24
votes
Is it time to include pronouns?
I realize this has become something like a political statement to do this for whatever reason. But a 100% wordcel medium where your only avatar is a text string of your username means if I want to talk about someone I have no idea what to call them. I have to use awkward constructions like “that user” or “OP.” This doesn’t sound nice. This disrupts the delicately crafted meter and flow of my sentences.
Mayhap we could introduce a teeny-tiny configurable logogram next to the username to disambiguate preferred pronouns. Or maybe even a subscript. It’d be small enough and faded so as not to impact the clean visual but visible enough to free me from having to guess.
I fully support pronouns in general, but I find that referring to a user by @-ing them is the most polite way to talk about someone (on tildes). It:
Barring that, if you prefer to use a pronoun regardless, on an online forum like tildes where we are all faceless, digital entities, the centuries-old polite they / them suffices.
As for adding pronouns in general, users can already do that if they so choose in their profile bio, which can be quickly opened when in doubt.
There's always the username's "Bio" profile information, though many people seem unaware that this feature exists.
Holy shit, count me as one. That is one buried feature.
For those reading and also feeling gas lit. It seems like if the user does not set a bio, nothing appears on their page. To set a bio you need to go to settings and edit your bio, then it will appear!
Yes, add that to the "TIL" pile...
TIL.
I think this feature did not exist when I joined lol.
Hah, yeah, it looks like it was introduced back in March 2019, so you missed it by a couple months!
Haha, sniped! I just switched tab after finding this commit so I could say the same thing.
I suspect you just missed it. I know for a fact it was around when I joined in 2019.
Edit: My suspicions were incorrect.
The Bio feature was added in March, 2019, and that's when I first filled it in. But it's a tiny mention in the Docs at the bottom of the "User Settings" page.
Just to mention an alternative perspective, I don't necessarily mind being @-ed, but I'm also not a big fan of it in principle if it's just being used to point to someone's elses post in a conversation that doesn't currently involve that person.
If Person C makes a comment, and Person A and B are in a chain of replies where Person A wants to refer to what Person C said to Person B, they're not asking for Person C to be involved in the chain of replies they're just merely trying to save time or space by referring Person B to more information already discussed in Person C's comment. Not that it happens much, but I don't personally care to be tagged in such a scenario. Usually I associate notifications with something that directly is a reply to me or is someone invoking my name with a tag to engage me on conversation.
So typically that's how I in turn use someone's name when I post. I wouldn't tag someone if I'm just trying to point someone else in the direction of a post they made, I'd just use their name without a tag to give enough specificity that the other person knows what post I'm talking about.
Edit: Also I get that other people have different perspectives, so I don't really care that much if someone does @ me in such a way, but that's my reasoning behind why I don't do it to others rather than something nefarious.
I just made a comment where I mentioned talklittle and Bauke, but didn't @ them, just like now. Maybe they would prefer to know every time anyone mentions them, I have no idea, but it's not like I said anything about their character or such, I just mentioned what I believed was pertinent information about their contributions to Tildes to another user. I don't feel like my comment is all that useful to them in particular to warrant getting their attention, so I just didn't @ them.
Yeah I tend to think of @ing someone as explicitly getting their attention, like saying "Hey Joe, what do you think?" It always feels kind of rude if I'm just referring to something that person did/said.
ETA: just had a minor panic attack when I thought I had pinged someone with the username 'ing', but fortunately that link just leads to a 404 😅
As a native speaker of a language with no gendered pronouns for humans or objects: meh.
I just use “they” when the gender might be relevant in some way and I can’t figure out another way of referring to someone.
Keeping track of people’s pronouns when communicating doesn’t come naturally to me at all. It’s like trying to understand a tonal language, my brain just isn’t wired for it and it all sounds the same 😀
Can I ask which language? I'm super curious!
Finnish.
We actually regularly call other people "it", because saying "hän" (gender neutral he/she) sounds too intimate or official =)
Japanese has some similar features, I've learned, and find fascinating:
It's generally preferred to not use "you" when talking to someone. (Too familiar/intimate, I infer.) Like "do you like tacos?" would be phrased more like "Frodo likes tacos?" Or "like Tacos?" Use of name is preferred, but also often omitted casually.
Talking about someone, again, name use is preferred over a pronoun. There are he/she equivalents (kare/kanojo), but I get the sense they're avoided if possible. It's also common to just say "green shirt person" if you don't know their name.
