Timeline for Responding to the Lavender Letter and commitments moving forward
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
39 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 12, 2023 at 10:32 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | FWIW, there is good evidence that "gender" in the Romance languages is pretty well entirely arbitrary, and nothing to do with perception of gender (in particular, the genders for various inanimate objects vary all over the place in those languages, and there are no worthwhile, practical rules for it in any of those languages). The only real reason they get called "masculine" and "feminine" is because of the common pattern that the words for "man" and "woman" end up in different categories. "Gender" shares etymology with the much more general concept "genre", after all. | |
| Aug 12, 2023 at 10:25 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Aug 12, 2023 at 12:43 | |||||
| Oct 21, 2020 at 17:51 | comment | added | IS4 | @Catija My native language has full inflection with masculine, feminine, and neuter gender, and there are also lots of words that can be used with epiecene meaning (mainly professions) but they have masculine gender. If a person gets offended by this, it's not the fault of the language or the speaker, it is fault of the person since they don't know the meaning behind the word. I am not generally against changes in languages, but I am if they are based on ignorance or laziness, and are imposed upon others. It would seem more efficient to me to try educate these people instead of making changes. | |
| Oct 21, 2020 at 14:13 | comment | added | Catija Staff | This is particularly the case when a traditionally feminine role ends up defaulting to female - which is also exclusionary of males in that profession. So, the goal is to help people feel included by not pigeonholing their profession (or whatever else) into a specific gendered pronoun. For the prior example, pluralizing is likely the best choice "When doctors take the Hippocratic Oath, they promise to do no harm." but it's also perfectly valid and more inclusive to use "they" as a singular if you need it to be singular - "When a doctor takes the Hippocratic Oath, they promise to do no harm." | |
| Oct 21, 2020 at 14:08 | comment | added | Catija Staff | @gbjbaanb I'm not telling you that what you learned is wrong. I'm telling you that - 30 years later - it's not current and that it's losing acceptance. You're more than welcome to continue to use it but you should be aware of the impact it has on others when you do so. Many women and non-binary people feel that seeing "he" everywhere, particularly in a generic use, leaves them feeling excluded. Consider - "When a doctor takes the Hippocratic Oath, he promises to do no harm." - many women feel that this subtly implies that all doctors are male. | |
| Oct 21, 2020 at 14:05 | comment | added | Catija Staff | @IllidanS4supportsMonica The rules on this site do not require that people avoid "he" as a neutral pronoun. We state that we prefer that you avoid it but it's allowed. What is not allowed is to continue to use "he" when discussing a specific person after they've told you to use something else. As too many people now do not accept "he" as a gender neutral option - we strongly encourage people to avoid it because it is exclusionary to many, many people. | |
| Oct 21, 2020 at 13:52 | comment | added | gbjbaanb | @Catija incorrect. My (female) English teacher taught me "he embraces she" way back in the 80s. The 'political' push to redefine this langauge part correspends to a lot of other politically-motivated pushes to redefine society at the same time. The change has been imposed, not gradually drifted like, say the word gay. You changed its meaning, and are now telling me everything I learned is wrong. Its all very 2+2=5 to me. | |
| Oct 21, 2020 at 10:19 | comment | added | IS4 | @Catija That's incorrect. If a speaker of a specific dialect of English uses "he" as a gender-neutral pronoun, then it is not just technically neutral, it is neutral, in that person's language. If someone gets offended by that, it's not the fault and blame of the speaker, since it comes from misunderstanding the language they use. English isn't uniform and universal; there could be a tendency to move away from certain features, but to tell an individual to stop using their language would be immoral and anti-scientific. | |
| Oct 20, 2020 at 20:37 | comment | added | Catija Staff | @gbjbaanb It's not a matter of realization. Many people are well aware of "he" being historically considered gender neutral. What's happened is that people - including women - are tired of being referred to as "he" and are tired of only hearing things be about "him" because, even if it's technically "neutral" - it is not. From my youth there was already a push to switch away from it in the 80s and 90s... to alternate between he and she or use "he/she" or "s/he". Using they as singular neutral has far more historical usage dating back centuries and is truly non-gendered. | |
| Oct 19, 2020 at 17:40 | comment | added | Rounin | Thanks, @gbjbaanb. I stand corrected. | |
| Oct 19, 2020 at 12:10 | comment | added | gbjbaanb | @Rounin I think you'd be surprised. Generally older folk use it in this way, its how we were taught. Young people apparently are taught otherwise. You must be hanging out with one of these groups and not the other! "One" is probably a better single replacement than they, which doesn't always work so should only be stylistic and not a grammatical rule. | |
