But there's also a more mundane level of operation where the purpose of genderless pronouns is to respect the identities of actual human beings who don't want to be gendered by language

Although of course one also needs to respect the identities of people who *do* want to be gendered by language.

Which is where it all gets very complex.

(let alone more radically as a complete replacement for 'he' and 'she')

Uh, nobody's advocating that. "He" and "she" are perfectly good terms to use when talking about gendered individuals.

I am, however, entirely willing to advocate a replacement for "he or she". For my money, "he or she" looks horrendously ugly when you're talking about people in the abstract. Furthermore, almost every time I've seen "they" used in that way it's been absolutely clear from the context what the deal is, and in those few cases where the context wasn't clear that's usually because of a whole host of communication failures on the part of the writer, rather than the use of "they".

And as Andy says, it's not like I'm going off to grammarian forums to troll pedants, I'm just happy to have ammunition to use if they launch a nitpicking raid.

As to genderless pronouns, all points made so far seem very reasonable if we look at them as a big plan to make people reflect on or discard their prejudices about gender, or that kind of thing. But there's also a more mundane level of operation where the purpose of genderless pronouns is to respect the identities of actual human beings who don't want to be gendered by language. Which to some extent short-circuits some of those other concerns: to use as an example Dan's point, and I stress that it does strike me as a good and interesting point, that one may not gain very much by writing 'If someone is hungry zie should eat' rather than 'If someone is hungry he should eat' because people will still tend to imagine the hypothetical hungry person as male, that doesn't actually arise if you're sitting around a dinner-table with people and one of those people is someone who doesn't feel male or female and would feel uncomfortable being referred to by either 'he' or 'she' and you want to say to your neighbour 'I think if Robin is hungry [pronoun] should eat'.

Personally I haven't investigated nearly enough to know what I think about it all, but that's why the regendering tool is useful, because at least it helps one become more familiar with the proposition and therefore better able to judge how it works in practice. It is unfortunate that it hasn't got 'zie' and / or 'ze', since those do seem to be quite popular.

The bits of grammar that are important are the bits that literally everybody knows and nobody ever makes mistakes about except for non-native speakers. Nobody ever "accidentally" says "the mat sat on the cat" or "mat cat on sat the" instead of "the cat sat on the mat" because they've got an intuitive understanding of English grammar and they know where subjects and objects go in sentences even if they don't know what the formal definitions of subject and object are.

Interesting linguistic fact: even babies don't get word order wrong when learning a language. They don't randomly put the word 'the' in the wrong place - rather, they're more likely to just leave out the word 'the'. And if they get words wrong, they're typically mixing up, say, one noun for another, rather than a noun for a verb or suchlike.

The point of language is to communicate, and in general using what pendants call 'correct' grammar (and the rest of us might call 'traditional' or 'standard' or 'orthodox' grammar) is an aid to communication

This is partially true.

The bits of grammar that are important are the bits that literally everybody knows and nobody ever makes mistakes about except for non-native speakers. Nobody ever "accidentally" says "the mat sat on the cat" or "mat cat on sat the" instead of "the cat sat on the mat" because they've got an intuitive understanding of English grammar and they know where subjects and objects go in sentences even if they don't know what the formal definitions of subject and object are.

I honestly can't think of a single situation where "singular they" creates an ambiguity that would not be equally ambiguous using "he", "she" or "he or she". In fact surely by definition if you are able to tell that "they" is being used as a singular pronoun then there cannot be any ambiguity about plurality.

Indeed the only situation in which a singular "they" could create ambiguity about the plurality or otherwise of the "they" in question is if one has *no other information whatsoever* about who they are.

"The Doctor said they would be back at two"
"The Doctors said they would be back at two"
"The guests will have to make their own beds"
"Your guest will have to make their own bed."

I think there are two separate cases here Jamie: firstly, advocating the use of 'they' in genuinely gender-neutral contexts when it is not pedantic to insist that people are using language incorrectly if they use 'he' as the accompanying pronoun to, for example, 'someone' (which I'm not doing in an ironic or jocular fashion, I'm just following the practice I've seen in several sociology texts). Secondly, advocating a wholesale replacement of 'he' and 'she' by 'they', which I don't think is at the forefront of most of the discussion. I don't think anybody is deliberately acting against the pedants - rather, they are just rather unimpressed about the criticisms that they are making in the first place.

Singular 'they' is all very well from time to time, but to use it as a complete replacement for 'he or she' (let alone more radically as a complete replacement for 'he' and 'she') would needlessly reduce the effectiveness and expressive capacity of the language by making it much harder to distinguish between singular and plural. Native Anglophones are by and large pretty sensible in using 'they', and you'll notice that they generally only use it when the context makes clear to a sympathetic listener whether the noun it's standing for is singular or plural. Try using it systematically for a whole week in stead of 'he' and 'she' and I bet you'll find it significantly harder to communicate with people.

