Several times I’ve tried to find out what pronoun to use for someone with an ambiguous name, by looking through their comment history, and failed to find that information. It would be nice to have a quick way to get to someone’s post on the Welcome thread, as a sort of profile, or at least regular account profiles that contain this information.
As it is, using “they” to refer to a specific person, guessing incorrectly, and posting a comment to ask which pronoun to use are all socially discouraged. Using names every time works, but is sometimes awkward.
The field should be a text box, not a radio button or a dropdown list.
Ideally, I’d like it to be labeled ‘pronouns’ rather than ‘gender’, but that might be non-preferred for signaling reasons.
Agree strongly with the signaling concern. Also, it helps prevent smartalecks filling in something like “second person” or worse “first person plural”.
‘Gender’ isn’t much better at dealing with smart-alecks or outliers, actually. If I’m in an odd enough mood on the day that’s implemented, I might fill in the box with ‘yes’. Or ‘no’. Or ‘blue’. ‘Female’ doesn’t always suit me, and unlike with pronouns there’s no obvious non-male non-female answer to that one.
I’d add “both”, “fluid” or “variable”, and “other” for a better shot at completeness, mostly because there are people whose non-binary gender is an important enough part of their identity that “n/a” seems likely to feel dismissive to them.
Better go with the text field then if there’s really demand for all those. The base three would pretty much solve the actually manifesting problem of people not knowing which pronoun to use of other people though.
It might be possible to automate this—if you’re commenting to someone, pronouns which don’t match their preferences are marked as spelling errors or (if wanted) autocorrected.
I don’t know whether this is worth the trouble to program, but it’ would be kind of cool.
That seems much too hard—pronouns are used in all sorts of contexts; how would it determine who (whether the author of the parent, the OP, or—more likely—nobody who wrote a comment here at all, in which case it has no reference) is being referred to?
This makes me wonder if there would be value in a top level post discussing the implications of social anxiety arising from lack of clear gender markers. I have an unverified hunch that gender-related privilege plays a role in this, too.
I’m not any kind of regular here but is “they” really discouraged? Why?
The Pronoun Question is a recurring topic of idle conversation around here that never makes definitive progress, and a fairly standard sub-pattern is someone suggesting “they” and someone else asserting that singular “they” is ungrammatical and thus to be avoided.
Other standard sub-patterns include someone suggesting Spivak pronouns and someone else asserting that they are dysphonious, someone suggesting “he” and someone else asserting that “he” is not in fact gender-neutral, and someone suggesting alternating “he” and “she” (either regularly, pseudo-randomly, or true-randomly) and someone else asserting that that’s too much work. (I’ve been known to assert some of those things myself.)
That said, I use “they” as a third-person singular pronoun all the time and have never gotten any negative comments (or, as far as I can tell, downvotes) because of it. Various other people use Spivak with equal success. And some people use “he” and “she.”
I endorse “they” but encourage you to use whatever works for you.
someone else asserting that singular “they” is ungrammatical and thus to be avoided.
Has that happened? It seems pretty well established that singular “they” is grammatical english, and if someone said otherwise, they may have been talking about a special ungrammatical use of “they” (there may be some cases where “he” or “she” is correct and “they” isn’t, but I can’t think of many off the top of my head)
I don’t feel like digging through links to find examples, and I accept that me repeating “Yes, it happens” is not actually additional evidence, so I won’t be offended if you remain skeptical.
That said: yes, it happens.
Though I suppose it’s possible that they meant a special ungrammatical use and I misunderstood them to mean the singular “they” in general.
That sounds like a lot of social anxiety to me if it’s enshrined as a routine group behaviour—heat & light make me tend to think something interesting is going on that isn’t being directly discussed.
I’m surprised that a group predicated on doing things better would appeal to tradition and authority as a reason for, well, anything.
And—seriously? Argument that “he” is gender-neutral? More argument for an eventual discussion of privilege as a pervasive bias.
The privilege-as-bias discussion has been had a few times, including in the context of gendered pronouns.
Which is no reason not to have it again, I suppose, but I encourage you to think carefully before doing so about your strategy for progressing it further than previous incarnations have, so we don’t keep going ’round the same mulberry bush.
Unrelatedly, tradition isn’t a bad thing to appeal to when it comes to the meaning of words, or really to any activity that depends on a community’s predictable adherence to conventions.
Why do we drive on the right side of the road in the U.S. rather than the left, and stop at red lights and go at green lights rather than vice-versa, and use “hello” to greet people rather than “ahoy” or “shoelace”? Basically, tradition.
Would it be better to switch? Well, maybe. But for at least some of those things, it’s better only if we all switch at once, which is difficult to manage.
Several times I’ve tried to find out what pronoun to use for someone with an ambiguous name, by looking through their comment history, and failed to find that information. It would be nice to have a quick way to get to someone’s post on the Welcome thread, as a sort of profile, or at least regular account profiles that contain this information.
As it is, using “they” to refer to a specific person, guessing incorrectly, and posting a comment to ask which pronoun to use are all socially discouraged. Using names every time works, but is sometimes awkward.
