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I am so sorry for dragging you back here in such a negative way, and that things went the way they did. Forgetting about it sounds like the sensible option.

I’d taken itoldyouso’s older comment as hopefully well-meaning but just old-fashioned. I ended up writing another long reply (please feel free not to read it, it’s just more rambling), which was probably pointless, but I’d like to think they could be open to changing their views one day.

Anyway.

I did the same thing with using they/them for authors! And characters sometimes, when talking about books. Though the use of they/them I meant with “very long time” was much older still. It’s really interesting that we had such different examples in mind!

The things you make are fantastic! You’re an inspiration. Thank you.

I didn’t claim that they/them was used just to keep the subject’s gender neutral, but that it was used for individuals in a way that did so (whether intentional or not). As of only about 700 years ago. Yes, it usually meant more “any given person” than “this specific person”, but that’s a tiny leap to make in such a long time, and the grammar takes the same form either way. Specifically for those who are non-binary, they/them is attested from the 20th century onwards, which is awesome. It’s at least a decade or so older than I’d thought!

Using he/him as a gender neutral pronoun is generally seen as archaic in modern English, in large part because it enforces sexist ideologies and assumptions. Even without considering genderqueer identities, I strongly recommend against using it that way.

A request isn’t pushing things onto anyone. If it were, it wouldn’t be a request.

In more pragmatic terms, requesting specific pronouns is a way of advocating for equal treatment. There is nothing entitled about asking for the same recognition that cisgender people already receive.

Using he/him and she/her for entirely cis people is also thinking about gender, after all. We’re just so used to these that they require less conscious effort.

I agree with your comment that “grammar does not define your gender, it’s the other way round”, in that the way we were using English before was insufficient to describe the vastness of how people experience gender, and we are finding ways to improve language to better understand each other. It’s great!

As for clarity, again, pronouns don’t exist in a vacuum. In all writing and speech, information tends to be included as and when desired. To be blunt, nobody owes you a description of numbers or masculinity/femininity/neutrality. If you’re really unsure, you can ask.

Language can’t be disentangled from respect and recognition. This has always been the case. It is a fundamentally human tool, not a machine.

If you’re determined to treat it as one, though, maybe oil your machine with appropriate doses of capital letters.

As for how important/non-important it is to focus on gender: on an individual level, that’s not something for you to decide, except for yourself. But it does make me question why you would choose disrespect on the basis of obsolete grammar here instead of finding a space where we can help each other address other issues in constructive ways.

Regardless, seeing as gender is a huge part of human identity, society and the roles we find ourselves in (not to mention whether or not we’re safe in those spaces), taking time to discuss it and consider it is absolutely necessary and not something to be condemned.

P.S. Yikes! Sorry to anyone reading that this got so long. Can you believe I did a lot of editing to make it shorter?

Hello. I’m aware it’s been a long time since your comment, but would like to attempt to add a bit of clarity. And simply to throw my opinion onto the internet and hope that it helps someone somewhere who just read the (seemingly not ill-intentioned but definitely maybe hurtful) above comment.

Firstly, thank you for your explanation regarding pronouns as compared to articles. I think you may have misunderstood the comment you were replying to, however. I can’t see any confusion there that needed clarifying.

As for the (current) importance of pronouns:

The main complexity that using they/them for non-gendered people brings (at least for me) is that we almost always use these words with plural grammar. Despite this, they/them has actually been in use in English when describing a single individual in a way that keeps their gender neutral or anonymous for a very long time.

To hopefully give some perspective, Japanese (for example) usually does away with pronouns entirely. There’s no need to say of the sky “it is blue” when you can simply say “(is) blue”. If it’s possible to understand a sentence with no pronouns at all, it’s possible to understand a sentence with non-traditional pronouns.

(Native Japanese speakers, please forgive my simplifications! I know I could explain this better, but I want to keep it short.)

In English, when you deliberately use pronouns for someone that are not the pronouns they’ve requested, you are being intentionally harmful. You are pushing your view of the world onto them and likely implying that you either don’t care about or dislike their existence. Far more so than by using words that sound “wrong” to you but are accepted by others as both correct and affirming.

Importantly, language, like gender, can be fluid! If there’s one thing I’ve come to realise by talking to speakers of many languages, it’s that nothing is static. How we use words changes. Using they/them singularly more often, or starting to use it/its for people who we know are sentient and sensitive, are just new changes. We come to understand concepts that we weren’t familiar with until now, and those concepts require shifts in how we use language. This is how language has always been.

In an ideal future, perhaps we could one day do away with gendered words entirely, if we wanted to.

For now, at least, using gendered (and not-gendered) pronouns when we refer to ourselves and others is a very important part of recognising who we are, of solidifying our rights and of showing solidarity with each other.

(Which isn’t to say that it’s important to everyone! Some people don’t mind or care how you refer to them, and that’s cool too!)

To use a person’s chosen pronouns is to say “you are absolutely the man/woman/enby/etc. you say you are, and I care about you”.

P.S. Obsession over “formal” use of a language is generally an unintentional form of elitism and imperialism.

P.P.S. I’m sure there are things I’ve missed and I’m sure I’ve made generalisations without realising. Please don’t be too harsh if you choose to point these out.

Edit: Changed some things to hopefully be clearer, removed some bits to make this long comment shorter. And I completely forgot to say the most important thing, which is that I love the idea of Gender All the Things and am really looking forward to playing it.