Personal pronouns, gender, equality, etc.

Skropi biology is sex, not gender.

Sex = XX or XY (immutable - at least without serious amounts of CRISPR gene editing!)

Gender = identity (choice)

The problem is just that most people conflate the two. I don't make an innocent mistake, and they are never offended because these mistakes just never happen.

I have a friend who looks like a bloke, but is in fact female. I use 'they' and 'their' to avoid ever making a mistake of saying 'he'/'his' instead of 'she'/'her'.

Removing gender from language just makes life easier for both parties.

burkey Lets not complicate things, a man is a he, and a woman is a she. You dont get to choose your genes. And if someone is offended by me calling them as such, they are free to feel however they like, as I am free to use the language as it was intended too. I really have enough problems in my life, so I don't need to add some make up ones too.

I really believe that homosexuals should not be discriminated, as they were in the past, but now that the discrimination part is over, or almost over, I see a tendency to go overboard and start discriminating all the others based on their beliefs……or use of language. Thank god we still have freedom of speech in my part of the world.

Next thing you know, some people will start identifying as animals, so we won't be able to use the word person, or people. I can hardly wait to see what communication will be like in a few years.

There are also legal complications with the gender notion and the choice. For example here in Bulgaria the retirement age for women is lower than for men. So, how about men reaching that age and then self-identifying as women to get early retirement? It just brings a whole lot of complication after itself. I believe anyone is free to identify and call himself however he/she/it/they/... want but let's not officialize that.

CyberGene Exactly what you said.

burkey Removing gender from language just makes life easier for both parties

Removing words from the language always makes it easier using the language. We could reduce the vocabulary to nothing, and speaking would never have been easier. But it also reduces what we can speak about.

I was here to read about PW bans and I see a big off-topic about gender and grammar??

The rules (which you never read when you joined because they don't exist yet) say to keep things on topic. You've ignored those rules so I'm going to give you 2 pats on the back. If you feel though you can't comply with my pats, I'll send a dog instead (to give you 4 paws on the back).

burkey biology is sex, not gender.

That's only the modern (woke?) redefinition. Long-standing usage says otherwise.

Anyway ... the use of they/them/their when referring to a singular antecedent is entirely wrong ... regardless of your notions of sex/gender. But we don't have genderless first-person singular pronouns ... except for it/its, which are reserved for inanimate objects, not people. We even use gendered pronouns for dogs.

So do not suggest that I use it/its/they/them/their when referring to any person.

They/them has been used for centuries to refer to a single person without specifying their gender. I've always used it, and always heard it used.

Same with singular "you". Entirely wrong of course: It should be "thou".

Johnstaf They/them has been used for centuries to refer to a single person without specifying their gender. I've always used it, and always heard it used.

I'm the last person on this forum to discuss the English language 🤣 But I think there are some nuances here. I believe it may have been used in the past for being polite (or when you don't know the actual sex of a person because you exchange emails. For instance, since I work for a big corporation with many offices, it's hard for me to determine the sex of a person from only his/her name and we've even made some funny mistakes in Bulgaria because in our language the feminine and "third" gender of words, sorry I don't know the grammar terms, always end with a proper suffix which determines the gender and thus one can unconsciously decide that a name is of a female.)

And in the last 10 years or so the accent of "they" is not because you don't know the sex of the other person, but rather to allow for "them" to assume a sex that is different than the apparent one. Or in other words it includes the possibility of the other person being transgender. At least that's how I understand it.

xooorx Thou is familiar. You has always been the polite form. Like du and Sie in German, tu/vous in French or tu/usted in Spanish etc.

CyberGene Of course. I agree. I was just responding to the assertion that referring to an individual as "they" is grammatically wrong or new. The political and grammatical issues are separate.

Yes, "they" has been misused for a long time as a singular. But it is misleading. Just as are other forms of misuse.

I find it discouraging that incorrect usage abounds, even among professional writers. But that does not make it correct.

Note, though, that some believe that language is and should be the way people use it. I think this evolves to make language less meaningful. Speech is already ambiguous enough. I don't like incorrect usage. We all make mistakes. But let's not defend them.

MacMacMac

Tim went to the market.

= They went to the market.

It wasn't a good day for Tim.

= It wasn't a good day for them.

There's no necessity to use He and Him in those two sentences. English is magical 🙂

That said, there are some extremist woke happenings that I find completely absurd - like the UK outlawing 'breast feeding': now it's called 'chest feeding'!

burkey Tim went to the market.

= They went to the market.

It wasn't a good day for Tim.

= It wasn't a good day for them.

At school I learned that:

Tim => He went to the market.
Tim and Tom => They went to the market.

Now are you saying you can use "they" in both the sentences? Sorry, I'm not English, so that's very confusing...

magicpiano

Read a few English books - it's not at all confusing, e.g:

'Where did Tim abscond to?'

'They went and hid in the dunny!'

(Dunny is Australian slang for toilet / lavatory)

burkey

You'll find a plenty of English books, where it's not the case. Especially classics. I think they instead of he/she is quite a new phenomenon. At least common usage of it. There is an interesting article on Times from 2019 on this subject.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5748649/word-of-year-they-merriam-webster/%3famp=true

So, rather than:

• Call that person. Tell him/her he/she is late.

I should write:

• Call that person. Tell them they are late.

?

It sounds to me like writing of the time of Shakespeare...

P.S.: but I understand it's more convenient when you don't know the sex of the person or you don't want to disclose it…

In English, when gender is immaterial the first-person singular pronouns are he/him/his.
If you prefer he/she, him/her, and his/hers, that's fine.

But one person ought not be referred to as they.
Many people do so, but THEY are wrong.
MacMacMac doesn't use the incorrect construction, and HE is right.
Mary does it properly, so SHE is right.
Do you know someone who uses the proper words? If so, HE is right.
Or HE/SHE is right. That's wordy perhaps. But it's correct.
It's all quite simple. But I guess the hypersensitive cannot stomach it. 🙂

Notice, though, that many European languages assign a gender to EVERY noun. And some (most?) require an article in front of every noun, so the article is likewise gendered. So why don't we hear about gender sensitivity from France, Spain, Italy? Perhaps it's because they know how to speak and write properly in their own language.

MacMacMac Notice, though, that many European languages assign a gender to EVERY noun. And some (most?) require an article in front of every noun, so the article is likewise gendered. So why don't we hear about gender sensitivity from France, Spain, Italy? Perhaps it's because they know how to speak and write properly in their own language.

I'm native Italian and familiar with few European languages. Currently I'm living in France and beforehand in few other European countries.

Your explanation of the English language usage corresponds to what I've learned and experienced on a daily basis. Anyway, I'm not a native English speaker, so I'm just conveying my experience here.

You're also correct in stating that every noun in Italian, French and Spanish are gendered and so are their relative articles which are also mandatory.

Interesting enough, the genders are often inverted among differences romance languages. What is masculine in Italian may well be feminin in Spanish or French and likewise.

Unfortunately, I've witnessed few occasions when politicians tried to propose gender changes of few "sensitive words" according to the mood of the time. The result sounded so awkward and occasionally hilarious that was quickly forgotten and buried into oblivion.