Gendered nouns, nonstandard and otherwise

So, this needs a thread. Following from here.

 

Assertion 1) "He" is a gendered noun. It refers to male things. If you dispute this, you can also try and argue that the sky isn't blue.

Assertion 2) A gendered noun is unsuitable as a gender-neutral noun. Self-evident.

Assertion 3) Using "He" as the default for a being of undetermined or inconsistent gender is sexist.


So, where is the breakdown in my logic?

 

Because women/trans/gender-queer should shut up and be glad men, the unquestionable masters of the human race, deign to let them have any words of differing themselves from the supreme, undying natural state of having and wanting a penis.


Personally, I have never seen nor heard of "him" being non-gendered, and have always learned that "it" and "they" are how to refer to non-gendered stuff. And obviously in cases like you, VS, where it's people, common courtesy says that I refer to you as you wish to. (Within limits, I won't call you "Supreme God-being of the Earth and all its People")

 

Can be. Is not always. Historically has also been the default gender neutral term for centuries. And as they (for whatever vague and nebulous organization is 'they' in this situation) have yet to agree on a new one to replace it... it remains the default. For now.

More the reverse, arguing that if it's blue it isn't automatically the sky. Plenty of blue things that aren't the sky. Plenty of uses for the word 'he' that do not refer specifically to a male human. Or even a male at all.

What happens when a nongendered pronoun is also used as a gendered pronoun? You've got this in reverse. Also, the next part:

Not really. Why is it unsuitable? I do not view this as a "self evident" thing. You can hold it as self evident, but that just means I think you're wrong. Please start supporting your case better.

We use masculine and feminine pronouns for nongendered purposes quite often in English. Boats are quite obviously gender neutral. At least until the Singularity. They get referred to in the feminine.

Speaking as someone who is of "inconsistent gender" (I'm whatever I feel like being at the moment... closer to a tomboy girl on stereotype than a metrosexual or otherwise effeminate male), I disagree. Using 'he' as the default is inherently meaningless. It's a quick and clean default,

If I were to hazard a guess... the part where you're going in reverse order... coming to a conclusion and then attempting to justify it. Instead of looking at the information and using that to acquire a conclusion...

The initial point that it's the gender neutral as well as gender masculine pronoun, at least in English for living things? I wasn't aware I needed to cite something that generic and commonly known. Reminds me of this time someone demanded I cite that gasoline was refined from crude oil. Oh well, here's wikipedia because it's not important enough to use effort.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gende...torical_and_dialectal_gender-neutral_pronouns

It's in there... several places, actually... Nothing I didn't know other people didn't already know.

I was also reminded that, in addition to ships, the feminine is used to refer to whole Countries. Something I never actually forgot, simply didn't think of earlier. Well, patriotism being what it is in the majority of the English speaking world, that's a show of reverence to the feminine unto itself.

Not a retcon so much as a "I was joking before, now I'm being real". I mean, seriously, how could you interpret an implication of people getting drunk and having group sex with a boat to be serious? Like. At all? That's just you being deliberately asinine.

Is Super Kami Guru on the table? No? Okay, I'll keep running with Verified Dick. You can shorten it to 'Dick' if you like. But not VD.

 

No. He, his, him. They are all male. You cannot dispute this. It is not in question.

Enough.

 

"They" is, within a lot of the English writing world, consider the perfect non-standard. It perfectly vales everything from gender, to even if they are a single person: i.e in the case of scifi when dealing with hiveminds.

I see no reason it wouldn't be the same in conversation.

 

Did you actually read the article? Because I just did and it disagrees with you. Here, let me quote it:

Whoooops. Want to provide a piece of evidence that doesn't completely undercut your argument?

And as truebeasts pointed out, reverence does not preclude sexism. The 'motherland' must be 'defended' from the invader. She can't do it herself!

Also, please do address my other points rather than just one sentence. Cherrypicking is so rude, Mr. VD.

 

Wow. Such vehemence and failure to accept facts. You'd think this was a personal insult against you.

They are male pronouns, yes, but not ONLY male pronouns.

