Talk:Gender-neutral pronoun
|
|
Original text (now heavily modified) imported from h2g2. I'm the original author (Researcher number 129960), and I copied only the unedited version, to which I retain a copyright. Martin
Suppose that instead of 'he' and 'she', we had different pronouns for people with different coloured skin. When referring to a black person we'd say 'ne', and when referring to a white person we'd say 'ge'. For example:
- 'Ge hit nim several times for nir disobedience - for ge did not want gir hard work to be wasted.'
Or, in normal English:
- 'The white person hit the black person several times for the black person's disobedience - for the white person did not want the white person's hard work to be wasted.'
It's a pretty silly idea, and it's clear to see how racist it could be. Yet we follow exactly the same idea with regards to gender -- our language is very sexist. And think of romance langauges which assign a gender to every rock, tree, and stone! Is this something that should be changed - and if so, how?
I moved the above sermonette here, because it's not encyclopedic. It's an appeal to the reader to agree.
We could revise it by reporting that some people (or many people) believe that this or that is "silly" or "racist" or "sexist". --Ed Poor
- "separate pronouns for the genders has no more logical basis than separate pronouns for any other grouping of ovjects of people" -- how about that, ed? -- Tarquin
I have attempted to add a little linguistic perspective to this article, including a statement of the problem in the first paragraph and the observation that speakers of English are simply switching from he-her etc. to they and their. I did not say, what I think, that none of these other solutions will ever happen. This article is fundamentally POV, isn't she?
I also think the treatment of other languages ignores the whole idea of grammatical gender, wherein the gender is attached to articles and modifiers and considerably simplifies sentence structure. Ortolan88 16:35 Dec 3, 2002 (UTC)
Perhaps it would make sense to completely delete the section on other languages? I'm not really qualified to say what tortures have been inflicted on them, and no info is better than badly expressed/researched info.
- "none have been successful outside of narrow contexts, such as this article"
Well, singular they is widespread. Universal male is widespread (though becoming less so). Recasting to avoid the issue (eg into plural, 2nd person) is widespread. 'he or she' is widespread. All of these are mentioned/linked in the article.
The options in the entry which aren't widespread are 'it', 'one', and 'neologisms and slang'. The first two are occasionally suggested by opponents to (eg) singular they, and are worth mentioning here, I think. The neologism section points out that most of these are "the failed ideas of dead people".
Seems to be a bit of duplication now: how many links to singular they do we need? ;-) -Martin
- The none in "none have been successful" is a pronoun (non-gender-specific, as it happens), referring to gender-neutral pronouns, the subject of the article. The "singular they" (second link removed) and "he or she" are not part of the the collection of gender-specific pronouns touted in the bulk of this article. I'll look at the wording though. It may be confusing. I think "it" and "one" are certainly worth mentioning.
- The article is mutating from one specifically pushing hairy solutions like "sie and hir" into one discussing general approaches in English to making discourse non-sexist, of which the "sie and hir" are a minor part, all due respect to the proponents and the originator of the article. Ortolan88
Ahh: I would consider singular they to be an example of a gender-neutral pronoun. 'he or she' is discussed briefly under the table marked 'dual'. Only one paragraph, though, and it's not NPOV (dang!). -Martin
I just restored a rewritten version of the "singular they" paragraph to this article and put it back as the second paragraph. This gives some proportion to this article.
A passing link to the singular they is not enough:
- Most people don't want to offend
- Most people tried out "he or she" and "his or her" and got tired of it quickly
- Some people (me, in 1972) switched over to she and her or simply wrote around it.
- Most people consciously or unconsciously switched to the singular they.
- A tiny tiny minority is fighting it out among themselves over various proposals like sie and hir that will never be part of the language.
I am too polite to say that in the article, but I feel strongly that the solution chosen by average speakers of the language, chosen out of a combination of good manners and wanting to speak and write smoothly, should have a prominent place in this article lest naive readers think the only solution is one of the clumsy, ideology-ridden solutions touted in the rest of the article. Ortolan88
- I agree, and anyway the Wikipedia is not in the business of endorsing (or suppressing) any particular idea. If they is being used by a lot of English-speakers as a gender-neutral pronoun, it should get at least a paragraph in this article. --Ed Poor
- I'm not convinced. According to the usage note at http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=67&q=he , very few people in the usage panel suggested the use of 'they'. See also http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=67&q=they which comments: "Eighty-two percent find the sentence The typical student in the program takes about six years to complete their course work unacceptable". The figures are summarised in the article itself. If that information is out of date, find me stuff that's more in date.
