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memevectorI have this idea that my LJ is going to be a gender-pronoun-free zone.
One possible objection to my plan would be that particular people may have a personal objection to being referred to without including their gender. So I'm open to requests from individuals to use a traditional gendered pronoun for them personally, or indeed a particular ungendered pronoun of their choice.
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36 pointed out in a recent essay, gendered pronouns are a way of continually referring to people's gender even when it's irrelevant to all other content of the discussion; and we (f.s.v.o. "we") would consider it strange and probably rather suspect if someone was doing that with race or body size.
So if I refer to someone by an ungendered pronoun, then I'm not implying some particular experience (or opinion) of their own personal gender. My choice of words is correlated not with something about them, but with my view that it would be better not to drag gender - any gender - into things when it's not relevant.
(The logical exception to that is if I were in a conversation using mostly gendered pronouns and then began to refer to someone who rejects them, in which case I would be choosing an ungendered pronoun precisely in order to correspond with their sense of themself - but that scenario requires gendered pronouns as the default, so the idea is that shan't happen here.)
I know there's no general consensus of what the ungendered singular pronouns should be, but I don't think that's an important objection. After all, lots of words have synonyms. And language changes, and different words become popular, and over time some fall into disuse. So, despite what some people say, I don't think it's necessary to decide in advance which pronouns are "the ones". I think we just need to be clear with each other about what we mean by them. And over time, some will catch on more than others (as has of course already happened in this area on a small scale).
As to the actual words:
I have given this a lot of thought over the years, and been in several discussions about it recently <waves at36 and D>, and my current faves are:
ze (where one might otherwise have said he, she or they)
em (where one might have said him, her or them)
zeir (where one might have said his, hers or their)
(I think I might have made up "zeir". But maybe not. Anyway I mean it to rhyme with "their". Sort of like someone with a French accent saying "their".)
or they / them / their, if and when such usage seems fitting & wouldn't be ambiguous.
This is only where I'm at with it right now, not a commitment that I'm sticking to those, or an implied demand for other people to start using them.
My criteria were/are:
- similarity/logical correlation with other words already in general use as pronouns
- sufficiently clear difference from other words already in general use to mean other things.
What I found is, it's easy to make up words that are distinctive enough in writing, but in conversational speech it's much more of a challenge. Most of the alternatives that I rejected were ditched mainly or entirely because of their limitations in that area.
Some people say that the sound of Z is hard to pronounce, and I'd agree that it is slightly more effort than some other consonants. (N is an easy one, for instance.) But then again I've never heard anyone complain about what hard work it is to say the words "zoo" or "zebra", let alone "isn't" or "doesn't". And both Dutch and German use the Z sound all over the place, including at the beginning of lots of words. So I can't help suspecting that the source of that complaint is mostly simple unfamiliarity and lack of practice with the words.
(Another source of some complaints aimed at particular words is an unacknowledged discomfort with the meaning - as when people claim that the word "chairperson" is clumsy or say "But "Lesbian" is such an ugly word".)
Pronouns are often said in a very condensed way - he sometimes becomes 'e; she (said fast in the middle of a sentence) is more like sh'; they becomes more like th'. Her becomes 'er, him becomes 'im, and them becomes 'em. But we still recognise them all, partly by context and partly by the remaining little sound. I wanted pronouns that would still work when they were squashed down like that. So the alleged/arguable slight drawback in ease of pronunciation of Z is counterbalanced for me by its distinctive sound.
I will add that in the long run, I think e has a promising future, but it sounds so much like the abbreviated he that I think it'll only come into its own if&when he has become unfashionable.
I could say much more about exactly why I rejected every single other contender I'd heard of and chose those, but I can't be bothered right now! If you think another one is better, then I'd like you to use it, and if it sounds better to me then I'll adopt it instead :-)
One possible objection to my plan would be that particular people may have a personal objection to being referred to without including their gender. So I'm open to requests from individuals to use a traditional gendered pronoun for them personally, or indeed a particular ungendered pronoun of their choice.
As
36 pointed out in a recent essay, gendered pronouns are a way of continually referring to people's gender even when it's irrelevant to all other content of the discussion; and we (f.s.v.o. "we") would consider it strange and probably rather suspect if someone was doing that with race or body size. So if I refer to someone by an ungendered pronoun, then I'm not implying some particular experience (or opinion) of their own personal gender. My choice of words is correlated not with something about them, but with my view that it would be better not to drag gender - any gender - into things when it's not relevant.