Much like cow refers to female, well, cows. Bovines. Cattle. The word cow also means pretty much any (adult female) buffalo/oxen/etc. Plus some types of deer. Elephants. Seals and manatees, too, if I recall correctly. Could look it up, but, irrelevant.

I do not dispute that cow means female cattle. Nor do I dispute that him/etc is a masculine word.

I dispute that there is only that one meaning. History and general language pattern stands on my side with this one.

And this is where you prove you're not ready to have an actual conversation.

Instead jumping to insults and ignoring my points. Hell, you even ignored the first six or so paragraphs of what you quoted, stating that 'he' was gender neutral from the eighteenth century all the way to the 1960s.

... And we both know the 1960s change was political shit, not natural linguistic evolution.

Now. I'm going to ignore you until you apologize for the active disrespect and then agree to have a polite conversation.


PS- by your own standard, calling me "mister" violates your own beliefs. Doesn't violate mine... but, then, violating someone else's politics isn't what makes someone a hypocrite.

 

No I didn't ignore it. I noted it, and noted that it was said to last until the 60s, the period before well known for its consideration of the issue of sexism - oh, wait. Indeed, it also backs up my argument that it's a hold out from the Romans - and I could go on for hours about the Romans. I dare ya. You only made one point, which the evidence you yourself provided showed was fucking retarded and had generally been rejected by everyone who didn't think good women belonged in the kitchen. The insult - yeah, that was petty and childish. But eh, so were a number of your comments. You gonna behave like a child, imma treat you like one. After all, since you view yourself as a tomboy you need to get used to people belittling you to really get into character. So, MR VD, explain to me how political shit makes it any less valid a change? A change is a change, no matter the cause, right?

 

My main issue with the ze/zir thing is that I think it sounds terrible. Like, if it was this beautiful flowing word chain, I wouldn't care much, but as it is it sounds like it's referring to Zenu, Lord of Space.

This means I have a lot of trouble converting ze/zir to represent a person of any kind.

Also, I was under the impression from English classes that referring to something in the masculine was the proper way when you don't know it's gender?

 

And that's one for the ignore list.

Still willing to talk to people who actually show respect in conversation.

 

It really, really does. I tend to run s/he, myself, when referring to an unknown singular. Or I use a titular reference, like "the doctor" or whatever... But that's out of habit and artistic flair, not any belief that it's grammatically correct. Rules- especially English rules- are meant to be broken. It does it to itself all the fucking time.

It is. In the vast majority of languages, actually. But some people have turned it into politics. And, well, politics.

 

Ah, the running away style. Nah, it's cool. Hey, am I actually invisible to you now? Good, cause I've got some bones to pick with you! Yay! I'm going to pick the fuck out of them if I don't have to deal with your bullshit! Whoopee!

 

Not necessarily. Use of "they" as a gender neutral singular pronoun has roots dating back very far in the history of the English language. Criticism of it has been fairly recent by comparison, and the idea is heavily debated by various people with PhDs who live for this sort of thing.

 

True, if a bit misleading. It had always been considered a "slang" part of English, possibly the oldest slang in English that didn't either vanish or get absorbed into the official language. And personally I find it clunky as hell. Still, it's an option to use, if you feel the need.


Personally, I'd sooner refer someone by title (or user name), or if I'm forced into it something like "that person" or "not sure who", than use "they" as a singular.

 

Except it hasn't really been slang for centuries and is an official part of the language, I'd possibly even challenge you to find a proper dictionary that doesn't give it a singular form. Sure it's been looked down on and it being nonspecific about quantity was part of the reason the use of He as a gender neutral developed more as people wanted it alternative, it partially worked for a few centuries before lapsing about fifty years ago and has since drifted away. Although as mentioned in the conversation prior to this thread I have a tendency to use the singular they a lot without realising it.

 

I would call any dictionary that doesn't mention 'singular they' to be a woefully inadequate dictionary. But that doesn't mean much, if anything. Simply that it's known to exist in the English language. That doesn't mean it's not slang. Most dictionaries now carry "ain't" as a word. And you can still find "rutting" listed as a vulgarity for sex in some dictionaries.