I think the ideal solution to this is to have a field like “location” and “website” that one can fill in.
Radio buttons might work best:
she / her / herself / hers / her
he / him / himself / his / his
it / it / itself / its / its
they / them / themselves / theirs / their
e / em / eirself / eirs / eir
Don’t use pronouns on me!
How about something for those of us who prefer anonymity..
Edit: I meant those of us who prefer anonymity but still want to post some personal information.
Don’t fill in the field?
*nods*
The field should be a text box, not a radio button or a dropdown list.
Ideally, I’d like it to be labeled ‘pronouns’ rather than ‘gender’, but that might be non-preferred for signaling reasons.
Agree strongly with the signaling concern. Also, it helps prevent smartalecks filling in something like “second person” or worse “first person plural”.
‘Gender’ isn’t much better at dealing with smart-alecks or outliers, actually. If I’m in an odd enough mood on the day that’s implemented, I might fill in the box with ‘yes’. Or ‘no’. Or ‘blue’. ‘Female’ doesn’t always suit me, and unlike with pronouns there’s no obvious non-male non-female answer to that one.
Are there important options beyond beyond male, female and an explicit n/a for the variable, not applicable, not your business etc cases?
I’d add “both”, “fluid” or “variable”, and “other” for a better shot at completeness, mostly because there are people whose non-binary gender is an important enough part of their identity that “n/a” seems likely to feel dismissive to them.
Better go with the text field then if there’s really demand for all those. The base three would pretty much solve the actually manifesting problem of people not knowing which pronoun to use of other people though.
If the field isn’t filled in, then posters are still stuck with a situation where what’s wanted isn’t obvious.
Tentative suggestion: a text field in profiles for preferred pronouns.
It might be possible to automate this—if you’re commenting to someone, pronouns which don’t match their preferences are marked as spelling errors or (if wanted) autocorrected.
I don’t know whether this is worth the trouble to program, but it’ would be kind of cool.
That seems much too hard—pronouns are used in all sorts of contexts; how would it determine who (whether the author of the parent, the OP, or—more likely—nobody who wrote a comment here at all, in which case it has no reference) is being referred to?
You’re right.
Is it? I wouldn’t have thought people here would react negatively to that.
This makes me wonder if there would be value in a top level post discussing the implications of social anxiety arising from lack of clear gender markers. I have an unverified hunch that gender-related privilege plays a role in this, too.
I’m not any kind of regular here but is “they” really discouraged? Why?
No, not really.
The Pronoun Question is a recurring topic of idle conversation around here that never makes definitive progress, and a fairly standard sub-pattern is someone suggesting “they” and someone else asserting that singular “they” is ungrammatical and thus to be avoided.
Other standard sub-patterns include someone suggesting Spivak pronouns and someone else asserting that they are dysphonious, someone suggesting “he” and someone else asserting that “he” is not in fact gender-neutral, and someone suggesting alternating “he” and “she” (either regularly, pseudo-randomly, or true-randomly) and someone else asserting that that’s too much work. (I’ve been known to assert some of those things myself.)
That said, I use “they” as a third-person singular pronoun all the time and have never gotten any negative comments (or, as far as I can tell, downvotes) because of it. Various other people use Spivak with equal success. And some people use “he” and “she.”
I endorse “they” but encourage you to use whatever works for you.
Has that happened? It seems pretty well established that singular “they” is grammatical english, and if someone said otherwise, they may have been talking about a special ungrammatical use of “they” (there may be some cases where “he” or “she” is correct and “they” isn’t, but I can’t think of many off the top of my head)
I don’t feel like digging through links to find examples, and I accept that me repeating “Yes, it happens” is not actually additional evidence, so I won’t be offended if you remain skeptical.
That said: yes, it happens.
Though I suppose it’s possible that they meant a special ungrammatical use and I misunderstood them to mean the singular “they” in general.
That sounds like a lot of social anxiety to me if it’s enshrined as a routine group behaviour—heat & light make me tend to think something interesting is going on that isn’t being directly discussed.
I’m surprised that a group predicated on doing things better would appeal to tradition and authority as a reason for, well, anything.
And—seriously? Argument that “he” is gender-neutral? More argument for an eventual discussion of privilege as a pervasive bias.
Fascinating, thank you for your thoughtful reply.
The privilege-as-bias discussion has been had a few times, including in the context of gendered pronouns.
Which is no reason not to have it again, I suppose, but I encourage you to think carefully before doing so about your strategy for progressing it further than previous incarnations have, so we don’t keep going ’round the same mulberry bush.
Unrelatedly, tradition isn’t a bad thing to appeal to when it comes to the meaning of words, or really to any activity that depends on a community’s predictable adherence to conventions.
Why do we drive on the right side of the road in the U.S. rather than the left, and stop at red lights and go at green lights rather than vice-versa, and use “hello” to greet people rather than “ahoy” or “shoelace”? Basically, tradition.
Would it be better to switch? Well, maybe. But for at least some of those things, it’s better only if we all switch at once, which is difficult to manage.