| Oct 19, 2020 at 11:43 | comment | added | gbjbaanb | @Rounin the reasons are 2fold: "he" is already a gender-neutral term (though I know many no longer realise this and assume its masculine; they changed the language then demand a change to compensate in a very circular way), "they" is already a plural term, so using it in the singular makes many sentences difficult to understand. | |
| Oct 16, 2020 at 19:39 | comment | added | IS4 | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| Oct 14, 2020 at 21:57 | comment | added | Catija Staff | @BlackThorn I'm unaware of that. I can think of one person who proposed that as a solution but the idea was quickly dropped after it was explained why that wasn't acceptable, either. | |
| Oct 14, 2020 at 21:52 | comment | added | BlackThorn | @Catija I'm sorry, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't one of the big controversies in the last year surrounding someone who, in an effort to not offend anyone, refused to call anyone anything other than "they"? I honestly am not sure how that resolved because all of the drama led to me taking a long break from the site, but I feel like you are framing the issue poorly. | |
| Oct 14, 2020 at 14:16 | comment | added | Stop harming Monica | @Rounin As I told you before that doesn't matter. Whatever pronoun you can think of, common use or not, there will be somebody objecting to being addressed by it on grounds of gender identity or maybe something-else identity. | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 23:59 | comment | added | Rounin | I am strongly in favour of a common-use non-gender-specific third person singular equivalent of "I, you, we, you and they". To be honest I struggle to understand why anyone wouldn't be. I hope - given this discussion has been going on since 1789 - that this year we finally get one. P.S. This Saturday is International #PronounsDay. | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 23:49 | comment | added | Rounin | The conversation has evolved now (I have been away for several days) but I should state (for the record) that when I asked: "[...] do we need more than one set of non-gender-specific third person singular pronouns?" I was not (at all) suggesting that that set should be "they, them, themselves" but rather something entirely dedicated (rather than repurposed). My motivating thought being: when multiple alternative sets compete to achieve mainstream traction, it becomes less likely that any particular set will. And without mainstream traction we're going nowhere progressive anytime soon. | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 23:16 | comment | added | IS4 | @Wildcard That's intriguing to hear. I am not a native English speaker so my "sense of language" might be kinda shifted, but that would make it quite similar to my (Slavic) language where the masculine gender is commonly used in grammar for an unspecified gender. If that was also the case in English, I now understand why someone would consider singular "they" unnecessary, perhaps a hypercorrection. | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 23:02 | comment | added | Wildcard | @IllidanS4supportsMonica it's not that simple. "He" has long historic usage in referring to an unspecified single person. "They" is now being used similarly but some object to it. Now, you can say that "they" is inherently a better term, and that you'll simply avoid it on a case-by-case basis if/when someone objects. But I (and most people) simply use "he" or "she" as we guess most appropriate—we're right more than 90% of the time—and SWITCH for individuals who object. The crux of it is that if language matters that much to you, it's not reasonable to claim it doesn't matter to someone else. | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 6:31 | comment | added | ColeValleyGirl | @VictorStafusa By your logic, use of the pronoun 'you' becomes offensive as it also does not indicate a gender. This seems an untenable position to maintain. | |
| Oct 13, 2020 at 5:45 | comment | added | Victor Stafusa | @IllidanS4supportsMonica It is because as much as misgendering is very likely to be offensive, so it is ungendering / disgendering. | |
| Oct 12, 2020 at 22:46 | comment | added | IS4 | @VictorStafusa With the current state of things, it seems mods might actually care about that. But I don't see much reason to find it offensive (rather wierd or clumsy); it is simply a part of the language some people use when they don't want to deal with genders, and perhaps that's for the better. That's why I insist the discussion (and the spirit of the new rules) is about genders and not pronouns - singular "they" is simply applicable to anyone in this usage of English. Denying it would be like denying being addressed "you". | |
| Oct 12, 2020 at 16:23 | comment | added | Joshua | @ReinstateMonica: What Catija has recoginzed but you have not is a consensus as you describe it is not going to happen. | |
| Oct 12, 2020 at 11:58 | comment | added | Stian | @Catija a consensus would hardly be a tyranny of the masses. A consensus requires minorities to be a consensus. I like the idea of a consensus because it condenses the rules down to the minimum acceptable by all parts. We automatically get the least cumbersome list if consensus is the basis. | |
| Oct 12, 2020 at 9:38 | comment | added | BelovedFool | @VictorStafusa "Use stated pronouns when known". So, if I know your pronouns, I won't use singular they to refer to you. If I refer to you with "they" and you are unhappy with that, you just have to correct me. If, after that, I keep referring to you with they, then I will likely be banned (the same way I would if I refused to use "they" for someone whose pronouns are "they/them") | |