And to my knowledge the only time I've ever seen that word used in such a way was in To Kill a Mockingbird.

I base these two details on the fact that I saw it was when was reading that book and was like 'well, the context makes it pretty clear what the word means, but... is that actually a word people *used*, or is it censorship? Turns out, it wasn't censorship. Harper Lee displayed her stories warts and all.


So... finding it in a dictionary proves little, if anything, about its status as slang vs proper grammar. Not that I'm saying it's improper... but it is still rather disfavored by the literary crowd. And I feel deservedly so.

 

maybe to best support your opinions on the matter,why not try posting links or quotes from thesis papers or books to back your stance.

 

English, and several other western languages, lack a true gender neutral pronoun. In Spanish, I know the default for a group of mix gendered individuals is using the Male pronoun.

As for my opinion on the mater, while I will not correct others for using gender neutral terms, I will defer to using the gendered pronouns of what I assume is your physical sex be it male or female.Though I on average assume the faceless speaker is male and use that as a default.

Edit: In the case where the individual's gender is in question and I can't assume one way or the other I tend to just swap the pronouns around until I form an opinion and subconsciously pick one over the other.

 

So then what is it that makes a word that has been widely used and established itself - the only criteria for being a proper word and not slang - and has been that way for centuries slang and not "proper" grammar TanaNari? Because as far as I can tell by pretty much any standard about slang I can find it stopped being that long before the use of He as a gender neutral pronoun in English even started taking off and it's still going strong unlike He, language is a social construct after all and when basically everybody agrees that's a legitimate use of the word regardless of whether they think it should be used why would it not be counted as such?

On an entirely different note hellgodsrus, that idea about a world where everybody has their own pronouns. How is it different from names? I've been thinking and as far as I can tell it would basically just act as a somewhat complex extension of normal names.

 

It's not that different really. The only real differences might be length of character and maybe some grammar stuff depending on how the language shakes out, but yeah. The fun stuff comes from thinking about a civilisation which is so set on the idea of the individual that they come up with a new word any time someone is born, one that changes over the course of their life as they become a different person. As I said, some advantages, some disadvantages.

 

Well, you have a point. Up until this right here. "Basically everybody" very clearly does not agree. Most don't have an opinion to begin with, so can be discounted entirely for both of our purposes. For the rest... some of them so vehemently disagree on this as a valid choice that people have taken to inventing completely new words (ze, etc) to use instead of using that one. Which sounds to me like an awful lot of unnecessary effort, but there you have it.

That's... hardly anywhere close to "basically everyone". In fact, I highly doubt it'd win a majority vote. After all, if it could, then it would have already and, again, artificially injected pronouns like "ze" would not exist.

In short, if we require our language to be a popularity contest, I'm pretty sure Singular They has lost the vote. It might, possibly, be the largest minority, and even that seems highly unlikely, but it's certainly not a majority. Let alone "basically everyone".

That and English is arcane and weird. Even if your argument was right about it having a majority, that doesn't necessarily mean much.

 

I don't really care and the non-gendered issue doesn't come up often enough for me to think it warrants a real solution. How many times a day do you actually run into a transgender individual who demands to be referred to in such a fashion?

I'll use whatever word they want because words are cheap, but I'm still going to think that they're ridiculous for demanding to be called "zir" or "hir" or whatever other slapdash solution they've chosen.

I think this entire thing is the result of bored people looking to start a fight.

 

First: How exactly do you tag a user, this is off topic but I've been wondering for a while now since that would make so many things easier.

On Topic:
English is a bastardized language. Like a chimera, it's formed from the stolen forms of other languages. Latin, Greek, German, French, hell it's even increasingly half assed since lots of it was created by accident or laziness. It is riddled with contradictions and some really really stupid rules regarding it's use. Think of it like Bethesda games, it's pretty good and adaptable but riddled with crippling flaws. In response users tend to mod it, and the makers also try to patch it usually taking things from said mods.

Basically, while the Majority does play a part it takes time for it to be accepted, a long time if ever. Just being a popular bit of slang does not a new word make, it just makes popular slang. It has to actually sink into the public consciousness to the point it truly becomes the automatic default use by the vast majority. Even then it still has to be accepted by the linguists who are in charge of teaching these things for to to actually be a proper use of the language, which they are as unlike to do as allow phonic spelling, multiple punctuations, over use of commas, and reintroduce that one letter that makes the 'th' sound.

Because, again, in English you are always wrong.

 

And sometimes it just pops into the vernacular overnight with absolutely zero explanation.

Like the 'Jeep". There are urban legends about where that name came from. But it is very much an English word now, by any definition. Of course, it helps that it's the name to something that did not exist before. You can name something basically whatever you want when you're the one who made it.

This may be my new favorite quote ever.

 

As Megaolix says, the shortcut is to preface the username with an @, like @Fakename_McFakerson or Master of Squirrel-fu. The BBcode is [user=5]Master of Squirrel-fu[/user], which allows you the advantage of tagging the silly person while referring to them with a nick-name or other non-standard reference.

Edit:
The number used as an attribute in the [user] tag is the user number (naturally), which I find easiest to locate by hovering over the user's avatar and checking the number at the end of their profile page's URL.

Oh, hey, singular gender-neutral they! I guess this is on-topic now.

 

The boat issue is orthogonal to the point at hand, as is the issue about cows/cattle (which I'm sure you can figure why cattle are usually referred to in the feminine if you think about the economic role they've played in most human societies that kept them--namely, only female cows produce milk and calves, they're more valuable than the bulls, which you don't need very many of). The actual question is "when used to refer to actual human beings, is the masculine pronoun gender-neutral?" Which it isn't, has never truly been, and has been broadly contested in its supposed use as such for at least the last half of the century.

Think about it, for a moment. If 'he' were truly a gender neutral pronoun, there wouldn't be a whiff of the absurd or the subversive about a sentence like, "The average American needs the small routines of getting ready for work. As he shaves or blow-dries his hair or pulls on his panty-hose, he is easing himself by small stages into the demands of the day" (from that Wikipedia article you linked to, fyi). And yet, that sentence clearly reads as either subversive or absurd. Because the vast majority of people who read it are going to say, "Ha, a man, putting on panty-hose?" Because 'he' always implicitly refers to a masculine subject.

Or, if you feel like it, you could produce an example where this isn't the case.

It's not inherently meaningless unless "he" actually ceases to have a meaning, which it is far from doing. Since I already talked a bit about markedness in the previous thread, I'm just going to quote myself:

"Basically, the origin of the idea is that, linguistically, we have certain pairs of words, where one word is considered to be normal/simple/commonplace (aka unmarked) and the second word is unusual/complex/divergent (marked). The unmarked word is used more frequently, tends to be acquired earlier by children, tends to be used in more neutral situations, etc. This isn't just a linguistic phenomenon, however, because words actually mean things! When we treat "male" as an unmarked category, the implication is that the natural, neutral subject to talk about is actually a man, and that female is a deviation from the norm of "man." This structures how people actually think about gender and humans and who is a subject.
Or, have you ever heard that joke that goes, "A father was driving his son to school and got into a car crash. He died instantly, the son was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. The surgeon walks into the operating room, only to exclaim in horror, 'I can't operate on this boy! He's my son!' What happened?"
Tell it to someone who's never heard it sometime and watch how long they're stumped. Because, you know, if the doctor's a woman obviously you have to specify lady doctor."

On a more historical level, you get philosophers from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas to Edmund Burke who explicitly posit that "male" is neutral because women are defective, imperfect, or incomplete men. This is not neutral or a "quick and clean" default. You can see it even in the Wikipedia article you linked, in which it's observed the use of the supposedly neutral "he" was used to exclude women from taking positions are doctors, senators, etc--because suddenly, when it was an issue of women's inclusion in "neutral" spaces, the male pronoun was suddenly not neutral anymore! Funny how that works.

Okay, this is a bad way of constructing an argument. Reply to the actual disagreement that you have with someone, don't make up psychological explanations for why they disagree with you. It's part of civil and respectful discussion, which you just claimed to be interested in.