[ SECRET POST #2597 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2597 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 047 secrets from Secret Submission Post #371.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - titc ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: *huffs*

[starphotographs]

I don't know why the singular "they" gets under so many people's skin. I've been using it for humans in general for as long as I can remember, and I think people know what I'm saying and stuff.

What does bother me is when people treat it as a separate identity, and they (plural!) insist on having everyone call them by some other gender-neutral pronoun because "they" means something else. Dude. "They" means "them/him/her/anyone." It's interchangeable with all other pronouns.

Re: *huffs*

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't realize it made people any more upset than any other grammar nitpick. Having a pet peeve is one thing, trolling a page is another. The page isn't even about "they", it's about being able to input preferred pronouns so that nobody has theirs left out (which poses a lot of problems, such as the millions of people who would inevitably set their pronouns to random obscenities for kicks, but since it's unlikely to get noticed by Facebook anyway, let alone implemented...)

If people can't/won't remember my preferred pronouns, I'm fine with "they". I'd even be okay with "it" if not for the underlying "I sneer at your weird gender identity bullshit" connotation it comes with. I just don't want to be called "she". Jesus.

Re: *huffs*

[starphotographs]

I don't see it often, and it's mostly an implied thing, but yeah, I've seen people who act like it's one of several pronouns people can prefer. Which kind of carries the meaning that you should never call anyone anything besides what they insist on, even if you're just calling them "they" because people sometimes do that with everyone and don't really think about it. Which doesn't make much sense, because singular "they" is just kind of the shared pronoun of humans as a whole.

Gah! I'm not making sense, and "they" has ceased to look like a word.

Re: *huffs*

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I use "they" as the default when I don't know someone's gender. (Before discovering invented pronouns, I mainly used "he or she" in speech and "s/he" in writing, but I've never had a problem with "they".)

Ugh. The page has a few hundred likes, and this is the only person so far who's decided to be a dick, so he's outnumbered, but it still helps to talk to someone who doesn't think conventions are more important than respect.

Re: *huffs*

[(Anonymous)]

The problem with the singular "they" is that it makes sentences harder to construct and parse correctly. It's the best friend the unclear antecedent ever had.

I'm not making a moral case here, nor even really a grammatical one. Just a practical one. Using the singular "they" lowers the overall utility of the English language.

You're totally within your rights to consider that an acceptable tradeoff, of course. There's a lot to be said for that point of view.