Preferred Personal Pronouns - revolutionary or ridiculous?

[TheTimidBlueBars]

Originally Posted by MillennialUrbanist

That's because names are essentially labels that identify a person. Pronouns, on the other hand, are closely tied to biology. Outboard = male/he, inboard = female/she; plain and simple. The inboard vs. outboard dichotomy even found its way into computing, for describing ports and plugs. Conversely, we sometimes say "he" or "she" to describe an animal when its sex is relevant, or to humanize a pet. When normally, all animals are "it".

Using "it" in place of "he" or "she" can sometimes be used to dehumanize a person. Which makes it the only place where I agree with liberals on respectful pronoun usage. Just consider the famous line: "It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again."

Well, pronouns do not explicitly convey biological sex as opposed to psychological gender. They're intended to convey psychological gender, because generally we're more interested in other people as members of intelligent society than as physical specimens. It's just that that information isn't available for every entity we might refer to with a pronoun.

With pets, all we have to go by is physical sex, and they can't understand language at a very deep level, so it's a pretty harmless assumption that if our dog has male sex organs, he probably has male brain chemistry as well. With humans, that is not the case; transgender people suffer a great deal of mental distress when others do not acknowledge their gender identities, and they can easily tell us what those identities are, so using their desired pronouns makes the most sense.

[Nonesuch]

Originally Posted by TheTimidBlueBars

Honestly, I don't think they're either revolutionary or ridiculous. They're basic common courtesy. If you're willing to call people by a particular nickname, or use their middle name, or avoid certain topics around then that they're sensitive about, what's the big deal about using different pronouns?

Consideration like calling people by a particular nickname, their middle name, avoiding certain topics goes beyond basic common courtesy, these are things I do for good friends and members of my immediate team at work.

Somebody who just attends one class with me (as a student) or who works in the same building/corporation, I'm not expected to remember their pet nickname or triggering topics, and it's equally unreasonable to expect people to remember custom personal pronouns for somebody with whom I don't have an actual personal relationship.


OTOH, I might remember that my cousin has decided "she" now needs to be referred to as "ponyself", but because she's family, I'll go out of my way not to reinforce that eccentricity. Family might be willing to go along with a change to "they" or "he", but where do you draw the line?

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by Ethereal

I can go with they/them, not with made-up words like "zey".

All words are "made up"

[Nonesuch]

Originally Posted by CBeisbol

All words are "made up"

All language is consensus, most of society does not accept snowflake words like zey/zir.

Pronouns in particular are very resistant to change; google “closed linguistic category”.