IIRC Jordan Peterson did not object to being polite. He has explicitly stated that if someone asked him to use a certain gender pronoun, he would do so. What he objected to was a law that forced him to do so.
I think the broader point is that the Left wants to take over language as a means to taking over one's thoughts and at least getting one to kowtow before a convention they impose. If you don't kowtow, we can identify you and make you an outcast. This is the playbook of totalitarianism.
FWIW, I think that laws enforcing good manners are absurd.
There may be cases where such laws are the lesser evil - IIRC, there have been cases where certain extreme "fighting words" were banned, because of the violence they predictably triggered.
But in general, the appropriate penalty for bad manners is social, not legal. Except perhaps if the ill mannered person misbehaves in a customer-facing role, in which case their employer may have reason to discipline or fire them.
FWIW, Stack Exchange appears to have come close to killing itself by making rules of this kind that many of their regular contributors hated. Enough of those people stopped contributing that questions no longer tend to get prompt responses, breaking the pipeline that used to produce new people who answer questions. Their archive is still useful, but there's now no point asking new questions, which leads to some who used to answer, and didn't rage quit over the new policy, nonetheless drifting away.
I grant them the right to use whatever pronoun they wish when referring to me (though if they call me “she” I’ll probably terminate the conversation). I expect the same consideration.
Perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky that, unlike Arabic (anta/anti), the second person pronoun is gender neutral in English: you.
Perhaps we should consider ourselves unlucky that the third person pronoun in English is gendered (he/she) unlike in Farsi, for example, where it is gender neutral: u. (Makes total sense given how Iran is a shining example of a society with gender equality!)
There's a joke among bilingual English/German speakers concerning use of second person singular [Du], which is informal, almost intimate, and third person plural [Sie], which is formal: You can say you to me!
When I was still teaching, students would sometimes ask me in public what they should call me. I think they were after titles, but I'm not sure now. I always answered: You can call me whatever you like. Just keep it clean!
Not clear. It avoids the problem I was discussing, but it conveys less information. I gendered he/she lets you specify which of two people you are referring to without additional words.
What English needs is a gender indefinite pronoun in addition to the gendered one, so you could, if you wish, refer to someone without specifying gender.
Yes. I find misnumbering offensive to the ear. Also, it is then ambiguous in number. That could be solved by combining the plural pronoun with a singular verb, "they is," but that offends not only my ear but, I think, those of most others so isn't used in standard English.
"They", "them", and "their" appear to be standard and inoffensive when referring to someone of unknown sex, at least. "The hooded figure in the video is the prime suspect, but they have yet to be identified."
In German, misnumbering is actually basically a way to sound polite to someone.
"Sie" is both the formal you* and also literally "they". It is also conjugated exactly the same way so you only know from context whether you are addressing someone in a formal way or talking about a group of people (you can also use it to address a group of people in a formal way). But admittedly, you are unlikely to mistake addressing someone with talking about someone in 3rd person.
So adapting they/them to English to refer to a 3rd person of an unclear gender is sort of similar.
You see this with other languages as well - in most Slavic languages you have the same pattern as in German but instead of "they", the formal variant is you in the sence of "you all" - even when refered to a single person. In Czech the conjugation is different when it is used to adress a single person in a formal way and when used to adress a group of people but as far as I can tell in other languages it is the same. Czech used to also have the German formal "they" but it is now extremely archaic (and it probably is a German influence).
So while I agree that "they" sounds weird in English when used in a 3rd person singular, it is a neologism but it is not that weird in the context of all languages even in Europe. What I find strange is when someone's gender is very clear and someone still uses "they" when talking about that person - "Have you talked to Adam? No, I haven't talked to them".
Most European languages are more gendered than English. German and most Slavic languages have 3 grammatical genders, but the neutral gender is used mostly for things, animals or children (not specific children but children in general ... also things can also have a masculine or feminine grammatical gender, that is sort of arbitrary and differs by language). Most other European languages have at least 2 genders (and so things also either feminine or masculine).
A question arises in these languages about which gender to use when talking about a group of people. The default is that if there is at least one man in the group or if you don't know you use the male gendered version of "they". This also raises emotion in some feminist circles and people propose various artificial "inclusion language", e.g. words like "ell@s" instead of "ellos / ellas" in Spanish, or "Student*innen" instead of "Studenten / Studentinnen" in German. In Czech where even the verbs retain the gender of the noun in writing in the form of a different suffix (although with 3rd person plural it is at least pronounced the same), so these constructs are even harder to parse (but consequently also less common).
*I believe that in English "you" was actually the formal variant originally and "thou" was the informal one? But I am not sure on that one)
With regards to specifying which of two people you are referring to without additional words, it is of limited use. It's only useful if the previous two people you mentioned were of different genders. i.e. "Bob and Sue came over today. She brought cake." hWho brought the cake? Clearly Sue! (Well unless Bob is Roberta and Sue is a Man Named Sue!)
In the case hwhere the two people you mentioned were of the same gender, it doesn't help. i.e. "Bob and Sam came over today. He brought cake."
I agree with you that we should have more options: masculine/feminine/neutral 3rd person singular pronouns. And using "they" just adds ambiguity in number.
But, if I had to choose, I'd choose a language with an ungendered 3rd-person singular pronoun over a language with gendered 3rd-person-singular pronouns without a neutral option. It can avoid awkward situations, like if you meet "Pat" from SNL.
Any comparison with Japanese? I learned some in the Navy and spent some time there on vacations. Verbs have no person or singular/plural, but they do have a politer conjugation. It was a lot of fun learning the grammar and speaking. The written language is another matter entirely.
I pretty much follow your reasoning in every regard, but have a much more practical reason for refusing to play the personal pronoun game: I have enough trouble associating faces and names. I'm not going to throw pronouns into the mix, and I absolutely refuse to remember made-up nonsense like "xir" and "xhe".
I swear, if someone ever upbraids me for misgendering them, I will upbraid them for not calling me "Your Majesty", and chew them out for not knowing my personal pronouns, which will be something along the lines of "haot/oyru" — and it will change a minute later, because my gender fluidity will make theirs look like snails.
