A plural pronoun for a singular meaning. Alright it's common in use when we don't know who we're referring to. But it gets too contradictory when we do know, and we use a plural pronoun to refer to one person. ...and it gets even more incongruous, contradictory and funny-sounding when we use a singular verb with "they". — Michael Ossipoff
Is it really so odd to see it used this way when it's for an explicitly gender neutral person? It seems exactly the same to me. — MindForged
But there's still a modern problem: What if you're referring to a particular person who rejects gender? — Michael Ossipoff
not require that everybody else also deal with their choice. Even if 1 million English speakers out of the 1.5 billion people who speak English reject gender,it's still their problem, not mine. — Bitter Crank
Yep.Almost a billion people speak romance languages which are decidedly gendered. Life is not an unendurable hell of gendered words in those language areas. If women's options are limited in a province of romance language, then it's discrimination based on something much more material than a pronoun. — Bitter Crank
My own mother tongue has a gender neutral word for the third person: "hän". The word hän refers to both sexes, hence a Finn cannot now exactly which gender one is from the word. Yet I don't think this changes the culture or gender relations in any particular way. — ssu
By the way, would you use a singular verb with "They"? That doesn't have the long-established usage we spoke of, and it's a further direct contradiction in a sentence. — Michael Ossipoff
You make it sound like an arduous task. It requires at most the reworking of the occasional sentence. Come on — MindForged
But many progressives want there to be a wide progressive unity, as wide as possible — Michael Ossipoff
They should be as progressive as they want; just keep it in the family. — Bitter Crank
They seem to want everyone to march in lock step. Surely progressives don't want to be dictatorial, do they?
Someone who rejects gender, implicitly rejects my gender as well as their own. — Marcus de Brun
Gender rejection as such is little different to homophobia.
Notwithstanding that, the rejection of one's gender implies the existence of a dis-ease with ones genetic gender.
When we respect the choice of others (as we apparently must do) we also ignore the pain that lies behind the disassociation.
People have the right to choose that their pain should be ignored by self and by others. However that which is ignored can rarely be ameliorated.
Forms like "this one" are "stylistically raised" and not equivalent to pronouns. "Jo ate the cake, but this one didn't like it." vs. "Jo ate the cake, but they didn't like it." I much prefer "they". — Dawnstorm
Maybe "Jo ate the cake, but that one didn't like it" would be better.
When I took Latin, we routinely said "that one" in translations. I just like it because it doesn't contradict other grammar. — Michael Ossipoff
But all that is getting outside of what I was talking about, which was just a grammar-convenience matter. — Michael Ossipoff
What most of us do to remedy the conundrum of expanding gender identification is to associate only with those who share similar views and to think those outside our box are foolish. That's what I do. — Hanover
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