(The logical exception to that is if I were in a conversation using mostly gendered pronouns and then began to refer to someone who rejects them, in which case I would be choosing an ungendered pronoun precisely in order to correspond with their sense of themself - but that scenario requires gendered pronouns as the default, so the idea is that shan't happen here.)
I know there's no general consensus of what the ungendered singular pronouns should be, but I don't think that's an important objection. After all, lots of words have synonyms. And language changes, and different words become popular, and over time some fall into disuse. So, despite what some people say, I don't think it's necessary to decide in advance which pronouns are "the ones". I think we just need to be clear with each other about what we mean by them. And over time, some will catch on more than others (as has of course already happened in this area on a small scale).
As to the actual words:
I have given this a lot of thought over the years, and been in several discussions about it recently <waves at
36 and D>, and my current faves are:ze (where one might otherwise have said he, she or they)
em (where one might have said him, her or them)
zeir (where one might have said his, hers or their)
(I think I might have made up "zeir". But maybe not. Anyway I mean it to rhyme with "their". Sort of like someone with a French accent saying "their".)
or they / them / their, if and when such usage seems fitting & wouldn't be ambiguous.
This is only where I'm at with it right now, not a commitment that I'm sticking to those, or an implied demand for other people to start using them.
My criteria were/are:
- similarity/logical correlation with other words already in general use as pronouns
- sufficiently clear difference from other words already in general use to mean other things.
What I found is, it's easy to make up words that are distinctive enough in writing, but in conversational speech it's much more of a challenge. Most of the alternatives that I rejected were ditched mainly or entirely because of their limitations in that area.
Some people say that the sound of Z is hard to pronounce, and I'd agree that it is slightly more effort than some other consonants. (N is an easy one, for instance.) But then again I've never heard anyone complain about what hard work it is to say the words "zoo" or "zebra", let alone "isn't" or "doesn't". And both Dutch and German use the Z sound all over the place, including at the beginning of lots of words. So I can't help suspecting that the source of that complaint is mostly simple unfamiliarity and lack of practice with the words.
(Another source of some complaints aimed at particular words is an unacknowledged discomfort with the meaning - as when people claim that the word "chairperson" is clumsy or say "But "Lesbian" is such an ugly word".)
Pronouns are often said in a very condensed way - he sometimes becomes 'e; she (said fast in the middle of a sentence) is more like sh'; they becomes more like th'. Her becomes 'er, him becomes 'im, and them becomes 'em. But we still recognise them all, partly by context and partly by the remaining little sound. I wanted pronouns that would still work when they were squashed down like that. So the alleged/arguable slight drawback in ease of pronunciation of Z is counterbalanced for me by its distinctive sound.
I will add that in the long run, I think e has a promising future, but it sounds so much like the abbreviated he that I think it'll only come into its own if&when he has become unfashionable.
I could say much more about exactly why I rejected every single other contender I'd heard of and chose those, but I can't be bothered right now! If you think another one is better, then I'd like you to use it, and if it sounds better to me then I'll adopt it instead :-)
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(no subject)
Date: 2002-02-20 07:28 am (UTC)Do you mind if I pass the URL of this entry on to the Sphere list? There's currently a discussion in progress touching on many of the areas of interest you cover above.
(no subject)
Date: 2002-02-21 01:23 pm (UTC)ha-haa!
<does a little self-celebratory dance>
yay original thinking!
The pronunciation thing is the songwriting influence. I've had cause to spend a lot of time considering the comprehensibility of different words, in particular as affected by the rhythm with which they're said (or indeed sung).
Do you mind if I pass the URL of this entry on to the Sphere list?
not at all - I would say "go ahead" but you already did :-)
There's currently a discussion in progress touching on many of the areas of interest you cover above.
yeah I've been lurking on sphere for the last couple of weeks (since you asked KH to sort out what was happening with my subscription, for which thanks). It was quite handy that that discussion came along when I was writing the post, 'cause it reminded me of a couple of things I wanted to say. E.g. to explicitly comment on the thing about whether we have to wait till we've all agreed before we can begin using them.
(no subject)
Date: 2002-02-23 09:55 am (UTC)