Sam Smith and They

[FranTastic444]

After opening the thread with Sam Smith and They, I should really give an honorable mention to Van Morrison and Them.....

I’ll get my coat

[Daryl]

...if you present as a male the pronoun is "he", if female then "she"...

What if you don't present as either (e.g. if you are intersex or asexual)?  Why should you be forced to pretend to conform to a false classification system?

Because it is not (deep ominous voice) "a classification system", nor is it "false", but rather an observation and a linguistic convenience. Only gender theorists want to do away with that convenience and make gendered words seem to be the site of a struggle for justice. Those theorists want to force the rest of us to do something with our common language, to conform to their theories about the role language plays in enforcing behaviours. Let's not play make-believe about who is attempting to force who to do what.

To "not present as either" actually takes a lot of work for most people, because humans are very good at detecting the markers of sex in each other. That's not socially constructed, but a biological fact. The tiny minority of people who are actually so androgynous biologically that people may have to inquire about them, mostly can supply one or the other identifiers quite easily. That doesn't stop them from being used as rhetorical pawns, however.

[Daryl]

I see that the Merriam-Webster dictionary has just added “they” as an acceptable non-binary pronoun. So there you are. It’s official. Well, in the USA anyway!

Yeah, well, Webster was the guy who gave Americans all their unique spellings, like "theater" and "color", so one person changing the habits of an entire country to suit his own whims, and by using his privileged position to do so, has a long history in the USA.

[Daryl]

Sam Smith, a very popular artiste in the arena of pop music for the youth of today, has announced that he is non-binary.

He seems to have a penchant for heels but to date he seems to have mainly dressed in traditional male garb. It will be interesting to see if / how he dresses going forward.

My reason for posting is to ask for opinions on use of they / them. I find it a most unsatisfactory solution in that it corrupts the original use of the words. I totally get that a different pronoun that is neither he or she is needed here, but the use of they seems so wrong in my mind - almost inferring that someone who is non-binary is some sort of schizophrenic This article lists some of the alternative option.

I've mentioned before that I think we should have a third gender for pronouns and honorifics, more as a convenience in language than anything else, but they would also solve the problem for people who don't want their sex identified in references to them. I think these could gain popularity as formalisms, if we could find words that would themselves gain traction.

I agree with you about the use of "they". (I found the list of alternative options quite humourous.)

[crfriend]

I've mentioned before that I think we should have a third gender for pronouns and honorifics, more as a convenience in language than anything else, but they would also solve the problem for people who don't want their sex identified in references to them.

We already have one: "it". It [used as a pronoun] is completely devoid of gender and is ready for duty.

[pelmut]

... nobody has the right to dictate to someone else their choice of which pronoun to use.

"Dictate" is perhaps a little strong, but the pronoun chosen by a considerate speaker will be the one the person would prefer to be known by.  A speaker who repeatedly uses pronouns which they have been asked not to, is inconsiderate at best and a bully at worst.

But the person demanding the use of a special language accomodation, no, that's not a bully. What hooey.

"Demanding", "Dictate"; these are confrontational words.  Every encounter doesn't need to be turned into a confrontation: I can tell you my name without demanding that you use it and you can hear what I prefer to be called without feeling that I am dictating to you.

If you persisted in calling a man "Miss" when you knew he preferred to be called "Mr.", it would not make him a bully if he asked you to desist from calling him something he didn't like.  Common courtesies such as this are the things that help to make life more pleasant in our daily encounters, surely you don't regard them as impositions dictated to you ?

I called him a "Pig-faced babboon and a thief"
When he suddenly struck me - it passes belief !

     "In Other Words" sung by George Robey

[Jim]

We used to have the word "he", which Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary defined as

2: that one whose sex is unknown or immaterial.

It was a very useful word. I wish we could make it inclusive again.

[crfriend]

It was a very useful word. I wish we could make it inclusive again.

We in the USA lost that usage in the 1970s with the rise of radical feminism.

[Stevie D]

I've mentioned before that I think we should have a third gender for pronouns and honorifics, more as a convenience in language than anything else, but they would also solve the problem for people who don't want their sex identified in references to them.

We already have one: "it". It [used as a pronoun] is completely devoid of gender and is ready for duty.

Maybe, but when applied to people, especially trans or gender-neutral/fluid people, ''it' is highly offensive and demeaning. That is the way the language has evolved and there is never any way back from that.

[Ray]

Indeed.

Just go with the flow! If you are asked to use a certain pronoun, what’s the issue? Make someone happy. If they (see what I did there?) ask to be referred to as “he, she, they” then why kick back?

[crfriend]

Why kick back? Because the whole thing smacks of Orwellian Newspeak, that's why. We're already too PC and we risk losing control of the language.

What English needs is the equivalent of the Académie française.

[pelmut]

What English needs is the equivalent of the Académie française.

They are fighting a losing battle, Franglais is rife and some of the 'correct' French words have virtually fallen into disuse.

[Dust]

I am afraid that I find the whole idiotic, if you present as a male the pronoun is "he", if female then "she". This world is just plain crazy, all the important issues like survival of us and the planet we ignore and then we argue about this stuff which is just not really important.

John

Aren't sexual relations (and therefore all of these LGBT issues) about the propagation and continuation of the human race, and therefore really about our "survival"?

[crfriend]

[...] fighting a losing battle, Franglais is rife and some of the 'correct' French words have virtually fallen into disuse.

I know, and I also know that any attempt to save English from creeping PC is a rear-guard action at best, if not already lost altogether.

Quite honestly, I do not care if my speech-patterns and writing have a late 19th Century character -- and I take my ration of abuse for it. I'll be gone in a few years and that voice shall forever fall silent. Perhaps some random soul will recall it, or some future one may read and take a liking. That I cannot know. What I do know is that I will fight Newspeak and PC to the bitter end.

My general tactics are to avoid using "contemporary" and "twee" Newspeak-hijacked words altogether or to deliberately stress them in their proper meanings in instances where it'll deliberately remind folks of the hijacking, and to reintroduce older terms that have been completely successfully hijacked using their original meanings in instances deliberately chosen to highlight the hijacking using humour. I've gotten into trouble a few times for the second tactic, but when I tell my accuser to look it up in a 40+ year old dictionary I almost always get an apology.

[Pdxfashionpioneer]

We already have one: "it". It [used as a pronoun] is completely devoid of gender and is ready for duty.

It's offensive to call someone an "it." That suggests they're an object rather than a person and depending on the inflection you give it, perhaps a distasteful object.

It seems to me that it is only good manner to address a person as they wish to be addressed so long as you're not demeaning yourself. Is that really asking so much?

Isn't that respecting who they see themselves as? And don't each and everyone of us expect to be accepted and respected for whom we see ourselves by everyone we meet when we're in our skirts?