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I 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. ( more on language design )
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. ( more on language design )
