this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
756 points (90.5% liked)
Memes
45535 readers
466 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You have a 50/50 split of upvotes and downvotes, so you’re hovering around 0 give or take.
Personally and if I understand you correctly, I pretty much share your view.
If someone looks/acts like a specific gender based on cultural norms and personal experience, I’ll default to calling the person that gender. It’s just a simpler and easier form of communication, and takes just a moment to correct if the opposite is desired.
They/them is technically usable but really clumsy sounding in English because that changes the entire sentence structure to plural even when you are speaking about a singular. Which is a personal pet peeve.
It feels more natural to default to a neutral “he” and change to feminine “she” if corrected than it does to default to a plural “they”. Heck I’ve seen someone default to a neutral “she” and it still sounds more natural than a plural as a neutral. Just a personal issue with the English language there.
And on the side of people who are trans… I have seen sentiment that the whole asking pronouns things makes some people feel very uncomfortable. It’s a constant reminder of being born into the wrong body, and makes it feel like all the effort to pass and be their true selves is meaningless.
I think I’d rather offend a couple trenders that don’t understand language use than remind someone whose mental health is at stake about that and invalidate their efforts to pass with something so unnecessarily superficial.