this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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In polish, calling people with the neutral gender. It's a grave insult which implies lack of agency and dehumanisation, and thank to some rightwinger assholes in parliament is also a specific transphobic insult now.
While in english it's completely normal thing to say if you're not sure of a person's gender.
So definitely not my "favourite", i would never said this to anyone in polish and i occasionally get a hiccup of misgendering someone in english because of that, but interesting from language point of view.
Is it kind of like calling someone "it" as an insult in English?
I'd say so, and I've seen it used in the same transphobic contexts.
Pretty much yes, the closest thing that would be.
Well...
You can use "they" without being insulting, as it still presumes personhood, but if you call someone "it" you're dehumanizing them and stripping personhood from them, as "it" is used for objects and things, not people. It sounds like what you're translating would be closer to "it" in English than "them" or "they".
Yes but "it" in polish is specifically belonging to the neutral gender. There's a bit more nuance there if you add context of sentence but it's pretty much build in. Polish equivalent of "they" or "them" is specifically 3rd person plural and cannot be used in singular and in 2nd person.
AFAIK English's they or them is supposed to be plural only, but we butchered that a long time ago.
This seems like a thing in Slavic languages in general. In Russian the equivalent is "одушевленные и неодушевленные существительные" - animate, and inanimate objects, so I guess they add one extra pronoun to the usual three, which is just for objects. I think some genderqueer people prefer using the plural pronoun in that case ("они" instead of "оно"). Is that possible in Polish?
The neutral gender is perfectly grammatical in polish, just it was never used for people other than small babies, i seen some effort to use it in literature for gender fluid or genderless people but it's rare and don't get positive reviews. It might catch some day though, i don't know.
Maybe I misunderstand, but you should never call someone "it" in English, except for animals and babies. Calling someone "it" is considered dehumanizing in English.
Yes, what i meant that in english you call people in 3rd person "them", "they" regardless of their gender, but in polish neutral gender would always be "it". That's why it's so insulting to use it despite it is gramatically existing. Polish had pronouns literally build in every noun, verb and adjective.