That was my first response saying my pronoun was “His Majesty”. If we must submit to a delusion, then why do we elevate a delusion of sex above a delusion of grandeur? Trans is the only delusion which psychiatry demands public accommodation to, as a treatment.
One day if in an argument, simply ask how a psychiatrist can verify if trans (pronoun) is a delusion or a reality. There is no test, not length of time, not age of emergence, not degree of dysphora, nothing which differentiates a true “she” for trans vs “she” for a delusion. If there is no objective way to identify non-delusional trans, then they are delusional, and there is no more social onus to accommodate than there is to accommodate his majesty.
The problem with these charades is that they lead or contribute to actual behaviors and policies. Observe the males continuing to compete in women’s sports. I am in your mother’s camp…I could pretend to indulge your need, but this deceit ultimately provides nobody any benefits other than perpetuating illusions.
I really like the breakdown you give. There is an aspect you do not incorporate, however, and it's important for understanding how this works and what the best behavior would be in different situations.
There is such a thing as a role. When people interact with each other, they adopt roles, and they use those those roles for more efficient communication. Lots of things can be said in a sort of short-hand way because both parties have a sort of dictionary of expectations that doesn't need to be re-communicated.
A gender role largely doesn't exist for a person who is by themself, so it's very different from an objective truth like biological gender. When someone wants to be a she or a he, it is something htat only makes sense within a group of at least two people. Gender roles are therefore more like how a countroom will have one person who is the judge. A hospital will have some people that are doctors. A classroom will have students and teachers.
Thinking of it this way help with another phenomenon, that the role can change based on the situation and who's in it. Someone is a teacher in one classroom but a student in another one. Sometimes someone is a male at the work place and a female when going out for drinks at night.
Even if we think about roles, versus belief, I think you are still right that the other person is not obligated to accept the proposed role. For example, I don't have to consider Dr. Phil as a real psychologist or treat him like one. It will generally be rude if I do so, but it's not against the law to be rude, and there are even times for it. If some idiot barges into a hospital and pretends to be a doctor, it's very important to not accept that role from them. It's rude but will save lives.
I haven't thought it through but would say there's usually little cost in just giving someone the gender identity they prefer. So I would say this particular kind of role is something that it's usually better to just give to someone. It costs me very little and can give them a lot.
Getting back to the beginning, a law about rudeness sounds terrible to me. Everyone likes to imagine their enemies being struck down by such a law. However, in practice, people are going to apply this law inaccurately, and it's likely to be subjective in a court whether someone "intentionally" misused a gender. It's better when our laws are about truly getting along, and hauling people into courts all the time ove rudeness does not seem like actually getting along. People should generally not be rude, but that doesn't mean a law about rudeness will do more good than harm.
You don't get to play the role of teacher by saying you are a teacher — you have to actually teach. One could argue that the FTM who I find convincing is successfully playing the male role but the one I find unconvincing isn't.
People who believe in both traditional gender and traditional gender roles are making an argument that when you are being "polite" you are actually damaging the person and society as a whole.
This is easy to see in a situation where a person is not actually trans and does not have dysphoria about their gender. If you are "polite" you are reinforcing something they don't believe in, and even they don't think is true. I think this happens with young people (children 9-14 mostly) who are convinced by others or supported in being/becoming trans. At least sometimes these people desist later, which means "being polite" caused them a significant amount of personal distress at an already difficult time in their lives.
I also think that this can apply at a societal level, but that the effects are really hard to see and don't become apparent until future generations become adults. Causality is hard to predict, and there are many many confounders, but I think the opening of gay marriage did have some of the effects that opponents said, and that at least some of the reduction in TFR comes from that change. I think there were other negative effects, but that seems to be one that a lot of people are recognizing lately and trying to find sources for the change. I do not think that's the only cause of reduced TFR, but that a basket of changes that overall devalued family, children, and non-career vocations for women all worked together to have that effect.
In the end we may decide that tradeoffs are worth it (like women being able to buy property and have bank accounts), but we should not delude ourselves that these discussions are only a matter of personal politeness.
I have always seen the insistence of preferred pronouns as some kind of "signal" to detect people who will "comply" without much questioning whatever they are asked to do. This signal can than be used to keep the problematic people (for example such as yourself) out of the group. The "diversity statements" in academia serve the same purpose. Everyone knows that chatGPT can produce an excellent word salad of such statements but the principled guy who is likely to question "diversity efforts" inside the org might not do it and hence can be prevented from hiring.
I think the situation is a little like a moral error theorist talking to a group of realists. If they were being entirely honest every time they made a normative statement they'd have to preface it with
"Of course objectively speaking there's nothing wrong with murder, its not immoral to torture babies for fun and all value claims are false."
But this will just derail the conservation they were trying to contribute to.
Similarly referring to trans people by pronouns they wish not to be referred to as is going to force us to have a conversation about gender regardless of whether either of us want to have that conversation.
Biological men that want us to use she/her pronouns or biological women that want us to use he/him pronouns are the people that are actually misgendering. I will not under any circumstance go along with their delusion.
By agreeing to these pronouns, I would implicitly be agreeing to everything else. I would be agreeing that a man is a woman and hence can be in women’s private spaces or on a women’s sports team, or in a women’s prison. I will not agree to any of this.
If their intention is to try and force us to go along with their delusion , then I would identify as a deity. I would expect that they call me God, expect that they take their hats and shoes off in my presence, and expect that they bow their heads in respect.
I see forcing these pronouns on me as forcing me to learn about their sexual proclivities, which in my opinion is a form of sexual harassment. I don't really want to know anyone's gender or sexual preferences.
Here is an argument that might make you (re)think this issue. In language, things can be identified using nouns (the chair) and using pronouns (that, it). People, similarly, are identified using nouns (David, Mrs Thatcher) and using pronouns (he, she). People can change their identifying nouns ( change of name, marriage); such changes often have legal status that can be enforced. If somebody changes their name (their identifying noun) would you take that as a lie? (is it a lie to refer to “Mrs Thatcher”, because her true name is “Miss Roberts”?). I presume not. Why, then is it a problem (or a lie) when someone changes another aspect of their identifier: their pronoun?
But I do take it as a lie if someone says he is six feet tall when he really is five feet tall, or adult when he is six or six when he is adult. In all of those cases the description is a fact about him not a label for him. So is his sex.
Why should everyone have to remember other people's non-standard parts of speech?
Do you offend French people when you say PAIR-is? Do you offend Germans when you say MYU-nik? Italians when you say NAY-pulls? Japanese when you say TOE-KEE-YO?
If someone has a full beard, they're going to be called he/him as a third person. Their objection makes no more sense than a French tourist in the US complaining people don't pronounce his country or capital as he wants.
As someone who lives in a city which regularly overflows with American tourists I have a visceral hatred of those who intentionally and repeatedly mispronounce the name of the city at which they are staying. So maybe your analogy does not show what you think it shows.
I also think it mixes up two other issues. First it can be physically difficult for a non-native speaker to pronounce the name of a place correctly, if this were the case with pronouns I'm sure trans people would be more accommodating. Second you give a case of a French person in America. Most trans people live in urban liberal cities, in those places they can have a reasonable expectation that people will know the correct way to gender them, even if they don't fully pass as their preferred gender.
If they were instead to go to a town in rural Texas it would far less reasonable for them to expect not to be misgendered. But most trans people are not living in rural Texas! So most of the time their expectation is justified.
"that people will know the correct way to gender them,"
That is assuming your conclusion — that the correct way is whichever way they choose rather than the way that accurately describes what their sex is or appears to be.
I took it that Chartertopia was trying to answer the question: "Is it rational for a non-passing trans person to be offended by someone failing to use their preferred pronouns?" They said no, this is like a tourist being annoyed at foreigners mispronouncing the names of their cities.
In reply, I said that unlike a tourist, who can have no reasonable expectation that foreigners will correctly pronounce the names of their cities, a trans person—given the circles they are likely to travel in—can have a reasonable expectation that people will use their preferred pronouns.
Its a separate question whether we ought to use their preferred pronouns.
I shouldn’t have used the phrase "people will know the correct way to gender them," but if there was a question being begged, it was not the one at issue.
I did not limit my Paris example to a French person in America.
I also specifically included two cities where the city name itself changes. Napoli in particular should pose few pronunciation problems for most tourists, unless you want to start down the rabbit hole of L vs R.
You don't have to. Using the wrong last name isn't rude if the reason is that you don't know.
My wife kept her maiden name. People occasionally, on a name tag or something similar, give her my last name instead of hers. We generally correct them but I don't think either of us is offended.
If someone changed their name legally (in marriage or otherwise), legal proceeding or contracts they enter into after the name change must use their new name, as far as I know (chatGPT thinks so too). I see laws on pronoun changes as a straightforward extension of this.
I can imagine a case where that came up, where a contract refers to a party as "he" and it matters whether that can be a reference to an FTM. Have there been any such cases? I would treat that as ambiguous language unless the contract itself included a statement on how gendered pronouns in it were to be read.
Yes, anywhere that cares about a formal legal name (employment, Social Security, Passport, etc.) absolutely requires the actual legal name.
I think a significant portion of the disagreement here would be reduced if there were a formal legal process for someone to change their preferred pronouns that could not be easily reversed.
I'm not a lawyer, but I can say from personal experience that the rule is not so hard and fast. I have been close to many legal documents where there was a legal name change of either the first or last name, and the document used the old name.
Even nicknames appear to be binding, in general.
The use of alternate names not an issue so long as the person being identified is clear to all the involved parties. In fact, "the" legal name is already an ambiguous concept, because there are different legal regimes even within one national border, and the earth also has multiple nations.
You’re overlooking the massive elephant in the room. In English and other languages, third person pronouns are linked to identifiable sex traits. The very real obvious issue is that people want to completely undo that whilst simultaneously enforcing the old standard. This is inherently mutually exclusive. If gender and sex identifiers are to be completely upended then the very concepts of he and she are moot, yet we are going to champion socially punitive actions for not adhering to a moot point? It is kafkaesque and inherently untenable.
There's a strong tension here between second wave feminism and this new orthodoxy. Second wave feminism believed that differences between men and women were social constructs, which at first seems to work well with transgenderism (you can decide you're either male or female as you wish). But instead, transgenderism often comes with gender essentialism and also with obtaining sex-based privileges (female sports, female locker rooms, etc.).
So now feminists can be called TERFs and become a nasty split.
I know I’m rehashing old worn arguments here, but the social construction argument as the sole explanation of the differences between men and women never makes sense. It believe it fundamental flaw to understand these differences as social constructions, mainly because I reject the blank slate argument. There are obvious natural differences between men/males and women/females that inform “the social”. This isn’t to say that elements of how society is constructed don’t at all influence or exacerbate sex difference, they most certainly can and do, but the utter denial of a fundamental difference has manifested truly bizarre beliefs that, in my opinion, come at costs.
> This may be a respect in which I am not fully acculturated to the culture around me, possibly due to the family bubble I grew up in.
Oh come now, unless you can point to a culture where people don't tell white lies this is not a matter of 'acculturation'.
The bit of your brain that values getting along with people more than having accurate beliefs is broken. As is the corresponding bit of mine. Or maybe even just the bit that can keep track of all the lies.
Even as a child I hated lying and was no good at it. And I insisted that things made sense, to the point of getting people angry with me. I'm sure the same was true of you.
That sort of behaviour is unlikely to have been evolutionarily advantageous.
In the (very interesting) book _The Nurture Assumption_ the author argues that the main environmental influence on personality is the peer group. For most children that's the kids at school but in some cases the family is the peer group. I think that fits my own experience — the kids at school felt like foreigners. I find it hard to think of ways in which my values and attitudes have deviated from my parents' in the direction of attitudes and values in the greater society.
However this pronoun business is very new. For most of my life there was just he and she and it didn’t change. I’m too old to adjust to transgender. It seems bizarre to me.
I do wonder if that's kind of the point with PC language. Because it's not natural to anyone outside PC circles it's a good tribal marker. In the same way that I'm instantly drawn to, and trust, people who make classical references or talk about updating priors, and tend to be a bit sceptical of those who make speling errors. I know that this is wrong and will lead me astray, but I can't help it.
The polite thing to do when I was a kid was not to mention the fact that somebody's uncle was gay, an example I remember. It's also polite to honor someone's request to respect their gender identity. However, it may also be appropriate to refuse that courtesy to people who aggressively abuse it, which has increasingly become a thing. It is further appropriate to point out that it is a mental health problem when staggering percentages of people, including children, report gender dysphoria and mutilate their bodies. It does not reflect liberation but a serious mess. I'm not a fan of Jordan Peterson but he's correct in taking on the cultural maoism that is the reason why we're even debating this.
There is a difference between not mentioning that someone is gay and positively stating that he isn't. Referring to an FTM as "he" is positively stating that she is not a woman, is a man.
I think an interesting parallel is that in some languages, such as Korean, the relative social status of the referent is indicated by the choice of grammatical forms (such as verb forms and the choice of which pronoun to use). A referent cannot simply demand from others that they use high-status forms when referring to him; social consensus determines which form to use. Using low-status forms when referring to high-status people is, naturally, considered rude, whether they are present or not.
My father told me a story about that in Japan. As best I recall it involved a Japanese official who was supposed to write another official and couldn't figure out how to start the letter because (I am inventing the details) the other was his subordinate in the bureaucracy but had graduated from the military academy the year before him so was senior to him "and is my father in law." It only works smoothly if there is a single unambiguous hierarchy, as in the military.
Isn’t “I’m just so deeply concerned with telling the truth, such a straight shooter, that I cannot conceal my searing genuineness” one of the classic excuses for rudeness?
I'm curious. If I am talking with A about transsexual B, not present, and use the pronoun appropriate to B's biological sex, who am I being rude to? If to B, am I also rude to someone not present if I disagree with some other opinion he has about himself?
If you are talking to Anita about Beatrice, who recently adopted a baby, and you express your opinion that Beatrice is not a real mom, Anita will likely find that mean-spirited and rude. If you are talking to Beatrice about your churchgoing acquaintance Carl and express your opinion that he is not a real Christian, Beatrice will likely find that judgmental and rude.
You may have biologically or doctrinally defensible arguments for these opinions. An interesting abstract discussion can be had about eg whether one can be a Christian without accepting the entirety of the Nicene Creed. But in social settings, it’s generally polite to treat people as authorities on their own basic demographic information.
That fits my view that we are acculturated to somewhat different rules. I don't find "that is judgemental" a convincing put-down. Beatrice in your examples is being judgemental in judging my statement to be rude — is your point only that she shouldn't tell me that she does? Shouldn't tell you that she does? That's the equivalent of my telling Anita my view re Beatrice.
Whether it is appropriate to express a judgement depends on the context but forming judgements is one of the things we have minds for.
How broadly do you apply "demographic information"? Suppose Anita comments that she understands from Beatrice that she is fluent in German. If I have observed that she is not is it rude to say so?
Rudeness is a matter of perception and social consensus. If everyone in the room is offended by what you have said, you have been rude. Maybe you are willing to be rude, for a good cause! Rudeness is not a crime or a sin. But you should accept the social consequences. When you conspicuously insist that someone is deluded or lying about a deeply personal matter of identity, they and their friends will not like your comment, and may be alienated from you altogether. If you want to preserve the relationship while still maintaining your conviction, you'll have to be extremely charming, and you still can't count on it.
You give the example of someone who claims to be fluent in German, but you think she isn't. I don't think people are usually that emotionally invested in their foreign language fluency; but I have lost friendships in part because the friend was very invested in considering himself an intellectual and I didn't take his thoughts seriously. Most people can tolerate critique on minor points, but won't tolerate people who have zero respect for emotionally load-bearing parts of their ego/identity.
I don't think fluency in German is demographic information. But I'm not trying to formulate a hard rule that no one can question others' demographic information, while other kinds of information are fair game.
I'm pointing out that it is generally polite to treat people as authorities on themselves and their own experiences. The more central a fact is to someone's identity, the more justification you'll need to question it. "You are lying or deluded about basic, foundational facts about yourself," is unavoidably insulting.
It may be necessary in psychiatric situations. It may be necessary in determining eligibility for certain programs. But in casual social situations, why would it be necessary?
In the particular context, the issue isn't "should I tell an MTF that she isn't a woman" but "should I feel obliged, in referring to an MTF in a conversation with someone else, to imply that I think she is a woman or at least avoid saying anything implying that I think she isn't."
My view is that it’s rude to imply that a mutual acquaintance is lying or deluded about a core fact about themselves.
I don’t have an opinion on whether you should feel obliged to trade off politeness with honesty about your views on the matter. I’m just suggesting that there is a tradeoff.
Never mind demographics. I've frequently had the experience of various self-appointed experts claiming to understand my personality better than I do, and informing me and everyone around of my true preferences, talents, etc. Quite often, their reasoning was something like this: person appears female, therefore stereotype.
I react emotionally to David's felt need to announce his opinion of everyone's gender by being reminded that other people have announced their gender-based opinion of my intellect (can't do math, good at soft skills), preferences (loves people, hates things, delights in children), etc etc.
For the record, I'm a retired software engineer. My soft skills are what you'd expect from a smart older person on the autistic spectrum - maybe low average, whereas I got an 800 on the math GRE.
Announcing my gender to all and sundry only serves to cause more of them to jump to similar wrong conclusions about me. I'm past breeding age, and not looking for a partner. Why would anyone but my doctor need to know my gender, let alone my gender at birth? Why would anyone feel the need to inform randos who may not even have met me of that gender? Or at least what they *believe* to be my birth gender. (For all David can know for certain, I'm an MtoF transsexual, or intersex. And we've met in person more than once.)
IIRC Jordan Peterson did not object to being polite. He has explicitly stated that if someone asked him to use a certain gender pronoun, he would do so. What he objected to was a law that forced him to do so.
I think the broader point is that the Left wants to take over language as a means to taking over one's thoughts and at least getting one to kowtow before a convention they impose. If you don't kowtow, we can identify you and make you an outcast. This is the playbook of totalitarianism.
FWIW, I think that laws enforcing good manners are absurd.
There may be cases where such laws are the lesser evil - IIRC, there have been cases where certain extreme "fighting words" were banned, because of the violence they predictably triggered.
But in general, the appropriate penalty for bad manners is social, not legal. Except perhaps if the ill mannered person misbehaves in a customer-facing role, in which case their employer may have reason to discipline or fire them.
FWIW, Stack Exchange appears to have come close to killing itself by making rules of this kind that many of their regular contributors hated. Enough of those people stopped contributing that questions no longer tend to get prompt responses, breaking the pipeline that used to produce new people who answer questions. Their archive is still useful, but there's now no point asking new questions, which leads to some who used to answer, and didn't rage quit over the new policy, nonetheless drifting away.
I grant them the right to use whatever pronoun they wish when referring to me (though if they call me “she” I’ll probably terminate the conversation). I expect the same consideration.
Perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky that, unlike Arabic (anta/anti), the second person pronoun is gender neutral in English: you.
Perhaps we should consider ourselves unlucky that the third person pronoun in English is gendered (he/she) unlike in Farsi, for example, where it is gender neutral: u. (Makes total sense given how Iran is a shining example of a society with gender equality!)
There's a joke among bilingual English/German speakers concerning use of second person singular [Du], which is informal, almost intimate, and third person plural [Sie], which is formal: You can say you to me!
When I was still teaching, students would sometimes ask me in public what they should call me. I think they were after titles, but I'm not sure now. I always answered: You can call me whatever you like. Just keep it clean!
(Apocryphally) The famously frosty Mitterand immortally responded to "on se tutoyer?" with "si vous voulez".
"You can call me anything you want, just don't call me late for dinner."
Turkish has no gender anywhere in the grammar either.
Sounds like a good way to go!
Not clear. It avoids the problem I was discussing, but it conveys less information. I gendered he/she lets you specify which of two people you are referring to without additional words.
What English needs is a gender indefinite pronoun in addition to the gendered one, so you could, if you wish, refer to someone without specifying gender.
Are not "they" and "them" often used this way?
Yes. I find misnumbering offensive to the ear. Also, it is then ambiguous in number. That could be solved by combining the plural pronoun with a singular verb, "they is," but that offends not only my ear but, I think, those of most others so isn't used in standard English.
"They", "them", and "their" appear to be standard and inoffensive when referring to someone of unknown sex, at least. "The hooded figure in the video is the prime suspect, but they have yet to be identified."
In German, misnumbering is actually basically a way to sound polite to someone.
"Sie" is both the formal you* and also literally "they". It is also conjugated exactly the same way so you only know from context whether you are addressing someone in a formal way or talking about a group of people (you can also use it to address a group of people in a formal way). But admittedly, you are unlikely to mistake addressing someone with talking about someone in 3rd person.
So adapting they/them to English to refer to a 3rd person of an unclear gender is sort of similar.
You see this with other languages as well - in most Slavic languages you have the same pattern as in German but instead of "they", the formal variant is you in the sence of "you all" - even when refered to a single person. In Czech the conjugation is different when it is used to adress a single person in a formal way and when used to adress a group of people but as far as I can tell in other languages it is the same. Czech used to also have the German formal "they" but it is now extremely archaic (and it probably is a German influence).
So while I agree that "they" sounds weird in English when used in a 3rd person singular, it is a neologism but it is not that weird in the context of all languages even in Europe. What I find strange is when someone's gender is very clear and someone still uses "they" when talking about that person - "Have you talked to Adam? No, I haven't talked to them".
Most European languages are more gendered than English. German and most Slavic languages have 3 grammatical genders, but the neutral gender is used mostly for things, animals or children (not specific children but children in general ... also things can also have a masculine or feminine grammatical gender, that is sort of arbitrary and differs by language). Most other European languages have at least 2 genders (and so things also either feminine or masculine).
A question arises in these languages about which gender to use when talking about a group of people. The default is that if there is at least one man in the group or if you don't know you use the male gendered version of "they". This also raises emotion in some feminist circles and people propose various artificial "inclusion language", e.g. words like "ell@s" instead of "ellos / ellas" in Spanish, or "Student*innen" instead of "Studenten / Studentinnen" in German. In Czech where even the verbs retain the gender of the noun in writing in the form of a different suffix (although with 3rd person plural it is at least pronounced the same), so these constructs are even harder to parse (but consequently also less common).
*I believe that in English "you" was actually the formal variant originally and "thou" was the informal one? But I am not sure on that one)
With regards to specifying which of two people you are referring to without additional words, it is of limited use. It's only useful if the previous two people you mentioned were of different genders. i.e. "Bob and Sue came over today. She brought cake." hWho brought the cake? Clearly Sue! (Well unless Bob is Roberta and Sue is a Man Named Sue!)
In the case hwhere the two people you mentioned were of the same gender, it doesn't help. i.e. "Bob and Sam came over today. He brought cake."
I agree with you that we should have more options: masculine/feminine/neutral 3rd person singular pronouns. And using "they" just adds ambiguity in number.
But, if I had to choose, I'd choose a language with an ungendered 3rd-person singular pronoun over a language with gendered 3rd-person-singular pronouns without a neutral option. It can avoid awkward situations, like if you meet "Pat" from SNL.
They still manage to be plenty sexist.
But the language is quite interesting. It's very regular and systematic, with nearly no exceptions.
Any comparison with Japanese? I learned some in the Navy and spent some time there on vacations. Verbs have no person or singular/plural, but they do have a politer conjugation. It was a lot of fun learning the grammar and speaking. The written language is another matter entirely.
I pretty much follow your reasoning in every regard, but have a much more practical reason for refusing to play the personal pronoun game: I have enough trouble associating faces and names. I'm not going to throw pronouns into the mix, and I absolutely refuse to remember made-up nonsense like "xir" and "xhe".
I swear, if someone ever upbraids me for misgendering them, I will upbraid them for not calling me "Your Majesty", and chew them out for not knowing my personal pronouns, which will be something along the lines of "haot/oyru" — and it will change a minute later, because my gender fluidity will make theirs look like snails.
That was my first response saying my pronoun was “His Majesty”. If we must submit to a delusion, then why do we elevate a delusion of sex above a delusion of grandeur? Trans is the only delusion which psychiatry demands public accommodation to, as a treatment.
One day if in an argument, simply ask how a psychiatrist can verify if trans (pronoun) is a delusion or a reality. There is no test, not length of time, not age of emergence, not degree of dysphora, nothing which differentiates a true “she” for trans vs “she” for a delusion. If there is no objective way to identify non-delusional trans, then they are delusional, and there is no more social onus to accommodate than there is to accommodate his majesty.
Agree. It’s bad enough trying remember the names! Now I’m supposed to remember pronouns too?
The problem with these charades is that they lead or contribute to actual behaviors and policies. Observe the males continuing to compete in women’s sports. I am in your mother’s camp…I could pretend to indulge your need, but this deceit ultimately provides nobody any benefits other than perpetuating illusions.
In the end it's all really about power and control. Control the language (by force or the equivalent), control the thought.
It's "a lot of nonsense with which I will not put up."
"up with which I will not put."
Churchill complaining about the supposed grammatical rule against ending a sentence with a preposition. Is that what you were thinking of?
If I want to assure I do not misgender someone I use the all inclusive pronoun; she/it/he.
I really like the breakdown you give. There is an aspect you do not incorporate, however, and it's important for understanding how this works and what the best behavior would be in different situations.
There is such a thing as a role. When people interact with each other, they adopt roles, and they use those those roles for more efficient communication. Lots of things can be said in a sort of short-hand way because both parties have a sort of dictionary of expectations that doesn't need to be re-communicated.
A gender role largely doesn't exist for a person who is by themself, so it's very different from an objective truth like biological gender. When someone wants to be a she or a he, it is something htat only makes sense within a group of at least two people. Gender roles are therefore more like how a countroom will have one person who is the judge. A hospital will have some people that are doctors. A classroom will have students and teachers.
Thinking of it this way help with another phenomenon, that the role can change based on the situation and who's in it. Someone is a teacher in one classroom but a student in another one. Sometimes someone is a male at the work place and a female when going out for drinks at night.
Even if we think about roles, versus belief, I think you are still right that the other person is not obligated to accept the proposed role. For example, I don't have to consider Dr. Phil as a real psychologist or treat him like one. It will generally be rude if I do so, but it's not against the law to be rude, and there are even times for it. If some idiot barges into a hospital and pretends to be a doctor, it's very important to not accept that role from them. It's rude but will save lives.
I haven't thought it through but would say there's usually little cost in just giving someone the gender identity they prefer. So I would say this particular kind of role is something that it's usually better to just give to someone. It costs me very little and can give them a lot.
Getting back to the beginning, a law about rudeness sounds terrible to me. Everyone likes to imagine their enemies being struck down by such a law. However, in practice, people are going to apply this law inaccurately, and it's likely to be subjective in a court whether someone "intentionally" misused a gender. It's better when our laws are about truly getting along, and hauling people into courts all the time ove rudeness does not seem like actually getting along. People should generally not be rude, but that doesn't mean a law about rudeness will do more good than harm.
You don't get to play the role of teacher by saying you are a teacher — you have to actually teach. One could argue that the FTM who I find convincing is successfully playing the male role but the one I find unconvincing isn't.
Yes--great example!
People who believe in both traditional gender and traditional gender roles are making an argument that when you are being "polite" you are actually damaging the person and society as a whole.
This is easy to see in a situation where a person is not actually trans and does not have dysphoria about their gender. If you are "polite" you are reinforcing something they don't believe in, and even they don't think is true. I think this happens with young people (children 9-14 mostly) who are convinced by others or supported in being/becoming trans. At least sometimes these people desist later, which means "being polite" caused them a significant amount of personal distress at an already difficult time in their lives.
I also think that this can apply at a societal level, but that the effects are really hard to see and don't become apparent until future generations become adults. Causality is hard to predict, and there are many many confounders, but I think the opening of gay marriage did have some of the effects that opponents said, and that at least some of the reduction in TFR comes from that change. I think there were other negative effects, but that seems to be one that a lot of people are recognizing lately and trying to find sources for the change. I do not think that's the only cause of reduced TFR, but that a basket of changes that overall devalued family, children, and non-career vocations for women all worked together to have that effect.
In the end we may decide that tradeoffs are worth it (like women being able to buy property and have bank accounts), but we should not delude ourselves that these discussions are only a matter of personal politeness.
I have always seen the insistence of preferred pronouns as some kind of "signal" to detect people who will "comply" without much questioning whatever they are asked to do. This signal can than be used to keep the problematic people (for example such as yourself) out of the group. The "diversity statements" in academia serve the same purpose. Everyone knows that chatGPT can produce an excellent word salad of such statements but the principled guy who is likely to question "diversity efforts" inside the org might not do it and hence can be prevented from hiring.
I think the situation is a little like a moral error theorist talking to a group of realists. If they were being entirely honest every time they made a normative statement they'd have to preface it with
"Of course objectively speaking there's nothing wrong with murder, its not immoral to torture babies for fun and all value claims are false."
But this will just derail the conservation they were trying to contribute to.
Similarly referring to trans people by pronouns they wish not to be referred to as is going to force us to have a conversation about gender regardless of whether either of us want to have that conversation.
*conversation not conservation
Biological men that want us to use she/her pronouns or biological women that want us to use he/him pronouns are the people that are actually misgendering. I will not under any circumstance go along with their delusion.
By agreeing to these pronouns, I would implicitly be agreeing to everything else. I would be agreeing that a man is a woman and hence can be in women’s private spaces or on a women’s sports team, or in a women’s prison. I will not agree to any of this.
If their intention is to try and force us to go along with their delusion , then I would identify as a deity. I would expect that they call me God, expect that they take their hats and shoes off in my presence, and expect that they bow their heads in respect.
I see forcing these pronouns on me as forcing me to learn about their sexual proclivities, which in my opinion is a form of sexual harassment. I don't really want to know anyone's gender or sexual preferences.
Actually it doesn't tell you their sexual proclivities. I believe many MTF prefer women, regard themselves as lesbians.
Here is an argument that might make you (re)think this issue. In language, things can be identified using nouns (the chair) and using pronouns (that, it). People, similarly, are identified using nouns (David, Mrs Thatcher) and using pronouns (he, she). People can change their identifying nouns ( change of name, marriage); such changes often have legal status that can be enforced. If somebody changes their name (their identifying noun) would you take that as a lie? (is it a lie to refer to “Mrs Thatcher”, because her true name is “Miss Roberts”?). I presume not. Why, then is it a problem (or a lie) when someone changes another aspect of their identifier: their pronoun?
But I do take it as a lie if someone says he is six feet tall when he really is five feet tall, or adult when he is six or six when he is adult. In all of those cases the description is a fact about him not a label for him. So is his sex.
Why should everyone have to remember other people's non-standard parts of speech?
Do you offend French people when you say PAIR-is? Do you offend Germans when you say MYU-nik? Italians when you say NAY-pulls? Japanese when you say TOE-KEE-YO?
If someone has a full beard, they're going to be called he/him as a third person. Their objection makes no more sense than a French tourist in the US complaining people don't pronounce his country or capital as he wants.
As someone who lives in a city which regularly overflows with American tourists I have a visceral hatred of those who intentionally and repeatedly mispronounce the name of the city at which they are staying. So maybe your analogy does not show what you think it shows.
I also think it mixes up two other issues. First it can be physically difficult for a non-native speaker to pronounce the name of a place correctly, if this were the case with pronouns I'm sure trans people would be more accommodating. Second you give a case of a French person in America. Most trans people live in urban liberal cities, in those places they can have a reasonable expectation that people will know the correct way to gender them, even if they don't fully pass as their preferred gender.
If they were instead to go to a town in rural Texas it would far less reasonable for them to expect not to be misgendered. But most trans people are not living in rural Texas! So most of the time their expectation is justified.
"that people will know the correct way to gender them,"
That is assuming your conclusion — that the correct way is whichever way they choose rather than the way that accurately describes what their sex is or appears to be.
I took it that Chartertopia was trying to answer the question: "Is it rational for a non-passing trans person to be offended by someone failing to use their preferred pronouns?" They said no, this is like a tourist being annoyed at foreigners mispronouncing the names of their cities.
In reply, I said that unlike a tourist, who can have no reasonable expectation that foreigners will correctly pronounce the names of their cities, a trans person—given the circles they are likely to travel in—can have a reasonable expectation that people will use their preferred pronouns.
Its a separate question whether we ought to use their preferred pronouns.
I shouldn’t have used the phrase "people will know the correct way to gender them," but if there was a question being begged, it was not the one at issue.
I did not limit my Paris example to a French person in America.
I also specifically included two cities where the city name itself changes. Napoli in particular should pose few pronunciation problems for most tourists, unless you want to start down the rabbit hole of L vs R.
Oops! I see I had two Paris examples.
Well, there's a lesson in there some place about the different expectations, but better to admit I was inconsistent by accident.
Why should everyone have to remember when someone changes their name, in marriage or otherwise?
You don't have to. Using the wrong last name isn't rude if the reason is that you don't know.
My wife kept her maiden name. People occasionally, on a name tag or something similar, give her my last name instead of hers. We generally correct them but I don't think either of us is offended.
If someone changed their name legally (in marriage or otherwise), legal proceeding or contracts they enter into after the name change must use their new name, as far as I know (chatGPT thinks so too). I see laws on pronoun changes as a straightforward extension of this.
I can imagine a case where that came up, where a contract refers to a party as "he" and it matters whether that can be a reference to an FTM. Have there been any such cases? I would treat that as ambiguous language unless the contract itself included a statement on how gendered pronouns in it were to be read.
Yes, anywhere that cares about a formal legal name (employment, Social Security, Passport, etc.) absolutely requires the actual legal name.
I think a significant portion of the disagreement here would be reduced if there were a formal legal process for someone to change their preferred pronouns that could not be easily reversed.
Is there a formal legal process for a wife to adopt her husband's surname or does it just happen (or not)?
I'm not a lawyer, but I can say from personal experience that the rule is not so hard and fast. I have been close to many legal documents where there was a legal name change of either the first or last name, and the document used the old name.
Even nicknames appear to be binding, in general.
The use of alternate names not an issue so long as the person being identified is clear to all the involved parties. In fact, "the" legal name is already an ambiguous concept, because there are different legal regimes even within one national border, and the earth also has multiple nations.
You’re overlooking the massive elephant in the room. In English and other languages, third person pronouns are linked to identifiable sex traits. The very real obvious issue is that people want to completely undo that whilst simultaneously enforcing the old standard. This is inherently mutually exclusive. If gender and sex identifiers are to be completely upended then the very concepts of he and she are moot, yet we are going to champion socially punitive actions for not adhering to a moot point? It is kafkaesque and inherently untenable.
There's a strong tension here between second wave feminism and this new orthodoxy. Second wave feminism believed that differences between men and women were social constructs, which at first seems to work well with transgenderism (you can decide you're either male or female as you wish). But instead, transgenderism often comes with gender essentialism and also with obtaining sex-based privileges (female sports, female locker rooms, etc.).
So now feminists can be called TERFs and become a nasty split.
I know I’m rehashing old worn arguments here, but the social construction argument as the sole explanation of the differences between men and women never makes sense. It believe it fundamental flaw to understand these differences as social constructions, mainly because I reject the blank slate argument. There are obvious natural differences between men/males and women/females that inform “the social”. This isn’t to say that elements of how society is constructed don’t at all influence or exacerbate sex difference, they most certainly can and do, but the utter denial of a fundamental difference has manifested truly bizarre beliefs that, in my opinion, come at costs.
> This may be a respect in which I am not fully acculturated to the culture around me, possibly due to the family bubble I grew up in.
Oh come now, unless you can point to a culture where people don't tell white lies this is not a matter of 'acculturation'.
The bit of your brain that values getting along with people more than having accurate beliefs is broken. As is the corresponding bit of mine. Or maybe even just the bit that can keep track of all the lies.
Even as a child I hated lying and was no good at it. And I insisted that things made sense, to the point of getting people angry with me. I'm sure the same was true of you.
That sort of behaviour is unlikely to have been evolutionarily advantageous.
The culture of the family I grew up in.
Well, sure, but there is an obvious genetic confounder? And people tend to assimilate to the culture around them as well as to their family.
In the (very interesting) book _The Nurture Assumption_ the author argues that the main environmental influence on personality is the peer group. For most children that's the kids at school but in some cases the family is the peer group. I think that fits my own experience — the kids at school felt like foreigners. I find it hard to think of ways in which my values and attitudes have deviated from my parents' in the direction of attitudes and values in the greater society.
