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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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I've been trying to degender my language. I grew up saying "thank you (or excuse me, yes/no, etc) sir/ma'am" and then being in customer facing positions for years just absolutely cemented that in my mind to the point where it is an absolute knee jerk reaction to make assumptions about the gender of others. It's an awful habit and makes me cringe every time I do it. I try to either just avoid the gender identifier ("thank you.") which to my mind sounds impolite, or use gender neutral terms like "friend" which REALLY sound impolite. It's tough but I'm working on it! The real trouble is getting my brain to stop gendering others and as a quite elderly millenial who actually identifies as Agender it is an annoying and difficult task. I'm envious of younger folks who won't grow up with these kinds of ideas as a default.
In my last job (which was on a team of all cis women), people shared their pronouns...both singular AND plural (i.e., how they wanted to be referred to in a group). Which is pretty bizarre. Like, what if one person's plural pronoun is "folks" and another's is "friends"...then which term are you supposed to use?
And I came to hate saying "friends" because we weren't friends. It was a soul-sucking corporate gig, and I wasn't part of their mom squad...I never saw them outside of work, and I was always the last to learn about team changes, so let's be real: we aren't friends, we're coworkers. It got creepy being expected to smile and address everyone as "friends"!
FWIW, I have nothing against folks or guys or y'all ;)
This is what bugs me about chosen pronouns, it's like a right someone has to tell other people how to use language, that can get complicated and needs memorization. People should have leeway on the words they use, even if they shouldn't be making unwanted assertions about other peoples gender. Would be better to just have a set of genderless pronouns that are always polite/safe to use.
I resonate deeply with this. I can't be bothered to memorise all these pronouns. I'd of course do it for people I am close to, though.
I maintain that "they/them" is that always-safe genderless pronoun type.
I do use singular they a lot for lack of alternatives, but it can get pretty awkward when both an individual and a group of people are part of the context of your statement. Do you accept the ambiguity and that people may misinterpret you? Spend a lot of time structuring your words to fight against that ambiguity? Overuse the word 'person' instead of using pronouns? I think it would be a strict improvement to the language if we just made 'xe' or something a real word.
Agreed.