It’s just always been ironic the two groups most opposed to it are the most extreme on either side of the issue
If he/she disappeared tomorrow and everyone just always used “they”, >95% of us wouldn’t care.
But ~5% of people would probably be really really pissed. Because they’ve made the entire idea of gender and sexuality their entire personality.
That stuff being tribialized never works out well for any of us. We need to aim for society where it just really doesn’t matter.
The only true equality is people genuinely not giving a fuck about it. And the first step to that is abolishing the distinction that language places between genders. As long as language draws a line, the human brain wants to put everyone on one side or the other.
Nah, it’s just a single differentiation between people and non-persons, e.g. him vs that.
There are gender-free languages that still make this distinction, e.g. Hungarian ő vs az.
To add to the subject of complexity, in English you have 3 genders, 2 numbers (singular/plural), and 4 cases, totalling a maximum of 24 pronouns. A gender-free language would just set the first factor to 1. Adding differentiation by e.g. status would increment (in cases of there being one extra formal gender for the 3rd person) or multiply it (when there are different versions for all pronouns).
Personhood.
Itd just be the “singular they” that English was using even before Shakespeare and other languages like Chinese still use.
It’s weird how many people get worked up about it now. It’s literally always correct and removes what’s almost always extrenous information.
Exactly
It’s just always been ironic the two groups most opposed to it are the most extreme on either side of the issue
If he/she disappeared tomorrow and everyone just always used “they”, >95% of us wouldn’t care.
But ~5% of people would probably be really really pissed. Because they’ve made the entire idea of gender and sexuality their entire personality.
That stuff being tribialized never works out well for any of us. We need to aim for society where it just really doesn’t matter.
The only true equality is people genuinely not giving a fuck about it. And the first step to that is abolishing the distinction that language places between genders. As long as language draws a line, the human brain wants to put everyone on one side or the other.
If there’s no line, there’s no division.
That would require a lot of pronouns! But sounds interesting ngl
Nah, it’s just a single differentiation between people and non-persons, e.g. him vs that.
There are gender-free languages that still make this distinction, e.g. Hungarian ő vs az.
To add to the subject of complexity, in English you have 3 genders, 2 numbers (singular/plural), and 4 cases, totalling a maximum of 24 pronouns. A gender-free language would just set the first factor to 1. Adding differentiation by e.g. status would increment (in cases of there being one extra formal gender for the 3rd person) or multiply it (when there are different versions for all pronouns).
Ah thanks for the clarification! I completely misread the comment somehow lol.
They/them, the standard pronouns that have been part of the English language since it was spoken in a way completely unintelligible to people today.