Thereās definitely some additional nuance (like a pronouns in bio/username situation) but this should cover the broad needs of anyone who is approaching this with good faith.
Thereās definitely some additional nuance (like a pronouns in bio/username situation) but this should cover the broad needs of anyone who is approaching this with good faith.
This is so rubbish. Almost everyone is a he or she, so just use that. On the very very very rare instance you get it wrong, say sorry and use the correct one from then on. Unless you forget, the appologise again when corrected. Yes I am imply it is on the person who got called the wrong pronoun to correct the one who made the mistake.
Iāve never met a person in real life who got upset because someone used the wrong pronoun once. Assuming peopleās gender is fine, as long as you donāt double down on your assumption when someone corrects you
Wouldnāt it be much easier to use the grammatically well established singular they/them. That way you never run into an issue. Surely youād do that when you encounter a name that can be used as both a female and a male name (Jessie, Les etc)
This implies you can not tell the personās gender, which for most people is perfectly obvious. So often can cause offence. I realize not using they/them can also cause offence, but just much less often.
I mean, historically itās well established, but you canāt deny that language has evolved in many places (at least in America) that they/them feels plural. Iām not saying they/them shouldnāt be gender neutral singular pronouns, but in the dialect I was raised, it only feels correct in indeterminate situations, like āwhoever stole my bike, I hope they get arrested.ā
Obviously language can continue to evolve where singular-they feels correct in any scenario, but if youāre talking about āmuch easierā then that includes the random rules people collectively hallucinate.
If were going from whats Ā«grammatically well establishedĀ» i would argue he/she is a lot more established
Tbh just saying they is easier, took a few weeks/months to train myself to do it and now Iām just cringing whenever I hear something thatās like āhe or she could be doing this thingā when ātheyā is just more efficient anyway. Theyāre just as established. I think ātheyā is an older term but Iād have to look into the etymology on that.
So Iām not sure how reliable it is given the age of the data but it looks like thereās some indication that ātheyā fell in use up to the late 1900s but before ~1860 it was actually more common than now. Iām now curious if thereās any more info on this.
He/She is fine for when you know the gender of someone. When you donāt they is really well established - it was used by Chaucer. So they if you donāt know because they might go by something else, they for someone with a name like Leslie who could be a he or a she outside of any discussion about trans identities.
I tend to agree, but I do get where the other viewpoint comes from. Iām from a country where I donāt believe this is a major point of contention, as long as weāre respectful with each other I donāt think people feel the need to make a big deal out of this, but Iām aware Iām speaking from a bubble here, others may disagree.
I do work in an international company with many anglophones from the UK and USA, and itās a much bigger point there, to the point certain expressions are banned, e.g. addressing a group as guys. I speculate that itās a bit of a cultural thing, and a language thing. As others mention, a lot of languages are Ill suited to naturally use gender neutrality. English is quite malleable that way.
I have a really hard time recognizing peopleās gender so I usually go along with the same pronouns others use and then inevitably feel really bad about it because of how often itās wrong. In languages without an accepted they/them equivalent I just flip flop but in English I really donāt understand the need to use he/she unless itās ambiguous whether there are one or more people being spoken about.