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There’s definitely some additional nuance (like a pronouns in bio/username situation) but this should cover the broad needs of anyone who is approaching this with good faith.
There's a lot of transphobes that use they/them to not acknowledge the pronouns of trans people, but also to skirt around anti-misgendering rules of social media. I call it "passive-aggressive misgendering".
Ask them, "why do you care so much about what genitals you think I have?"
This is so rubbish. Almost everyone is a he or she, so just use that. On the very very very rare instance you get it wrong, say sorry and use the correct one from then on. Unless you forget, the appologise again when corrected. Yes I am imply it is on the person who got called the wrong pronoun to correct the one who made the mistake.
I tend to agree, but I do get where the other viewpoint comes from. I'm from a country where I don't believe this is a major point of contention, as long as we're respectful with each other I don't think people feel the need to make a big deal out of this, but I'm aware I'm speaking from a bubble here, others may disagree.
I do work in an international company with many anglophones from the UK and USA, and it's a much bigger point there, to the point certain expressions are banned, e.g. addressing a group as guys. I speculate that it's a bit of a cultural thing, and a language thing. As others mention, a lot of languages are Ill suited to naturally use gender neutrality. English is quite malleable that way.
Wouldn't it be much easier to use the grammatically well established singular they/them. That way you never run into an issue. Surely you'd do that when you encounter a name that can be used as both a female and a male name (Jessie, Les etc)
If were going from whats «grammatically well established» i would argue he/she is a lot more established
Tbh just saying they is easier, took a few weeks/months to train myself to do it and now I'm just cringing whenever I hear something that's like "he or she could be doing this thing" when "they" is just more efficient anyway. They're just as established. I think "they" is an older term but I'd have to look into the etymology on that.
So I'm not sure how reliable it is given the age of the data but it looks like there's some indication that "they" fell in use up to the late 1900s but before ~1860 it was actually more common than now. I'm now curious if there's any more info on this.
Also, if you mistakenly use the wrong pronouns, apologize and respect their wishes.
We’re humans after all, and mistakes happens. No one is asking you to be perfect. People just want you to be a decent person.
And then there are some languages where using pronouns for the secondary person is considered rude/weird in some conditions and you are supposed to use the name directly.
That's fun stuff.
If only there were gender neutral pronouns in my language 😭
My only issue is when apparently someone can choose that "they", a gender neutral pronoun, doesn't apply to someone. I saw it in a recent Elliot Page post. Someone was getting ripped to shreds for talking about Elliot and saying "they". "No it's him! You're trying to minimize his identity!" was basically the response. But the person was talking about Elliots work pre and post transition and you could tell they were taking great care to not offend, and yet it was still offensive apparently. Which was then made even funnier when others chimed in to point out that Elliot specifically asks to be referred to as "They/Him".
My whole point is that some people need to cool it when it comes to gender neutral pronouns. Lest we forget, "I'm a dude, he's a dude, she's a dude, we're all dudes!"
In arabic we don't even have neuter or non-gendered anythings, a table is a he or she.
Not even objects are safe 😔
In German it feels completely random.
A table is masculine. A castle is feminine. A sausage is feminine. A boy is masculine. A girl is neutral. A fire is neutral. ...
Not sure if there's any meaningful rule behind.
As far as I know there isn't any rule to learn. Grammatical gender is a wild mixture of several things, sometimes it has something to do with the ending of words and sometimes with attributes of the things, if it has like agency, is an inanimate object, or is an abstract concept. Sometimes it's completely arbitrary and sometimes there are rules to it like with group of people. But there is no way of telling, you got to memorize it. In any way, grammatical gender has nothing to do with biological gender. And I'm pretty sure that's not it's origin. Though, we try to link it to biological gender in case of people. But even that has exceptions, and it doesn't really work with group of people etc.
Actually, Mädchen (meaning "girl" in German) is a diminutive. It comes from Magd (an old word for "maid" or "young woman") with the -chen suffix, which is a common diminutive in German.
The -chen suffix makes words grammatically neuter, which is why Mädchen takes das instead of die, even though it refers to a female person.
I'm not German but the same applies to the Dutch word for girl, and we've the same rule for neutral. By the way, 'magd' in Dutch means virgin (maagd to be precise), which sounds incredibly inappropriate to be going around calling someone; little virgin (/¯ ಠ_ಠ)/¯
Unlike for girl, das Mädchen, which is a diminutive (of die Maid, a virgin young woman) as it is ending with -chen and thus, is of neutral gender, I doubt if rules for the other examples do exist:
Oh sorry I went out and commented the same thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Doesn't matter, as you elaborated more deeply on why das Mädchen has neuter gender.
BTW: The use of (das) Fräulein (miss), again a diminutive; 'little woman', in German, to refer to an unmarried woman has come out of fashion since ~50 years and now may be perceived as insulting as well.
Mädchen is no longer perceived as a diminutive of Maid or Magd, as both terms are more used in a historic context, and thus, it stands on its own.
Some non binary people use the pronoun "they" in arabic, but unlike english it is exclusively meant for plural. And in arabic, verbs also are conjugated with amount, So you just can't say "They ate" in a singular form, you have to explicitly mark "ate" in plural.
It'd be like saying "they ate(plural verb)". It sounds very weird but there's not much better.
There's a similar — though very localised — thing in English with "themself."
The singular form is used, but it's far less common than the plural form "themselves." I often hear "themselves" used to refer to one non-binary person and it always sounds weird.
I guess we have to work with what we have. Is there an alternative in Arabic, like neopronouns?
Your comment made me try to think of one, and all I got was a headache.
In arabic everything is gendered. Even the most simple pronoun "I" changes the form of the sentence based on your gender (ie masculine: "ana ju'an" fem: "ana ju'ana"
Even the numbers and verbs are gendered. To try to add a new gender would be rethinking the entire language.
But in Arabic masculine pronouns are considered normal. Even with feminine objects like the sun, you can use a masculine pronoun "hua kabir" He (it) is big. So most enbies I know of just use masculine pronouns. There may be an alternative I don't know of. It's an interesting yet complex topic.
I'd say default should be to offer your own name/pronouns to encourage someone to share rather than asking.
Super fair! I guess I would categorize or lump that in as a tactful and warm way of “asking” but I absolutely am with you for that suggestion. 🤗
AND HOLY SHIT does it get toxic. for some reason there’s no will for even this basic level of nuance. currently watching an entire anti-blahaj hate crusade over a simple misunderstanding where the left and the right conclusions of the chart got conflated as though they are the same thing.
then i tried to help clarify and got called insults.
just… so sad :(
Dare I ask?
see my comment history if you are truly interested. fair warning: it’s fucken bad.
I think one of the issues is that several of the people involved in that crusade were also banned from blahaj.
People tend to not disclose their conflict of interest.
That’s a very probably true analysis :(
Relevant meme post of what brought on a lot of those bans for onlookers.
