I want to flag that I've decided to move towards replacing gendered pronouns in my speech and writing with they/them. The transition will take a while, but it is now underway.
If it's important to you to be referred to as he/him or she/her (eg you're trans and they/them feels like a denial of your internal sense of gender), please be a squeaky wheel. As always, I'll do my best best to remember and use your preferred pronouns.
But consider this;
(1/?)
Even if I refer to you using a gendered third-person pronoun (she/he), I'm still going to use a genderless second-person pronoun when I address you as 'you', because in English I have no choice. Again, if your community has come up with gendered terms for this (eg shou/hyou), let me know, and I'll try to remember that.
But really, wouldn't we all be better off just dropping gendered pronouns altogether?
(2/?)
As with unisex toilets, if most people use unigender pronouns, then misgendering stops being a thing people can do. At least without very obviously being an old fogie using archaic language to yell at clouds ('look, she's shading my yard, get thee hence foul vapour!'). Accidental misgendering would become all but impossible.
(3/?)
Unlike a bunch of the really useful pronouns we've ditched from English (eg thee/thou/thine as the singular of you/yours), a language doesn't need gendered pronouns. Te Reo Māori, Mandarin Chinese and many other languages get along just fine without them.
Now that the gendered pronouns in English are actually causing social division, I think their time is over. I can't make that decision for anyone else's use of language, but I'm publicly announcing that I've made it for mine.
(4/?)
I'm very lucky to have always felt very comfortable being embodied as a male. Identifying fully as a 'man' was hard won, coming well into my 30s. But it's like a well worn pair of boots now. I can't imagine I'll ever feel misgendered by he/him.
All this serves as context for another flag; despite mocking profile pronouns, I'm getting on the bandwagon. From now on, I'm going to like being referred to as they/them. But purely as the corollary of preferring genderless pronouns in general.
(5/?)
Coda: I am living proof that people with questionable opinions about identity politics - who might easily be dismissed as 'down the rabbit hole' and ostracised - can *sometimes* be changed by kind engagement.
Like Stallman, I was one of those pedantic nerds who insisted that it was incorrect grammar to use they/them as singular pronouns. Until a patient housemate heard me say it, and asked me which pronoun I'd use to refer to a person whose name I didn't know, flipping my script forever.
(6/?)
I was one of those crusty old punks who would staunchly defend people flagging their pronouns online if they were trans or nonbinary, because it *wasn't* necessarily obvious. While take the piss out of other cis people doing it, as if it wasn't obvious what gender they were. Now I'm one of you ; }
(7/7)
@geniodiabolico
> Why am I elevating these specious points of grammar above the feelings of living humans that I know?
Exactly the question. For me it was always an intellectual argument, I've never refused to use they/them pronouns when asked. Trans people who've known Stallman have asserted that he always remembered and used the pronouns people told him they preferred.
But the point here it that we weren't just being pedantic, we were *factually wrong*, and willing to be convinced of that.
Strypey
Dave Slusher - Tech Stuff
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