|
|
| Line 13: |
Line 13: |
| There is an argument that [[Doubt|constructive ambiguity]] is no bad thing. Perhaps a “runniness at the edges” of one’s contractual commitments and rights might moderate one’s tendency to officiousness when policing one’s [[relationship agreement|commercial relationship]]s. Any that can encourage merchants away from the docs and towards ''calling'' the other guy has got to be a good thing. | | There is an argument that [[Doubt|constructive ambiguity]] is no bad thing. Perhaps a “runniness at the edges” of one’s contractual commitments and rights might moderate one’s tendency to officiousness when policing one’s [[relationship agreement|commercial relationship]]s. Any that can encourage merchants away from the docs and towards ''calling'' the other guy has got to be a good thing. |
|
| |
|
| ===Pronouns and [[gender]]===
| | {{pronouns and gender}} |
| :''Fools rush in where [[libtard]]s fear to tread.''
| |
| :— {{author|Alexander Pope}}
| |
| | |
| Much ink and no small amount of bile has been spilt on the question of [[gender inclusivity]] in language. Some of it, we cautiously venture, speaks to a bit of softness in the command of grammar from those who study grievances.
| |
| | |
| There is a fashion towards signposting one’s preferred personal pronoun wherever the opportunity arises: business cards, [[email]] signoffs, [[LinkedIn]] profiles and so on. So, “[[Otto Büchstein]] (They/Them)”, for example.
| |
| | |
| Now the [[JC]] has no quarrel with how any of his fellow humans want to identify their own gender — variety being the spice of life, the more concoctions we have between us the better — though one does risk tripping over the conclusion that lies down that road, if you go far enough along it, that there should be ''no'' genders; we are all different, all individuals and the very idea of declining [[noun]]s in the first place was a ghastly mistake.<ref>The problem with atomising identity groups, to avoid those at the margins being categorised in a way that doesn’t suit them, is that “margins” are a property of ''any'' group, however small, until it numbers ''one''. Thus, any philosophy that emphasises marginalised identities will tend to fray at the edges.</ref> But with even that aside, there are still a few puzzling aspects about this behaviour.
| |
| | |
| Firstly there is that [[slash]]; that [[virgule]]. As with “[[and/or]]”, “(she/her)” is an ungainly construction, and it speaks to a certain fussiness unrelated to one’s wish to be clear about one’s gender. Why include [[nominative]] ''and'' [[accusative]]? Are there some for whom gender differs depending on their position in a sentence? Can one be a ''he'' when a ''doer'', and a ''she'' when a ''done to''? If the goal is to neuter the power structures implicit in our language, this seems an odd way of going about it. And if that is the idea, why stop at [[subject]] and [[object]]? What about the possessive? Shouldn’t it be “(she/her/hers)”? And, actually, why not include datives, genitives and ablatives? Will we eventually go the whole hog and append “(she/her/her/her/her/hers)”?
| |
| | |
| Second, for the great majority of the population — the whole “cis-normal” part, at least — there’s already a way of unfussily designating your gender: your ''title'': Mr., Mrs., Ms., Miss, and Master. Of this great mass of hetero-normativity, only academics and medics have a quandary. Even they could fix it, if they cared to, by adding a gendered title to to their honorific, the same way judges do: Mr. Doctor Jung; Mrs. Doctor Freud, and so forth.
| |
| | |
| Third, this [[pronoun angst]] is directed only at ''third-person singular'' pronouns. The other five buckets are fine as they are. Yet, when we address someone directly, we don’t use the third person, except to distance ourselves from our own tendentious but firmly-held opinions, as the [[JC]] often does. <Ref>Though this is to switch ''first'' for third person, not the second. I hardly need lecture the world on how I should gender ''myself''.</ref>
| |
| | |
| The ''second'' person pronoun, — “you” for most of the English speaking world, “y’all” for the Americans, “youse” for the kiwis — is perfectly [[gender-inclusive]] already.<ref>Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby made this point well in her show ''Douglas''.</ref> This is the one we use invariably for interpersonal communication: wherever you may be on the gender spectrum, you remain politely, unoppressively, uncontroversially, incontrovertibly, ''you''. I dare say language evolved like this precisely ''because'' of the difficulties one would otherwise have making polite conversation with unfamiliar individuals of an apparently, but not definitively, feminine or masculine bearing.
| |
| | |
| So, the “(he/him)” designation appears to stipulate how one should gender a person ''when communicating about that person with someone else''. I am going to get in trouble for saying this, readers, but that strikes me as rather ''bossy''. Who are ''you'' to tell ''me'' how to moderate the language ''I'' use with ''someone else''? Not to say, a little delusional: aren’t my choices of the pronoun to use when talking about you the least of your concerns? (What if I call you “bossy”? Or a “pronoun bore”?)
| |
| | |
| The [[JC]] dreads to think what people say about (he/him) behind (he/his) back: if the worst they do is to misgender (he/him) then all is well in the world, frankly.
| |
| | |
| {{sa}} | | {{sa}} |
| *[[Chauvinist language]] | | *[[Chauvinist language]] |
| {{Ref}} | | {{Ref}} |