- That's not to say that singular they doesn't deserve more space than sie and hir - it does, and it gets it. However, it's not the solution, and the article shouldn't promote it as such. -Martin
- You're right, Martin. In fact, the article should not present any form of usage as the solution. It should just report what people use for pronouns. --Ed Poor
I don't promote it. It grates on my ear too. However, my belief is that it is not necessary to promote it because it is happening anyway. And, if I may say so, usage panels and the like are always very conservative and up-tight, and generally are prescriptive rather than descriptive. If I encountered the singular they in an article I was editing, I would take it out and replace it by rewording. Personally, I use her most of the time. That does not change my belief that the singular they is the solution, but I don't say so in the article, except to note that people have done it since the 1500s and are doing it even more today than ever. Ortolan88 19:11 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)
I just put the singular they back again! I don't know who is taking out, but it is a mistake. Look, the article cannot be NPOV if it ignores the most common solution to this problem. I know it is ungrammatical. I know that many worthy people are addressing this problem with more formal solutions, but to suppress the common solution is the worst form of political correctness and I will keep putting the singular they back in this article forever. Ortolan88 19:28 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)
- The articles should not ignore singular they: I totally agree. What I don't agree is that it needs to mention it four times: twice in the introduction, again under 'options', and a fourth time under 'see also'. Doing so gives it preferential treatment above other options, and I've yet to see any evidence that it is so much more common than, say, rewording, that it deserves this extra exposure. There is a middle way between ignoring singular they, and mentioning it four times. -Martin
Four mentions of singular they is preferable treatment and four screensful of politically correct claptrap isn't? Ortolan88
If people would refrain from adding specific information about specific solutions to the intro, I believe that would improve the article. The point of an introduction is to summarise what comes later, not to make it redundant. That means name-checking each of the four most common solutions, but not going into detail:
- singular they
- generic male
- he or she
- rewording the sentence
That's what I've done. If more detail is added to the intro regarding singular they, then corresponding info must be added to the intro regarding the other three, or the intro becomes unbalanced. Alternatively, if anybody would like to offer any actual evidence that one of these four is vastly less common than the other three, and can be dropped, then please go ahead.
In my personal experience, which is not evidence, the percentages would be rougly as below. Of course knowing how often a rewording strategy is used is inherently difficult because it is impossible to distinguish between a sentence that was drafted as plural and one that was drafted as singular and changed to the plural to avoid the he/she problem. Also it is difficult to tell the difference between the generic male used properly, and male pronouns used because the speaker is assuming that all members of the relevant group are male.
- singular they (30%)
- generic male (25%)
- he or she (15%)
- rewording the sentence (30%)
FWIW, I personally hate the generic male, and hope it dies a quick and painful death. The other three I find clumsy but tolerable, while sie and hir (which I use when I can) I find elegant but hopelessly naive.
The sections in this article about singular they and the generic male could do with much work, because they were constructed by cutting and pasting from the previous introduction. *steps down from soapbox* -Martin 15:46 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a style guide, or a soap box for social engineers. I moved nearly the entire page here (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_gender-neutral_pronouns). --Ed Poor
Ok, I can accept the style guide argument. Not clear on why it might be viewed as social engineering, though. *shrug* -Martin
- This is now a more useful article. Personally, I will continue my practice of the last 30 years of using the unmentioned solution, the generic she , or writing around it entirely. I like the external link to the meta discussion though. Ortolan88
I'm a little perplexed as to what exactly made this a style guide. I can see that the usage examples could be bad... but Ed added some of those (for it and him), so I did think I was on the right track there. Current guess is just too much detail and detail that's not necessary in an encyclopedia - am I close?
I don't want to make same mistake with gender-specific pronoun (which mentions generic she), sie and hir, singular they, spivak pronoun... -Martin
A styleguide tells people how they should use language. Your styleguide is excellent, which is why I preserved it. However, the Wikipedia is not in the business of telling people how to act. If it were, the arguments over the stardard of right conduct would be endless and all-consuming. --Ed Poor
"Gender-neutral pronouns neither reveal nor impute sex or gender when referring to people, animals or things."
(1) I had to look up "impute". Is there a particular reason why "reveal" and "impute" are both used? To me they mean pretty much the same thing in this context, is there some subtle implication that I'm not getting? How about just "indicate"? GGano
- Consider this sentence: "Chris washed her hair" - 'her' reveals that Chris is a woman (Christine, one imagines).
- Consider this sentence: "every doctor cares for his patients" - 'his' imputes that all doctors are male, something that isn't the case.
- "indicate" is probably fine. Martin
(2) More controvertially: "sex or gender" seems weird here, and linking to gender roles seems completely wrong, at least with the current content of that page. Pronouns do not indicate anything about the role of the person, only their biological sex (or at least their perceived biological sex). I think the gender page is being naive when it says that "gender" cannot mean "sex". This usage may be "incorrect" according to some people, but it certainly is the most common everyday usage, and the above sentence is a good example. It uses "gender" to mean "sex", but this questionable prohibition causes it to link to "gender role", which is wrong.
- regarding the gender page, why not take it up at talk:gender - I happen to agree with you.