| Oct 12, 2020 at 6:52 | comment | added | Victor Stafusa | @Catija BTW, we have this also. | |
| Oct 12, 2020 at 6:30 | comment | added | Victor Stafusa | @Catija What about people (like me) who find it out offensive to be referred to with singular they? Do I have any means to opt out of it? And if the answer is yes, will mods or anybody else actually ever care for that? People (like me and a lot of other people) are very scared of all that pronoun stuff because it looks like rules that are very hard to follow correctly and very easy to screw up, and I saw no effort from SE to calm down things for people who are confused or afraid of this. | |
| Oct 11, 2020 at 20:42 | comment | added | Catija Staff | @Rounin There are people who are adamantly unwilling to use "they" as a singular pronoun (both generically and as someone's personal pronoun), yes. | |
| Oct 11, 2020 at 12:30 | comment | added | Stop harming Monica | @Rounin It is not the case that no one has any sort of issue about anything. It is safe to assume that there will always be somebody that has issues. The existence or lack thereof of a canonical set of non-gendered pronouns is pretty much irrelevant here. Although, interestingly enough, there seems to be a canonical set of pronouns that you are not allowed to request. | |
| Oct 11, 2020 at 10:40 | comment | added | Rebecca J. Stones | @Catija: Wow! It's such a relief to read your comments here. I'm tired of going around this mulberry bush, wasting otherwise productive time. | |
| Oct 8, 2020 at 21:52 | comment | added | Catija Staff | We, as CMs, and the moderators on our sites are not absolutist people. We understand that there are many people who are learning these things - we, ourselves are learning them and adapting - but we have great people around us to help. Some of my coworkers are Trans, as are some of the moderators who I've come to know in my time as a mod and as a CM and I've really appreciated them helping me broaden my understanding of what being Trans is like and how to be supportive and accepting of Trans people. It's OK to struggle. We're asking people to be open to learning and treating others kindly. | |
| Oct 8, 2020 at 21:47 | comment | added | Catija Staff | I've spent hours - years - of my time working with English learners on our English Language Learners site so I'm not blind to the difficulties of people who are trying to follow the rules for English. These rules, particularly around pronouns are currently in flux and, the honest truth is some people who use pronouns other than he, she, or they will have one of the more common pronouns as an alternative... for example, someone who uses zhir may be OK with being referred to as they. But that doesn't mean that saying something like "zhir is fake, pick something else" will be accepted here - it is rude. | |
| Oct 8, 2020 at 21:43 | comment | added | Catija Staff | But our statements are true. For Trans people, using incorrect pronouns is offensive and alienating. Heck, even as a female, being called "he" or "sir" is something that at least bothers me a lot - because many people assume I'm male and I generally correct people and when I do, no one bats an eye and some even apologise. But we're not talking about language here, we're talking about people. Descriptive or prescriptive language usage ignores the people receiving it. While language learning may not have encompassed these concepts, we hope that learners will be open to new concepts. | |
| Oct 8, 2020 at 21:34 | comment | added | Catija Staff | That's not at all the case that I'm making. I am, myself, not a member of the Trans community and yet am 100% behind advocating for them. I'm still learning what I can do to be supportive and being active in listening to others. I completely understand that many people around the world don't understand what being Trans is, and, even if they do, the idea of being non-binary (a subset of Trans) is even more difficult to grasp. What we're doing here is making a statement that we will support Trans members of our network so that they aren't left to fend for themselves. | |
| Oct 8, 2020 at 21:02 | comment | added | BelovedFool | @Catija Not sure how to phrase this (especially since we are not supposed to use comments for this) but: thank you for your comment, it means a lot to me to read this <3 (and it also explains things very neetly, IMO) | |
| Oct 8, 2020 at 20:59 | comment | added | IS4 | @Catija You confuse lack of information with willfull ignorance and disrespect, implying the majority is by default plainly dismissive to these issues and act harmfully to the minority unless being told to behave. I don't like that implication. You can't derive lack of general empathy and respect from the fact the majority of people here have never met a transgender person or at least have never faced their issues, and then simply cross out that majority from the decision-making process because they "could never understand the reasons". | |
| Oct 8, 2020 at 20:46 | comment | added | Catija Staff | The thing is, that consensus in issues like this can lead to tyranny of the masses. It's well known and understood that people who are trans, non-binary, etc do suffer ill effects and harm when their pronouns are not used and respected. There's no arguments to be had here. But Trans people are in the minority, so their concerns can rarely reach consensus unless they're amplified by people who accept the hurt they face on a daily basis and wish to do something to alleviate it or at least refuse to be a platform that turns a blind eye to that hurt. | |
| Oct 8, 2020 at 20:41 | history | answered | IS4 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |