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By the way, here's a thing I think is a Bad Meme: criticizing not putting your pronouns in your bio/in introductions.

I felt pressured to do so before I was *out* as nonbinary trans-femme. It felt like pressure to out or misgender myself.

I do it now, and I'm all for it... but it shouldn't be mandatory. Someone might have a reason for not doing so. You might pressure them into doing the wrong thing.
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber

Christine Lemmer-Webber
Christine Lemmer-Webber
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Also honestly the *long-term* solution is questioning why we prioritize gendering in our pronouns.

Pronouns are scoped temporary variables. If you were to design a language today, would you choose to prioritize that information? We know that gendered pronouns automatically load a giant set of preconceptions, whether we want to or not. Does doing so help or hurt more often?

Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.

in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber

Christine Lemmer-Webber
Christine Lemmer-Webber
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See Lojban as a language that embraces "pronouns are just scoped temporary variables". No additional information is added to them by default, but you can *add* additional language.

English is a language that's forever changing based on use; it's worth considering how we might use-change it.

Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.

in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber

Meena
Meena
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i wonder if we can pinpoint when which language gained gendered pronouns, and what the peoples speaking that language where going thru culturally
in reply to Meena

Elena ``of Valhalla''
Elena ``of Valhalla''
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For indoeuropean languages it (gaining a grammatical gender) probably happened at a time that is remote enough that we probably can't even know exactly what archeological culture was speaking that language, there is probably no way to discover what was happening with them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_nominals#Gender

(and many other language families have wildly different grammatical gender classes)
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

Meena
Meena
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i *really* like Hittite for this reason, i wish there was enough resources to learn it
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber

momo
momo
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Yesterday I folowed a 90 minutes long discussion about how our language changes and how we feel about it changing and whether discrimination will end or be less when we adapt it or not. It was a talk show with different opinions but all participants wherer respecting the other ones even when they disagreed on their opinions.

Language is a moving target. Learning is a our livelong effort. Maybe our language will be more discrimination free and more involving and appreciating.
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber

Ludovic Courtès
Ludovic Courtès
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Agreed. English kinda allows you to avoid gendering everything, if you don’t want to; one can default to “they”.

Unfortunately, Latin languages are in a bad situation: you have to resort to various tricks and paraphrases, often ending up double-gendering phrases. Fellow French (and Catalan, Castilian, etc.) speakers know what I’m talking about…

Christine Lemmer-Webber reshared this.

in reply to Ludovic Courtès

(mapcar #'emacsomancer objs)
(mapcar #'emacsomancer objs)
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Though English's 'default' "they" (which I think most people do in fact have in their grammars, so this sort of use of singular "they" historically pre-dates the use of "you" (rather than "thou") as a singular) actually seems to have particular properties, which also partially overlap with the use of "they" as a chosen pronoun.

That is, English's default non-plural "they" signals either lack of knowledge or genericity. Using it to refer to known, specific person still usually takes English speakers conscious effort.

But, yeah, Romance languages in general end up in a 'worse' position in terms of their accident morphology: there are only two genders and they don't generally neutralise in the plural.

@cwebber
@Christine Lemmer-Webber
in reply to Ludovic Courtès

Elena ``of Valhalla''
Elena ``of Valhalla''
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OTOH, I think that especially for somebody who presents as male, listing “they” as their pronoun is already a message that they may or may not be willing to give.

That's unrelated with defaulting to “they” for other people, just a reason why even using “they” may not be a solution for people who are being pressured into listing their pronouns.
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber

Anke
Anke
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I wish European languages (all languages, really, but I don't know how many other languages even have gendered pronouns) had proximate/obviative pronouns instead of gendered ones.
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber

DoeNietZoMoeilijk 🥔
DoeNietZoMoeilijk 🥔
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Frankly, people shouldn't be pressured into *anything*, really.

But published pronouns or no, congrats / good luck (not sure which one you feel is more appropriate) on your journey!
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber

GunChleoc
GunChleoc
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Agreed it shouldn't be mandatory. A person's gender is completely unimportant to me when I'm having a discussion about a subject.
in reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber

Arne Babenhauserheide
Arne Babenhauserheide
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Back when I was in School I made a point of not having my gender in forms, simply because I didn’t like the social implications (I’m a he, so I must have short hair and like football and cars? No, thank you)

Today, thanks to the German constitutional court ruling that forcing people to identify as either or is illegal discrimination against intersexual people, I can luckily just say “no answer” in most forms.

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