There are a metric ton of first person pronouns with nuances that I'm not equipped to fully grasp. (And how gender-aligned some of them are has shifted over time.)
I find it interesting that it sounds intimate and official in Finnish. Those are fairly diametrically opposed in English, usually.
I'm indifferent, but will point out that "they" is acceptable in every case.
No it isn't. I do not accept "they" as a pronoun for me and when anyone calls me "they" or anything but "she" I automatically assume whoever does it is being a dick. No exceptions.
Even if they have no way of knowing your gender? Had I not read this post, I would not have known what to refer to you as and would have naturally used a neutral pronoun, or said (s)he, which is something I also sometimes do when unsure (less now that more and more people prefer non-gendered pronouns).
Why such a strong reaction?
So, not to speak for her, she's her own person with her own reasons. But what I've picked up is that some folks won't use your preferred pronouns and stick to "they" to give the impression of being safe/accepting... But it is another way of rejecting your gender, kinda like the pronoun version of "just asking questions" when the other person knows better.
If you look at me and use they instead of he/she, it could be othering me as trans rather than of a gender like cis folks -- if you don't know and you're talking to me, ask. Maybe without asking you got the memo and use she, maybe you didn't fell on he. In the latter case, I correct you and we move on -- you're a dick if you pushback. Correcting someone on they, you may get pushback that "it's gender neutral, I use it for everyone, I already changed my language to accommodate people like you", even when you're telling them it isn't your pronoun. We lack a pronoun for "gender unknown" versus "gender neutral", there's a difference between referring to someone you've never seen or talked about (like the mail carrier example), and someone confirmed as gender neutral/preferring the pronoun -- if we've met, neither is correct.
Err, does that make sense? We aren't a monolith, I certainly don't speak for all and I'm certain some trans/gender neutral/gender non-conforming folk disagree with what I've written. I haven't even included the cultural and language differences that occur abroad.
No, it doesn't make sense, because I was explicitly talking about the case where I do not know the person's gender, or the "gender unknown" case. I agree that continuing to use they when the person has explicitly asked for a gendered pronoun is just as inexcusable as refusing to use they if that's what the person has explicitly asked for.
The use of "they" for "gender unknown" has been the norm for my entire half-century+ on this spinning rock.
Fair. Since English doesn't have a pronoun distinguishing between unknown and neutral, they already has multiple meanings, someone may have a strong reaction to the word because of one use even if the other is used. For an extreme example, consider an alternative for cigarette, f*g -- I'm going to have a strong reaction even if context is clear you mean cigarette. Of course there's the slur and history angles that make this a different situation, but same idea -- strong reaction to a word than a particular definition and its use.
You're right, they for gender unknown has been the norm for English, and still is. English isn't the first language for everyone and other languages don't have an animate pronoun for gender unknown or neutral, so "they" translates back from those languages more closely to "it". Even if we speak a shared language, our language shapes our perceptions, that's why her reaction feels counter or bizarre to an English primary speaker while she feels dehumanized.
Wow! The human mind can be amazingly petty.
Hell, they aren't even always trying to be petty or intentionally misgender -- sometimes they want to be allies while being uncomfortable with trans gender and struggling to overcome their own dissonance. It's still... Problematic, but not petty or hateful, just like a thing to work out -- society has done a number on us wrt gender perceptions after all. I've had my own share of internalized transphobia to unpack.
I'm sorry, but that comes across as trans-phobic, whether you intended it to or not; it reads as an over-reaction to the fact that some people prefer gender neutral pronouns.
The use of "they" for the case where a person's gender is unknown has been the norm for basically forever.
EDIT: I wrote that before seeing your comment about being trans yourself -- but it still reads that way without context.
Yeah, I think you've completely mis-read what I said. I was merely talking about the usage when a person's gender is unknown, nothing about preferences at all.
Honestly as a cis-gendered man I feel the same way. I’d rather someone mistake me as “she” than refer to me as “they.” (Except in the usual case of context making it indeterminate).
My native language actually differentiates based on whether you’re talking about singular people or plurals. Individuals are masculine or feminine gendered, but when you’re talking about groups there’s specific grammatical genders for a group of people and another one for a group of inanimate objects. But referring to people by the term for an inanimate objects is rude. And also if you’re being respectful towards an elder you use the plural form when addressing them for some reason.