However this pronoun business is very new. For most of my life there was just he and she and it didn’t change. I’m too old to adjust to transgender. It seems bizarre to me.
I do wonder if that's kind of the point with PC language. Because it's not natural to anyone outside PC circles it's a good tribal marker. In the same way that I'm instantly drawn to, and trust, people who make classical references or talk about updating priors, and tend to be a bit sceptical of those who make speling errors. I know that this is wrong and will lead me astray, but I can't help it.
The polite thing to do when I was a kid was not to mention the fact that somebody's uncle was gay, an example I remember. It's also polite to honor someone's request to respect their gender identity. However, it may also be appropriate to refuse that courtesy to people who aggressively abuse it, which has increasingly become a thing. It is further appropriate to point out that it is a mental health problem when staggering percentages of people, including children, report gender dysphoria and mutilate their bodies. It does not reflect liberation but a serious mess. I'm not a fan of Jordan Peterson but he's correct in taking on the cultural maoism that is the reason why we're even debating this.
There is a difference between not mentioning that someone is gay and positively stating that he isn't. Referring to an FTM as "he" is positively stating that she is not a woman, is a man.
I ind the number of aggressively toxic maculine behaviors by transwomen to be pretty weird.
I think an interesting parallel is that in some languages, such as Korean, the relative social status of the referent is indicated by the choice of grammatical forms (such as verb forms and the choice of which pronoun to use). A referent cannot simply demand from others that they use high-status forms when referring to him; social consensus determines which form to use. Using low-status forms when referring to high-status people is, naturally, considered rude, whether they are present or not.
My father told me a story about that in Japan. As best I recall it involved a Japanese official who was supposed to write another official and couldn't figure out how to start the letter because (I am inventing the details) the other was his subordinate in the bureaucracy but had graduated from the military academy the year before him so was senior to him "and is my father in law." It only works smoothly if there is a single unambiguous hierarchy, as in the military.
Isn’t “I’m just so deeply concerned with telling the truth, such a straight shooter, that I cannot conceal my searing genuineness” one of the classic excuses for rudeness?
I'm curious. If I am talking with A about transsexual B, not present, and use the pronoun appropriate to B's biological sex, who am I being rude to? If to B, am I also rude to someone not present if I disagree with some other opinion he has about himself?
If you are talking to Anita about Beatrice, who recently adopted a baby, and you express your opinion that Beatrice is not a real mom, Anita will likely find that mean-spirited and rude. If you are talking to Beatrice about your churchgoing acquaintance Carl and express your opinion that he is not a real Christian, Beatrice will likely find that judgmental and rude.
You may have biologically or doctrinally defensible arguments for these opinions. An interesting abstract discussion can be had about eg whether one can be a Christian without accepting the entirety of the Nicene Creed. But in social settings, it’s generally polite to treat people as authorities on their own basic demographic information.
That fits my view that we are acculturated to somewhat different rules. I don't find "that is judgemental" a convincing put-down. Beatrice in your examples is being judgemental in judging my statement to be rude — is your point only that she shouldn't tell me that she does? Shouldn't tell you that she does? That's the equivalent of my telling Anita my view re Beatrice.
Whether it is appropriate to express a judgement depends on the context but forming judgements is one of the things we have minds for.
How broadly do you apply "demographic information"? Suppose Anita comments that she understands from Beatrice that she is fluent in German. If I have observed that she is not is it rude to say so?
Rudeness is a matter of perception and social consensus. If everyone in the room is offended by what you have said, you have been rude. Maybe you are willing to be rude, for a good cause! Rudeness is not a crime or a sin. But you should accept the social consequences. When you conspicuously insist that someone is deluded or lying about a deeply personal matter of identity, they and their friends will not like your comment, and may be alienated from you altogether. If you want to preserve the relationship while still maintaining your conviction, you'll have to be extremely charming, and you still can't count on it.
You give the example of someone who claims to be fluent in German, but you think she isn't. I don't think people are usually that emotionally invested in their foreign language fluency; but I have lost friendships in part because the friend was very invested in considering himself an intellectual and I didn't take his thoughts seriously. Most people can tolerate critique on minor points, but won't tolerate people who have zero respect for emotionally load-bearing parts of their ego/identity.
I don't think fluency in German is demographic information. But I'm not trying to formulate a hard rule that no one can question others' demographic information, while other kinds of information are fair game.
I'm pointing out that it is generally polite to treat people as authorities on themselves and their own experiences. The more central a fact is to someone's identity, the more justification you'll need to question it. "You are lying or deluded about basic, foundational facts about yourself," is unavoidably insulting.
It may be necessary in psychiatric situations. It may be necessary in determining eligibility for certain programs. But in casual social situations, why would it be necessary?
In the particular context, the issue isn't "should I tell an MTF that she isn't a woman" but "should I feel obliged, in referring to an MTF in a conversation with someone else, to imply that I think she is a woman or at least avoid saying anything implying that I think she isn't."
Is it your view that I should feel so obliged?
My view is that it’s rude to imply that a mutual acquaintance is lying or deluded about a core fact about themselves.
I don’t have an opinion on whether you should feel obliged to trade off politeness with honesty about your views on the matter. I’m just suggesting that there is a tradeoff.
Never mind demographics. I've frequently had the experience of various self-appointed experts claiming to understand my personality better than I do, and informing me and everyone around of my true preferences, talents, etc. Quite often, their reasoning was something like this: person appears female, therefore stereotype.
I react emotionally to David's felt need to announce his opinion of everyone's gender by being reminded that other people have announced their gender-based opinion of my intellect (can't do math, good at soft skills), preferences (loves people, hates things, delights in children), etc etc.
For the record, I'm a retired software engineer. My soft skills are what you'd expect from a smart older person on the autistic spectrum - maybe low average, whereas I got an 800 on the math GRE.
Announcing my gender to all and sundry only serves to cause more of them to jump to similar wrong conclusions about me. I'm past breeding age, and not looking for a partner. Why would anyone but my doctor need to know my gender, let alone my gender at birth? Why would anyone feel the need to inform randos who may not even have met me of that gender? Or at least what they *believe* to be my birth gender. (For all David can know for certain, I'm an MtoF transsexual, or intersex. And we've met in person more than once.)