I know all this pedantry-hating is jocular, but I'm sorry, I find it pretty silly. What's obnoxious is people offering unsolicited criticism of other people's use of language. That's obnoxious whether their criticisms happen to be valid or not. It may be amusingly ironic when they aren't valid, but that's incidental. The fact that people are rude and annoying does not make their views unreasonable or wrong, and deliberately doing the opposite of what they say is shooting yourself in the foot. The point of language is to communicate, and in general using what pendants call 'correct' grammar (and the rest of us might call 'traditional' or 'standard' or 'orthodox' grammar) is an aid to communication. When being 'correct' gets in the way of communication then there's good reason to use an ad hoc 'incorrect' solution, and when being 'correct' systematically gets in the way then there's good reason to change what we regard as correct. When a new usage gains sufficient currency to be regarded as a 'common mistake' the appropriate reaction is neither to insist that it's wrong and object whenever it's used nor to use it as much as possible because you enjoy irritating the people who object to it. The appropriate reaction is to consider whether it increases or decreases the expressive power of the language and to adopt or avoid it accordingly.

I approve of grammar pedantry being used to argue that you can do certain things with grammar rather than the opposite. I love seeing the enemy's weapons used against them. ;)

I particularly like:

The only problem with this view is that all you’ve managed to learn about English is how to get your brain to release some satisfying endorphins every time you blindly regurgitate some authority figure’s unjustified assertion.

I'm totally going to use that.

More Legend of Korra. The series is looking more and more promising the more information comes out.

This page presents a lot of evidence that the singular 'they' is unambiguously correct. However, I don't know whether this will be interesting to you or seem just as annoying as the grammar pedants with the opposite opinion.

Are you advocating metapedantry?

But what about being a reverse grammar pedant? I love using [sic] when quoting somebody who says 'he' when they should have said 'he or she' or 'they'.

I absolutely hate grammar pedants.

I have a lot of time for "they" as a gender-neutral single pronoun. Anything that makes grammar pedants rage meets my approval. ;)

From a linguistic point of view: I know that there are certain categories of words that are closed, which means that it is impossible to introduce new terms into them and make them stick. It is possible to invent new nouns, verbs and adjectives, but it is not possible to create new prepositions or conjunctions. I don't know if that's also true of pronouns, which could explain the resistance to introducing gender-neutral or genderqueer pronouns - if it needs any explanation beyond prejudice/ignorance. This isn't to say that the existing pronouns can't be used in different ways - many languages use them without gender implications in most circumstances, and singular they has been introduced instead of he as a gender-neutral pronoun.

Actually I'm saying pretty much the opposite.

The reason using ungendered pronouns works is because they highlight the fact that the use of gendered pronouns masks a lot of unconscious sexist assumptions. When we say "he" to mean "an unspecified person of either gender" we are, in fact, assuming that the unspecified person is male. If you say "zie" (which is the version I've heard) then it stands out, and confronts you with the fact that you're making assumptions.

The problem is that if the ungendered terms were commonly used, they'd wind up being effectively gendered anyway, because the same assumptions would get attached to them. Yes, most people will assume that a "chairman" or a "policeman" are male, but people make the same assumptions about a "doctor" or a "scientist" or a "captain of industry."

Ironically if we used *non* gendered pronouns as standard, I suspect the use of gendered pronouns would actually be quite a good way to highlight the same issues (for much the same reason that the racially-derived pronouns make such an impact in the essay Jamie linked to).

I don't, and I'd love to hear you expound on the subject, as it's one I've wrestled with quite a lot over the past couple years. On the other hand, I have a sneaking suspicion this conversation has just about passed its "best if consumed by" date, and if that's the case, I won't attempt to keep pushing it forward.

Only Dan can answer for Dan, but for my part the whole ey/sie thing doesn't quite work for me because they just don't seem like real words - they jump off the page at you and shout LOOK AT ME I AM DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT AND UNUSUAL, when surely the point of the exercise should be to make the use of ungendered pronouns seem entirely unremarkable and ordinary.

Robinson L: I've also tried out the other options, including the “wh” and “bl,” but they just produce pronouns like “wher” and “ble,” which doesn't seem to be making a point about racism.

Jamie: Shani has helpfully pointed me at the probable origin of the 'ble' / 'whe' thing, which is a very clever bit of Swift-like satire from the 1980s.

