only that it can be considered an act of violence. Further, the context of the sentence is about harming people's feelings and mental well-being, not their physical person. The OP then makes a bunch of non-sequitur logical jumps to make this one statement a direct attack on the anti-trans crowd.

Honestly, I agree with The_Animus. dirtywck and Blank's takes pretty much summarize the thread. The trans-hate crowd are panicking that they might be called out for violating Wheaton's Law.
 
Thermal said:
Great question. I would say yes, simply because not all trans folk have the significant financial means.

I also keep the distinction between transsexual and transgender. A transsexual (someone who feels like they are a guy just as much as I do, but looks down to see boobs and stuff), I have a world of sympathy for. Man, that's gotta be disorienting. And I will call them by whatever helps them to feel comfortable.

But when the 106 or whatever they are up to "genders" start getting bantered about...maybe I'm just old but my fingers start a-drumming.
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That last part makes me curious. I mean, people will come up with many different ways to label themselves, including sub-labels of a sort that usually aren't well-known by outsiders. Have you met many people that ask for more than what you say in your second paragraph? Does that portion rise to a problem in your life beyond "people are weird and sometimes annoying or awkward"?

I don't think I would be put off by someone discussing an obscure variation of gender any more than I would someone discussing how their garage band is a sub-genre of metal that I've never heard of.
 
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If we're going to conform our behavior to our language rather than the other way around -- that's just weird.

"Sorry to make you feel bad, but the traditional concepts of language forced my hand."
 
Ryan O'Dine said:
"Sorry to make you feel bad, but the traditional concepts of language forced my hand."
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A decent part of skepticism involves saying true things which will invariably hurt some people's feelings, such as "Sorry to make you feel bad, but you didn't really communicate with your dead spouse at the BDIU seance last weekend," or "Sorry to make you feel bad, but that faith healer just takes his parishioners money; he doesn't actually cure anyone," or "Sorry to make you feel bad, but you evolved from chimp-like ancestors rather than being specially created by the cosmic supermind in charge of the entire universe." Sometimes the truth just sucks to hear, especially when you're heavily invested in something else.

I'm still a bit surprised to see skeptics—speakers of uncomfortable truths in so many other contexts—easily swayed by arguments which boil down to the idea that we ought to be catering to feelings (avoiding the linguistic violence of misgendering) rather than plainly acknowledging facts (avoiding the linguistic confusion of missexing). It certainly is not obvious to me why we should invariably choose the former path over the latter, especially since the arguments provided thus far are basically appeals to authority and/or majority.
 
gnome said:
That last part makes me curious. I mean, people will come up with many different ways to label themselves, including sub-labels of a sort that usually aren't well-known by outsiders. Have you met many people that ask for more than what you say in your second paragraph? Does that portion rise to a problem in your life beyond "people are weird and sometimes annoying or awkward"?
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Well, aside from my daughter's friends and their short lived "xe" phase, none of this impacts most of us a bunch IRL, I'd venture but the OP article is giving guidelines that kind of assume it. As a discussion point, I think it's fair to assume we will actually run across this stuff and at least our hypothetical positions regarding them.

I don't think I would be put off by someone discussing an obscure variation of gender any more than I would someone discussing how their garage band is a sub-genre of metal that I've never heard of.
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Sex is binary, though. It doesn't really have subgenres that are significant enough to warrant new or inapplicable pronouns or terminology. I guess the irksome point for me is that it bothers me when people's imaginations are pushed on others and demanded to be treated as reality. It's like talking to a Trump supporter and they demand that J6 be taken as a peaceful protest.
 
d4m10n said:
A decent part of skepticism involves saying true things which will invariably hurt some people's feelings, such as "Sorry to make you feel bad, but you didn't really communicate with your dead spouse at the BDIU seance last weekend," or "Sorry to make you feel bad, but that faith healer just takes his parishioners money; he doesn't actually cure anyone," or "Sorry to make you feel bad, but you evolved from chimp-like ancestors rather than being specially created by the cosmic supermind in charge of the entire universe." Sometimes the truth just sucks to hear, especially when you're heavily invested in something else.

I'm still a bit surprised to see skeptics—speakers of uncomfortable truths in so many other contexts—easily swayed by arguments which boil down to the idea that we ought to be catering to feelings (avoiding the linguistic violence of misgendering) rather than plainly acknowledging facts (avoiding the linguistic confusion of missexing). It certainly is not obvious to me why we should invariably choose the former path over the latter, especially since the arguments provided thus far are basically appeals to authority and/or majority.
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Someone wants me to refer to them as "them." It means a lot to them and costs me next to nothing. Who cares why?
 
Ryan O'Dine said:
Someone wants me to refer to them as "them." It means a lot to them and costs me next to nothing. Who cares why?
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This.

But it seems that there are snowflakes who are hurt by referring to people in the way those people prefer to be referred to.
 
Ryan O'Dine said:
Someone wants me to refer to them as "them." It means a lot to them and costs me next to nothing. Who cares why?
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Why would it mean a lot to them if it really doesn't mean anything? People don't really see themselves as not a he or she, if we are being honest here. They know whether or not there is any point to scheduling with a gynecologist. The rest is a ride on the Imagination train. Why would you make others partake in that for any reason?
 
Seriously, if someone prefers being called Robert rather than Bobby, call them Robert. If they prefer being called her rather than him, call them her.

It's really very simple: just try not to be an ********.
 
I'll put that differently so that people will know what I mean in future:

Don't be an asterisk.
 
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