- imo, pronouns don't merely impute biological sex, they also impute gender. A pre-op female-to-male transsexual may be biologically female, but he will still typically prefer to be referred using male pronouns to reflect his current gender. Martin
- I did, we'll see what happens. IMO pronouns may impute gender or sex, depending. E.g. if your pre-op transsexual were to visit a doctor, the doctor would probably use "she" in his/her notes. And I've seen no end of "she - I mean he" or vice versa in popular writing about RuPaul, etc. I think the answer is that pronouns were originally meant to impute sex, but now it varies (in the relatively small number of cases where the sex and gender may be different). Of course, this all assumes that "gender" means something along the lines of "the sex you identify with", rather than "your biological sex, used when talking about sociological issues", which I think remains controversial. GGano
I am moving this question from the article:
In the Example section about Co and Cos, User:Daniel_Quinlan asked, "(What do they mean?)"
Paige 14:39, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- Just a note: I put the question in the article on purpose — I'm well aware of how to use Talk pages. I don't want any readers to think they're stupid for not knowing the answer. It seemed rather non-obvious enough for me. I think it's okay to indicate when articles are incomplete in the article itself. Daniel Quinlan 17:32, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)
- Daniel, I want you to know that certainly no offense, implication or insult was intended, but quite often those questions have a way of staying in the articles for some time, especially considering that the info has been in the article for a while and is in the disambig page co (since the contributor may not check the article again for some time). As far as the meaning, I understand it to be simply what the section says, a neologism that is used as a gender-neutral third person pronoun. It seems to be used mainly by groups like the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, a commune group, and seems to have evolved from the prefix "co-" as in co-ed, originally from the Latin "com-." However, there are no formal definitions available. There is also a pronoun "co" in Polish and possibly Czech, but since I know very little about those languages, I do not know if this could be related. There is an article about it here: [1] (http://www.panix.com/~kingdon/gender.html), and an almost humorous discussion involving it here : [2] (http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/05/265455.shtml), including this line: "supposedly the "co/co/cos/cos/coself" scheme had some actual use among alternative co-opters in the 1970's." Can you think of anyway we could clarify this section in the article? -Paige 18:21, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)
co is an English (proposed) gender-neutral pronoun, right? Doesn't say that anywhere, and I want to be sure before I add it. --Spikey 17:08, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Please read this slowly and carefully:
A book made in the distant past will very likely tell you that the word "he" is a legal generic pronoun. However, according to what sounds natural to me, "she" makes more sense than "he", because "she" already contains "he" in its letters. How about other forms of the pronoun?? As for other forms, neither word already contains the letters of the other word in it, so the best solution is simply to use the forms of "she", unless you want to create new words, which can be hard to get accepted. This gives us the following pronouns:
- First Person Singular (I, me, my, mine)
- First Person Plural (we, us, our, ours)
- Second Person (you, your, yours)
- Third Person Singular Masculine (he, him, his)
- Third Person Singular Feminine/Generic (she, her, hers)
- Third Person Singular Neuter (it, its)
- Third Person Plural (they, them, their, theirs)
Examples:
- CORRECT: Each BOY in this class raised HIS hand to indicate HE needed a question.
- INCORRECT: Each STUDENT in this class raised HIS hand to indicate HE needed a question. (Unless, of course, all the students are boys.)
- CORRECT: Each STUDENT in this class raised HER hand to indicate SHE needed a question.
How often do people ask questions about what word to use as a generic pronoun?? Please identify to yourself which word, "he" or "she" sounds more logical to you for whatever reason. Please make sure it is a reason based entirely on what YOU say, not on what other people tell you.
- This seems to be offtopic to me. What bearing will this have on the article? We aim to report on what the current status of using gender neutral pronouns are, not advocating or asking for change. Dysprosia 23:52, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- Wikipedia sadly is not the place for advocacy of different generic pronouns. Martin tried once, but sie learnt soon enough.
Where is a better place on the Internet for such a thing??
- I would recommend usenet for general debate: alt.usage.english. However, do lurk before you leap. Martin 00:19, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I got to http://alt.usage.english and it appears that no such URL exists on the Internet.
- You need to go to news://alt.usage.english. You'll need a usenet reader, such as many email client. You probably already have one. Martin 00:39, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Table
The Sie and hir article has a little table showing different forms. I think this article should have a table with all the different forms in it, alternative words, sie zie co it ey etc. and maybe have another column to show how popular they are. I came here looking for information on these words, and there isn't much. - Omegatron 14:40, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)
- I don't believe there are any stats on popularity around, but if you find any I'd be interested. Martin 22:04, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- they don't need to be scientifially exact. it already says that some forms are more popular than others. even something like a google search gives a general idea:
- Results 1 - 10 of about 862 English pages for zie zir.
- Results 1 - 10 of about 2,180 English pages for hie hir.
- According to this page [3] (http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/faq.html): "Depending on how one counts, there are between three and five active groups. The two most popular seem to be "sie, hir, hir, hirs, hirself", (especially "hir"), and "zie, zir, zir, zirs, zirself"." - Omegatron 05:25, Jul 12, 2004 (UTC)