Oh, I see. With that essay for context, I'd have to say yes, that is indeed quite clever. (Unfortunately, I can't seem to get either "wherblim" or "bler/whim" to work on ferretbrain. Poot.)

On genderless pronouns:

Dan: I kind of think they only work because they feel unnatural, if you see what I mean.

I don't, and I'd love to hear you expound on the subject, as it's one I've wrestled with quite a lot over the past couple years. On the other hand, I have a sneaking suspicion this conversation has just about passed its "best if consumed by" date, and if that's the case, I won't attempt to keep pushing it forward.

IT LOOKS SO AWESOME.

As a way of fiddling with pronouns, I can see the sense of it, although personally I'm not sold on genderless pronouns. I kind of think they only work because they feel unnatural, if you see what I mean.

If you look at what we did with the tool when we got hold of it, we basically played around with names we already knew and picked up on the errors.

Without wishing to outright disagree - you make a fair point - I should say for the record that actually what I've mostly been doing with it is trying to get my head around 'ey' and 'sie'. I just didn't mention that 'cause frankly who wants to hear about My Struggle With Pronouns?

I like the book-spine poems.

I have to agree with Dan that the point is undermined by the propensity to change around gender-neutral terms such as Capital-A Art, and by missing a whole slew of gendered terms such as “chick,” “Sir,” “fangirl,” “misogynistic,” “bitch,” and several others which presently slip my memory, not to mention its complete failure to address anatomical terminology.

At the same time, I agree with Rami that the re-gender process does do its job, if not as well as it might. Jamie has shared how its gotten him thinking, and in my digging through the archives I've more than once caught myself thinking 'Gosh, that's really quite a lot of female authors/directors, oh, wait …' Also, I've found reading through articles which deal directly with gender dynamics not only lends to much mirth, but also gets me thinking in terms of switched genders and the implications thereof. It's all well and good to imagine gender-flipping a discussion as a mental exercise, but it's quite another to see and feel what a gender-swapped discussion would actually be like.

For instance, the other day I had a look back at Earth-Kevin Robinson's mini-rant on Vernon Mars and dear lady but the gender dynamics in that show are creepy as hell.

I would also argue that just because we've mostly just been having fun with the re-gender process seeing what silly results we get (“Arundhati Robert,” “Timothy Barry's Alberta,” “my sound system still being KIMBERLY,” the month of “Angela”) doesn't preclude the application working as its primarily intended. In other words, I'm saying the regender feature can work as a source of childish amusement and as thought-provoking social commentary at the same time. It may even work better as the latter because it also serves the former function.


On a different subject, I've also been having a go at the I Write Like feature. Of my three Ferretbrain articles so far, The Problem With the Iron Ring and the Oracle Renamed apparently follow the style of H. P. Lovecraft, whereas Race in Popular Culture is reminiscent of Dan Brown.

In my livejournal archive, my reviews of Doctor Who Series Three and Four most approximate Douglas Adams in style. My NaNo novel (intro and full) is a close cousin to the writings of one Mr. Stephen King. Well, I always knew it was terrible. Also, I have a short time-travel story which puts the feature in mind of Raymond Chandler, and a short-short comic horror piece which might've been penned by Arthur C Clarke.

It thought my reflection on the recent Sherlock Holmes movie most resembled Arthur Conan Doyle in style, which follows Dan's experience. It was at this point I began to suspect the author generator was playing silly buggers. In confirmation, my reflection on 1984 came out in the vein of George Orwell. (Interestingly, my thoughts on Homage to Catalonia, with much fewer Orwellian buzzwords, came out as written like Chuck Palahnuik.) Also, I fed Ptolemaues' epic smackdown of that one chapter from New Moon and Melissa's Twilight article into I Write Back and they both came back with Stephenie Meyer. (ouch)

Additionally, I'm convinced I Write Like has a randomized “12% of David Foster Wallace” application, as a lot of random articles (including my review of David Tennant's last five Doctor Who specials) of mine, one prose story and my one and only poem all came back with his name attached.

I've also been feeding some other authors into I Write Like. From his thoughts on Doctor Who, Terry Pratchett writes like Dan Brown. From his short stories available free online, he writes like either Edgar Allen Poe, *ug* J. K. Rowling, and yes, David Foster Wallace.

Melina Marchetta (from the first three paragraphs of On the Jellicoe Road, writes like P. G. Wodehouse. From a couple of short snippets from Saving Francesca (review still pending) I got Dan Brown for the longest, Mario Puzo for another, and *gag* Stephenie Meyer again.

If you look at what we did with the tool when we got hold of it, we basically played around with names we already knew and picked up on the errors.

I think that may be not because of the flaws in the Regender site but because of our tendency here on FB to rip things to shreds...