points by buuyytp 3 days ago | 0 comments
And yet despite centuries of use of singular they/them pronouns, people respond the same way when they encounter them. Presumably you are comfortable with singular they, given its long and frequent use?
[–] pona-a 3 days ago
I don't know about others, but yes I'm entirely fine with people using singular they on me. My native language doesn't have an animate gender-neutral pronoun and I like how English gives me the option to actually be more gender-inclusive without an unnatural "he/she" construct.
If another cis man was suddenly uncomfortable with "they", I'd attribute that to some fragile sense of masculinity or a weird anti-woke crusade, as was the case with most such cases in my life, and find it personally annoying.
I don't want to deliberately make other people uncomfortable with my language, but it does feel exhausting to second-guess yourself, having to double-check if any innocuous phrase might be misinterpreted as an underhanded aggression, preempting a correction we know will be awkward for both sides.
I think we'd do better to consider context more than the specific language...
[–] autoexec 3 days ago