I’m not threatened by they or them. I think ze and hir sound silly (especially hir - it sounds like her so what problem did you solve?). And I think the idea of proactively asking people if they have a Very Special Pronoun is silly - let them bring it up but I’m not going to waste time asking people who clearly present as male or female if they have special pronouns.
@Pizzagirl Hir does not sound like her. It is pronounced like “here”.
Do the folks on this board ever use “he or she” in writing, or do you always recast the sentence into the plural? Despite its awkwardness, it is a construction I use on occasion. Given the concerns expressed here, are people backing away from the “he or she” construction even more?
It’s generally accepted on this board to use D for daughter or S for son, how do those with trans, non binary, etc… offspring refer to their children here?
My 12-year-old daughter currently identifies as “queer, agender.” I’m still calling her D, partly out of habit and partly because she hasn’t asked for a pronoun switch yet. (Though she now doesn’t like to be called “sweetie”.) I’m totally on board with the rights of LBGTQ people to be who they are. But, considering puberty is pretty new to her and there are a lot of gender options these days, I’m not sure how to know when this is a solid thing. She says she doesn’t have a sexual preference yet.
I’ve seen C or DC for child or dear child- and that’s with non-gender queer kids, too.
I oscillate between “spouse” and Mr. R for my spouse.
I found out about halfway through my 2 week orientation that my cohort thought I was married to a woman. I’m not sure why, but everyone assumed I was a lesbian. I guess I never used pronouns. The rare time he came up, I referred to him as “my partner” (as is typical) and I guess I never needed to use a pronoun after that.
Almost no one expects anyone to be perfect. This is simply about respect and keeping things in mind. A few generations ago, there was similar outcry when colleges began to go gender neutral- meaning that they shifted away from assuming that “male” was the default and we shifted in to “male AND female” because, weirdly enough, women started going to school and didn’t want to be referred to as “he” in policies or whatnot.
My father, before he died last year at 94, had gotten quite used to using the correct pronouns for me, and to referring to me as his daughter rather than his son, early on in the nine years that had passed since my transition. I would hope that any parents of trans children here would eventually get used to doing similarly, assuming those children identified as male or female. As for non-binary children, I think romanigypsyeyes has the right idea.
good to know, I had always thought DC, or C was plural for Dear Children or Children, to be used when you were referring to kids of both genders in the same sentence. Learn something new ever day. I will be more careful to state DS and DD or DSx and DSx and DDx instead of just DC in the future to make sure people know I’m referring to more than one child.
“Hir does not sound like her. It is pronounced like “here”.”
Well, that’s why it won’t be adopted. It doesn’t signal its pronunciation by how it’s spelled.
Why not use it/its? If you’re not a he or a she, what’s so offensive about being an it?
Quite right! All English words, though they may come to the language through different means, are always pronounced exactly as they are spelled!
If you want to introduce a neologism, and especially if you want to enforce its use, it seems to me that it’s better if it doesn’t seem dopey to a lot of people. “Ms.” had some opposition, but it had the advantage of sounding natural to a lot of people (especially people from the South). I think “their” has the same advantage, because it’s already in our ears. “Ze” and “hir” do not share these advantages, so it will be much harder, in my opinion, to get most people to use them.
Indeed, many–probably most–people already use “their” in connection with words like everybody and everyone. “Did somebody leave their hat here?” just doesn’t sound that strange.
Teenagers are comfortable using “they” and “them” in the singular in exchanges like this: “Who are you going to the movies with?” “With my friend.” “Who is this friend?” “You don’t know them.”
When my daughter used “they” and “them” in high school to refer to a friend, the friend always turned out to be a boy.
Harvard has joined in.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/9/2/registrar-adds-pgp-option/
So is it “they is” or “they are”?
My kid’s college has “suggested syllabus statements” about a number of things that can be included but are not required. This is among them:
Preferred Gender Pronoun
This course affirms people of all gender expressions and gender identities. If you prefer to be called a different name than what is on the class roster, please let me know. Feel free to correct me on your preferred gender pronoun. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.
133: It's *they are/i, just as the formerly-only-available-in-plural-but-now-also-singular *you* takes *are* in both the singular and the plural.
Note the issue I heard discussed this AM about the trans kid who wants to use the female bathroom because that’s the kid’s gender id and a bunch of students walked out in protest. Not commenting on that but rather that this person id’s as female and wants to be seen that way by others. That kind of need makes the idea of xem or zirs or whatever less likely to catch on. When word choices are so purely personal desire, I don’t see much success.
Ms., by contrast, filled a need for women who didn’t want to be labeled as single or married no matter their status. There are reasons, both social and business, not to be labeled and Ms is somewhat clearer as a label for a woman who is married but uses either her original surname or a new combo surname. As in, if your name is Joan Smith and you are married to George Gordon, you’d traditionally be Mrs. Gordon but if you are Mrs. Smith that implies your husband’s name is Smith.
Note also the TV show Carmichael, which is mostly about class and age differences in an African-American family, brought up trans issues through a Big Brother kid the lead Jerod Carmichael mentors. The discussion was interesting: it brought out how trans issues are new even to the relatively young and how attitudes among the older generation - even the church goer mom - have changed dramatically. It ends with Carmichael telling the kid he doesn’t need to understand 100% to support him 100%, which was a nice way of presenting it.
@Lergnom For people that are non-binary gender, this is the same as a trans individual wanting to use their preferred pronoun (well, actual pronoun). They don’t identify as female or male. It’s not about word choice. They aren’t a woman, they aren’t a man, so what are they? They need a word to describe who they are. It’s exactly like Ms, which fills the voided between single or married, but is different in that identifying as Ms is a personal choice, being non-binary gender isn’t.
I don’t see why this is so hard for you (and others) to understand. You seem to think that people just don’t want to be called male or female. That’s not the case; neither term applies to them from a gender standpoint.
And again, this isn’t about “catching on” or anyone asking people to start using gender neutral pronouns to describe themselves. This is individuals wanting to be recognized as who they are.
If you have no problem referring to a trans individual by their proper and preferred pronoun, I don’t see how you can have a problem doing the same for individuals that are non-binary gender. It’s the exact same thing.
“They aren’t a woman, they aren’t a man, so what are they?”
Seriously, what’s wrong with the word “it”? It already exists in English.
I was listening to a lecture series by an archeologist, and she made a point that I thought was relevant to this discussion. She said that archeologists use the term “sex” to refer to physical differences between males and females, and “gender” to refer more to social roles. I think we use these terms interchangeably, and it creates confusion. With all due respect, the vast majority of agender people have a sex, and it is male or female. That’s just biology. (Yes, I know there are some exceptions, but it doesn’t seem to me that we are really talking about those primarily.) What they have is a gender identity that does not fit into traditional male or female gender roles. And much of our language is based on gender in this sense, rather on sex per se. This, I think, is why so many people can’t get their heads around a person who is genetically and physically a member of one sex preferring to be considered agender and preferring non-gendered pronouns–we are mixing up sex and gender.