I probably should stay far away from this conversation, but just to represent some other personal perspectives on this - I'm a cis-gendered woman who has a lot of interests that are more common for men, and honestly it really does bother me when internet people assume I'm a "he" with nothing to go on. I instantly feel othered and like I'm not expected to belong in the space. I'm a big fan of "they" when someone's gender is unknown.
WTF??! I don't where I got mixed up, but for years I thought you were a woman. Like, since 2018/2019.
I usually don't make any assumptions and just base these things off of posts where someone made it clear, like with TaylorSwiftsPickles. I guess I must've made that connection because I've met a handful of girls/women named Nara? In any case, my bad if I ever misgendered you, and yes to pronouns in bios because hot damn this just melted my brain.
You know the funniest part about this is that "nara" literally means "man." "Naravara" is Sanskrit for "first-rate man." :-D
Lol well that is something I won't forget any time soon.
I'm sorry, I just don't think this is a reasonable expectation you can have of your fellow humans. If you forgot your wallet in your restaurant and someone sees you leave, they will might tell the staff "they forgot their wallet". They're not being a dick, they just don't know.
There is always going to be an element of living in society where I don't think you can expect people to care that much about you on an individual level. I think it's a reasonable expectation you expect someone to not intentionally misgender you, because that's just someone denying someone else's identity and trying to hurt them. But I don't think it's a reasonable expectation to expect people are going to open your profile, double-check your pronouns, and then keep them in mind when referring to you, and then expect they're going to do that for everyone. Most strangers are just not going to care about you personally that much, and are going to fall back on the pronoun that catches everyone.
When engaging with people on the internet, you engage with people of all cultures and in English the gender neutral is they/them. I'm also of the opinion that it shouldn't elicit a strong reaction, especially when they made an attempt to not misgender someone in good faith.
This is my first time hearing someone be upset about being misgendered when being referred to with they/them but I guess I'm not super in the loop with that kinda stuff. I had always thought that was the safe and polite way of referring to someone without asking or being able to ask them, for whatever reason.
...english encompasses much more varied linguistic traditions than you presume...
It does. However, in a large enough group, we are most likely to default to whatever traditions the common group shares, particularly when a large part of the group encompasses ESL speakers that learned a specific branch of the language formally.
We have kinda collectively agreed that when the gender is unknown, they/them is a safe word to fall back on. This certainly isn't universal, but we don't currently have a better catch-all term.
...well at least two of us haven't; do what you feels right to you but 'we' presumes at minimum two fewer than consensus...for what it's worth, my own linguistic tradition was based upon abritrarily choosing 'she' or 'he' devoid of judgement...
But that's what society is, isn't it? It's consensus, not unanimity. Society will change for a group of the group is large enough, powerful enough, or if it decides the issue is morally important. It will very rarely change for individuals.
I guess I don't understand the alternative you're proposing. As I said to the other person, I don't know anything about you beyond your username. So if I'm going to refer to you without asking you directly, what do you suggest?
(consensus inherently disenfranchises those who do not consent)
...i'm not proposing anything; merely noting that your presumed consensus is not as broadly-accepted as you might imply...
...feel free to use my name(s) if it matters, or choose whichever gender feels appropriate otherwise?..i've alternately identified as male or female across various periods of my life and been performatively misgendered both ways; honestly it's never bothered me in either case and feels pretty sexist to react otherwise...
Consensus and collectivism generally punishes individuality, you're completely right. It's a cost we generally have to accept if we want to remain a social species.
I think what I noted is pretty broadly accepted. It is not unanimously accepted, but that's not quite the same thing. And I remain open to suggestions. But if you're not really proposing an alternative, I'm not sure what else I can feasibly do to be respectful!
In the most widely spoken English dialects, "they" is used for humans of undetermined gender (typically when their gender is not known). It is not intended offensively; it's simply grammar.
Granted, historical style guides pushed everyone to use "he or she" (or even sometimes just "he"!) when gender was unknown and considered singular "they" nonstandard. Yet singular "they" has still been widely in use for hundreds of years, across many different English-speaking countries and regions, despite presciptionist efforts to stamp it out.
Not every English dialect uses singular "they", just as not every English dialect uses plural "you" (instead opting for "y'all", "y'uns" "youz", or one of the dozens of other regional variants), yet it's fully possible for speakers of all these different dialects to come together and communicate productively. It just requires people to take a less prescriptionist approach and resist the urge to police each other's inoffensively-intended grammatical rules.
