Who will volunteer to tutor Asia Kate Dillon in pronouns, singular and plural?

They may call itself anything he wishes, but she does not get to unilaterally change the English language.

I don't care what gender, or whether any gender, Asia chooses. I do very much care that singular and plural are being mixed, as if number has nothing to do with anything.

Quote from Splinter

I personally find this non binary identification quite ridiculous, especially the weird use of singular and plural.

I hope all rational people do feel this way. I peek out of my cave occasionally to see what new social trends are likely to be appalling, so understand fully that this kind of bullshit is going to be important to someone whether or not I like it.

So, in the sense of being inclusive and up-to-date, how about someone just inventing a whole new set of pronouns for these valuable members of society rather than trying painfully and grotesquely to fit them into the existing set?

Suggestions?

In the 1970’s, a means of avoiding gender declaration was the awkward s/he.

Combining the last two thoughts, we could amalgamate she/he/it into:

Sheeit!

It is what it is!!!!!

Now that students are allowed to either state or register Preferred Gender Pronouns, profs must need a few minutes to consult the chart of who prefers which, before calling on or answering each student.

Quote from EJLarson

Combining the last two thoughts, we could amalgamate she/he/it into:

Sheeit!

How can anyone be “assigned” a gender at birth. People are born either male or female at birth, not assigned

This is a crazy world

I completely agree about the imposition of language distortions. The pronoun thing is CRAZY. Each person choosing own preferred pronoun? Nuts.

Quote from serafina

SpaceNut : you are mixing up things. Sex is what your biological organs tell about you. Gender is what you feel you are.

So you can be born with male or female genitalia (and with a mix of both, whether it is showing or not), but growing up you may identify/feel of the opposite sex, or none, or both or at times once, both or the other! The former two are binary (either male or female) and the last ones are non-binary.

I admit it is a different thing to "understand" deep down unless it interest yourself, but rationally we can't ignore that there are people with different bodies, minds, and feelings.

Personally, I am okay with the topic itself but I don't like how these language distortions are being imposed. If they were the result of a reasoned solution, I would be happy to adapt. But these seems random and spot-on decisions which are just causing confusion. Furthermore, being native of a Romance language that revolves around the gender male and female (just like Spanish), and the male used to indicate an assorted group of male & female nouns, I never feel excluded... I consider language a convention/custom, and as such, the gender of a noun has NO correlation with the gender or the connotation of the thing the noun describes.

In fact, if we look at Romance languages, most common words have different gender across them. For example, in Spanish and Italian, the sea is male (el mar, il mare), but in French it is female (la mer). The salt is male in Italian (il sale), but female in Spanish and French (la sal).

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To be born with both genitalia is considered to be an abnormality or aberration, we have seen this with people who are born with defects, how can it be considered normal? I'm not advocating any discrimination or any harm done to intersex people, that is wrong

We can, and should question any psychologists "findings", because its hard to believe that someone could "feel" a female when that person has male genitals firmly attached, let alone vice versa

Quote from serafina

When I was in elementary school, a classmate of mine was born a male but he behaved, felt and had the interests of a typical girl, he was very feminine / effeminate in the way he moved, talked and walked (much more than me). He loved to play with Barbies and his parents let him do it. This is how he was, beyond his male attributed and the sex stated on his birth certificate.

He was obviously being bullied by the whole society, and later in life he went to study fashion/textiles because this is what he was attracted to - I don't know about his whereabouts and what he did with his life. He was always very kind and approachable to me, we played together and I don't have anything bad to say about him. Yes, he was 'the odd one' in our cohort and it was not an easy situation to handle for his parents, either - and school teachers were old school and not prepared/educated to handle someone like him.

However, if at 5-10 years old he was already that way, I don't think we can use the modern psychology argument - he was naturally that way, his way, since early age. And just to complete the pictures, his parents were farmers, so not progressive parents with a degree in psychology.

Likewise, some children were bullies, others were submissive, some were brighter, and some were whiners. I still know a lot of people from elementary school and they are more or less the same.

In our small town, everybody knew those few individuals who were 'not the norm'... some were even grandparents who later in life decided to stop faking who they were and expressed (limitedly) their true self by dressing differently or moving/talking/walking like they felt natural to them. They aren't doing any harm and they deserve to find happiness as much as any of us.

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How does playing around with Barbies make a person suddenly effeminate? Its just a plastic doll, much like an Action man

Men who play women in stage and movies are being told to walk and act like women, doesn't make them effeminate at all

It is such a tough subject to understand because ultimately the psychology on it has not been done. One of the problems is we are trying to solve the problem before we understand it. What I am trying to say is we do not know if the need for some people to regender themselves mentally and/or physically is a a natural process that can happen or whether it is caused by society, psychology, learned behaviour, and other factors. Because the science is not up to speed with it, most of us are positoning ourselves on what would be our own, well, gut instinct.

So, person A's logic tells them it is impossible for someone to be another gender. Person B's logic says it is possible and possibly even natural, and then A and B are locked in a battle of different ideologies. In the meantime, person C is degendering or regendering themsevles and saying, "well, hey, I feel like this either way". What we do not know yet is why they feel like this. I want to tread carefully here before I get to my own "opinion" on this subject, but if this is a natural process we have not previously observed, fine. If it is the product of something external, then that suggests the people are mentally broken, quite literally. Is it then the responsibility of society to fix those people who are broken as we do with other mental issues? These are the things that have not yet been tackled.

As for my own opinion... Person C still feels like that, they are not making an active choice in my opinion and certainly not choosing to be non-conformant with what society says is normal. By the way, I am not talking about sex, but the gender issue. I think a man who becomes a woman can regender themselves as female, but unfortunately for them they can never escape the fact that they are indeed male. Now, I am happy to recognize them as whatever they want to be, but I don't think I am willing to ask every person I meet how they prefer to be addressed and I don't think I am willing to play the pronoun game. I think it is an infringement to try to force people to say certain things, especially when the clarity on what to say has not been properly defined.