bah!

[taimatsu]

I have a very strong urge to be CREATIVE and make things, but I CAN'T because I have to understand gendered language and the like. *pout* It is interesting but I may be reaching burnout point. Possibly time to switch to typographic history before I go nuts.

Comments

[darkwaterfairy.livejournal.com]

Oooo, gendered language, sounds fun to me ... but only koz I'm always wanting to reform it with the adoption of Spivak (new) pronouns as a non-gendered singular option. (The Singlular Plural "they" option bugs me.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Does "you" bug you too?

[darkwaterfairy.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I think I see were you're coming from, in that how "you" can address both an individual, a group, or an unspecified number of people.

Oddly I've never thought of it like that and not been bothered by it.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

"you" was historically plural, with "thou" being the singular form. The shift to exclusively using "you" was hundreds of years ago, but that's also true of singular "they". Yet for some reason people only object to one of these two uses (if they object to either).

[darkwaterfairy.livejournal.com]

*Adds to tasklist "Get enraged at the use of 'you'"*
:P

[darkwaterfairy.livejournal.com]

Though in seriousness the reason behind my objection to the Singular Plural 'they' is that as part of the current mainstream pronoun system (in my mind), it effectively forces the Gender Binary on everyone in a 'you'll be defined as male or female, or fudged as a totally-non-defined entity(s).' (Since in many case it is impossible to deduce which "they" is being used.)

I just think, what would be so hard with dropping the "th-" off the usage of Singular Plural 'they' and thus having a handy, clear, and non-clunky 'I'm discussing/addressing an individual, but recognise the gender of that individual is immaterial here' pronoun?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I'm having real trouble understanding what you mean in the first paragraph there. 'They' is usually used of an individual of unknown or unspecified gender; I don't see how any forcing is going on.

[pointyhairedone.livejournal.com]

It could be worse. It could be temporal verb tenses.