...so, for what it's worth, i read 'they' as third-person plural; i'm not compelling anyone else to adopt my cultural interpretation but that's how i read it and always will...
from a really stupid movie:
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
(individuals have agency; collectives are beholden to emergent traits and antithesis to free will)
...besides the fundamental grammatical ambiguity, to call an individual 'they' implies less-than-sovereign agency to my ears; it's insultingly dehumanising and inherently sexist in its presumption that gender matters other than as a trivial tool of specificity...i recognise that other people read it differently, but it's never going to sound any less offensive to my ears, as collectives are anathema to human worth in my esteem...
I hear you, but we're on an internet forum. We are not friends. I don't know your face, body type, name, anything beyond your username and comment.
What is your expectation here? Is that people somehow already know you're trans, or that people read through your comment history before referring to you? Or is it that people change the default from they back to gendered pronouns? I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to navigate all of this for every internet conversation they have.
Would you be able to link to that comment, or copy/paste what you said?
Is your offense at "they" specific to your language, or does it extend also to other languages with different grammatical rules? Many languages do not have gender-based pronouns at all. Usually the differentiation is between inanimate (equivalent to "it") and animate (equivalent to "they").
English's ancestry is male/female-based, but it's been moving toward animate/inanimate-based for a few centuries now, so we're currently in this awkward between state where both pronoun systems are used simultaneously and employed under different circumstances (for the most commonly spoken English dialects, based on whether an animate object's gender has been determined or not). This makes English very flexible for non-native speakers from different linguistic backgrounds, because their pronoun mistakes generally don't inhibit understanding, but probably also pretty frustrating, because English pronoun usage is abnormally nuanced and the connotations of these pronouns likely differs quite a bit from their native language.
...i also find "they" offensive on several levels; it may be a generational thing but it's absolutely a cultural thing...that said, if i can infer that it's spoken with just intention, i'll wince inside but presume good faith and move on...
("most people" also presumes a great deal about the world beyond your personal experience and comes across dogmatically narrow-minded to my metaphorical ears)
...for entirely unrelated reasons, i will never accept "they" in reference to an individual and i automatically assume anyone who takes offense at mis-gendering is sexist...
...any yet here were all are, getting along fine by simple presumption of mutual respect: hooray diversity!..
The irony given all the accusations of misuse going around.
Btw, I apologize if I've ever defaulted to "they" for you, it's not intentional but I sometimes don't clock who I'm referencing when I'm a few conversation levels deep. (And for me it's not a "non-gendered" thing but it is like an active part of my gender identity, so definitely not intended to be invalidating or a declaration of being ungendered or anything. )
Even so, if I ever fuck up, feel free to call me out and I'll fix.
Honestly... when I post or reply to people, I just don't look at usernames at all. I don't have a working identity in my head of anyone here, no matter how many comments read or reply to. Its just not how I engage with online spaces.
While I recognize names that I see a lot, I don't have a memory of who anyone is, their gender, their personality, or anything. As a result, I just call everyone "they".
This is the first I've heard of anyone potentially being upset about it. I don't plan on changing that though, because I really can't think of a better solution. I'd be happy to call anyone I know in real life any pronoun they prefer, but psuedo anonymous strangers on a message board? Sorry, you're all "they".
sigh that's "nice" and all, but I was replying to someone and apologizing if I caused her harm.
I find it odd to use my comment directly apologizing to a person and asking her to correct me if I make a mistake as the jumping off point to say "actually for me, even if it caused harm I'm going to keep doing it" instead of replying to someone who agreed with you above instead.
It doesn't make sense and I disagree with not respecting folks wishes even as I'm someone else who doesn't always track usernames.
...i generally don't parse identities too closely in the depths of discourse, either: it's the message that matters more than whoever's saying it, and i'm a firm believer that offense is taken rather than given, absent ill intent...
We don't agree about offense. I was apologizing for possible harm done, not insisting that if she took offense it was on her.
...indeed, yours are one of the few positions i identified with a specific personality long ago...
When you feel like saying something directly rather than whatever "specific personality" implications are being made, let me know.
Personally, I don’t want to know your gender or you to know mine. I think the plain text pseudonymous conversation here is in fact a good thing, and any step towards avatars or other decorations on users is bad.
I specifically and consistently say "partner" about my partner and my kids are always "they".
A random internet person doesn't really need to know the gender of my partner, my possible relationship status or the gender(s) of my kids. It's not relevant at all.
I find avatars useful to recognize the user and feel like I’m getting to know them over time — I don’t tend to read usernames. I find that I feel more connected to other users on forums that have them. That said, I’d want very minimal avatars, nothing flashy or large.
Yea, Avatars give me a quick visual reference of who I'm conversing with. I very rarely bother to read or remember usernames.
It might make things more confusing ("Who is he? There's 3 he/hims in this comment chain."). The forum-native pronouns of OP (original poster) and GP (grand parent, the parent comment to the one you are replying to) can do a lot of work. And there's always just naming people with @<username>.
For some reason I never thought of the parent to the parent comment as grand parent, nor have I seen anyone mention it before this comment, but it's so logical I can't believe I hadn't seen it used before. Maybe I'm just the oddity here in that experience.
People use GP on Hacker News a lot. I don’t see it much on other sites but it’s a good tool to add to our collective consciousness.
I agree, but I'll never not read it as "General Practitioner" or "Gold PIeces"
You have the answer right in your post.
Them. They.
I like how on forums I don't have an image of what a person is. Eventually I pick up on someone's gender over time but for the most part, I have no idea what someone is. Like you, @NaraVara, and I don't care because your gender to me doesn't change how I consider your ideas. I wouldn't use the feature, but I wouldn't oppose it either.
I am clearly a silver haired teenage girl who is also a mech pilot and possibly your mother.
Your expressionless face throughout the series is as much a bummer for me as it has been a boner for the weebs. Not sure where I'm going with this.
I don't feel like I would use a pronoun feature (I mean, my username is gendered enough already, no?) and clearly a lot of people in this thread feel the same, but I think there are people here who would and for that reason I agree it would be a good feature to implement. Having the option there if they want it would cost other users nothing. It's also faintly annoying that on so much of the internet, Tildes included, the default assumption is that everyone is a man, and such a feature might help with that.
Oh, the timing of reading this right after the big announcement... (This popped up before that so I'll answer this without that context)
I'm not opposed to it in spirit. Some people want to identify themselves more on a Semi-anonymous platform and having some small flair would give room to do that. It also harkens back to the old school days where we could have a "signature" field under every comment. A little extra bit of personalization to help us stand out.
At the same time, though: it's an anonymous platform and I would expect a good amount of people to actively not want to identify themselves here intentionally. As such, the use of gender-neutral pronouns or "distant" constructions is part of the appeal for some people. They don't want to bring more aspects of their personal identity to the table, and that distance reinforces that.
So it'd be a neat feature. I also wouldn't expect everyone to use it for their own reasons.
Pretty interesting discussion here that I wish I could eventually digest fully (too bad so many comments were deleted!). My two cents is that I've always liked how gender/sex don't have to be a thing on forums. We're all just humans (or dogs, I suppose). I hate how on reddit, everyone assumes everyone is a dude (even though I am one). It seems very dismissive of everyone else. But clearly there's more nuance to the idea that I need to think about.
I think people tend to post them in their bios if they have a preference? So it might be nice to have that as a hover text. But if they don't list anything, presumably they don't mind being potentially misgendered.
IME I just check their bio for a preferred pronoun, and use they/them or @'ing otherwise.
I'm totally open to it since I know it's very important to some, as long as there's an option to leave it blank or disabled. I personally don't usually explicitly identify here for the sake of privacy, but I also don't mind if people gain an impression of me as a certain gender over time. Whichever conclusion they come to is fine and even interesting to me, so I wouldn't want to be forced to declare it to be a specific one. And using "they/them" as a placeholder doesn't feel appropriate since that can be much more complex than simply "undefined".
...i'm comfortable answering to either gender but i'll never answer to "they"; given the choice, i always leave gender fields empty...
If you mean adding the option to include my pronouns alongside my username in a comment, I'm for it.
I'm not gonna be a whiny human thumb like Az from HeelVsBabyface and cry about it. The tendency to disclose and acknowledge one's pronouns doesn't take away from my identity as a cis he/him.
Curtains for Zoosha?
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra?
Darmok and Jalad on the ocean
No.
Why not?