Eh, the main point was that They is unarguably grammatically incorrect, regardless of common use. This is in the same way in which people use "Of" instead of "Have" in certain places. Most people don't pick it up and most people aren't going to care, but there are a few people who are going to intensely want to correct it.
Calling the old generic term sexist when talking about gender identity is a bit of a strange one. After all, if were were all a He, as humans and gender didn't have specific pronouns, this wouldn't be a problem at all. I'm not sure what the statement here is about.
Restricting language without offering a decent and accepted alternative is, realistically, not going to end well.
It works fine, but doesn't seem particularly something to be desired...
So the many who will be confused and try to correct "he" to they should be outweighed by the few that will not like "they"?
Realistically, it has never been neutral though. The male is linguistically treated as the default human, the female is an exception. Like, androcentrism in language is something that appears well researched and it's shown that it leads to a masculine bias in society. Also, legally the masculine gender only refers to males and not females, as such it has been used to exclude Women from legal rights.
And yes, I agree, Restricting language to the generic he, which has never been a decent and accepted alternative, has, realistically, not ended well.
Just a quick google easily brings up various articles ranging from scholarly to social justice blogs that talk extensively about how the generic he doesn't work well and that change is desired.
The primary reason given for a lack of change is the 120+ alternative gender-neutral pronouns have never gained the support the singular they just natively has.
It's a stubborn refusal to accept reality at this point.
The confusion isn't going to be coming from a place with set gender pronouns... In fact this discussion and the confusion around it is entirely based on the fact that there should be alternatives. The confusion isn't introduced by the lack of a third person pronoun, but rather the demand for it.
Realistically, we have no idea on that and probably shouldn't be making suppositions like that without some serious research to back you up. Logic says that we probably would have had a generic term before we got into matters of gender. Feelings and opinion don't allow for imposition on reality and historical attitudes. Androcentrism is language is researched by people that generally have a point to prove or are going against societal views. Expectancy theory is a powerful thing.
The issue was a lack of law, not laws purposed to exclusion. You'd find that women discriminated based on these laws were likely vocal minorities after the fact, not a common occurrence.
This statement about 'he' not working doesn't work in response to what was said. It's fair to accept all points of views as long as they aren't a lazy 'gotcha' which doesn't even make any particular sense.
A quick google search will yield just as many opposing views, if not even more. If change was actually so desired, it would have happened already, it hasn't. Give it a few more decades and attitudes will change further.
Lack of support for one thing does not indicate positive support for another, as Americans will know all too well.
Reality is not defined by anecdotes, outliers and baseless statements, thank you very much.
Other people have already suggested ideas on this thread for how alternative pronouns could be handled, so I won't add to that. I just want to express my overwhelming support for this, and moreover, I think it would be good business for IRE.
A sci-fi MUD coming out in 2018 has a lot of potential to break new ground, for so many reasons. One being that text-games are often said to be a dying genre (something I personally disagree with), two being that there aren't a lot of nonbinary-friendly games out there, and three ... it's set in space. In the future. It has aliens, and all kinds of weird things. Surely with space magic technology, kith and cybernetics, the technology to alter or customise one's gender any way one sees fit would also exist — and why not? Gender is a performance, after all. I am cis, but I perform the act of being female, because doing so makes me feel more comfortable in my body.
I think the config option is probably the best, so any pronoun that targets a person's pronoun (i.e., $him) would just check whether a player has chosen to set him, her, it, they, xir, etc. And in a space MUD, I for one welcome a spectrum of cultures, preferences and characterisations.
"They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty." — Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before." — Margaret Atwood
Comments
Win-Win d(^.^)b
You don't sound like an asshole, but you're probably not aware that Transylvania was part of Hungary until 1916.
You’re not an asshole...you’re just wrong, Walter!
PS - For the record I have no idea where Transylvania is.
Realistically, we have no idea on that and probably shouldn't be making suppositions like that without some serious research to back you up. Logic says that we probably would have had a generic term before we got into matters of gender. Feelings and opinion don't allow for imposition on reality and historical attitudes. Androcentrism is language is researched by people that generally have a point to prove or are going against societal views. Expectancy theory is a powerful thing.
The issue was a lack of law, not laws purposed to exclusion. You'd find that women discriminated based on these laws were likely vocal minorities after the fact, not a common occurrence.
This statement about 'he' not working doesn't work in response to what was said. It's fair to accept all points of views as long as they aren't a lazy 'gotcha' which doesn't even make any particular sense.
A quick google search will yield just as many opposing views, if not even more. If change was actually so desired, it would have happened already, it hasn't. Give it a few more decades and attitudes will change further.
Lack of support for one thing does not indicate positive support for another, as Americans will know all too well.
Reality is not defined by anecdotes, outliers and baseless statements, thank you very much.
A sci-fi MUD coming out in 2018 has a lot of potential to break new ground, for so many reasons. One being that text-games are often said to be a dying genre (something I personally disagree with), two being that there aren't a lot of nonbinary-friendly games out there, and three ... it's set in space. In the future. It has aliens, and all kinds of weird things. Surely with space magic technology, kith and cybernetics, the technology to alter or customise one's gender any way one sees fit would also exist — and why not? Gender is a performance, after all. I am cis, but I perform the act of being female, because doing so makes me feel more comfortable in my body.
I think the config option is probably the best, so any pronoun that targets a person's pronoun (i.e., $him) would just check whether a player has chosen to set him, her, it, they, xir, etc. And in a space MUD, I for one welcome a spectrum of cultures, preferences and characterisations.
"They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood