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The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#191

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

ghaff wrote: post #168
sgt wrote: post #163

> The question of what will become of the farm is a very complicated and painful one for Eleanor. They are an academic and a writer, and their family wants them to pursue their passions. Eleanor has no interest in farming themself, but they don’t want to see the farm disappear. They now live in New York State and miss home all the time. The family wants to hold on to the property, if at all possible, so they can live…

It's not a well-written paragraph because it deals with both Eleanor and the family and it's not immediately obvious what "they" is referring to in one or two spots. That said, singular-they is pretty much the best alternative to dealing with a number of issues that copy editors have struggled with for years.

Why can't we just make a new pronoun that is "they" but singular?

Like "Theya".

Theya is my friend. It's singular, non gendered, and then we can just get rid of every pronoun except "they" and "theya".

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#192

Post by ghaff »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #191
ghaff wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a well-written paragraph because it deals with both Eleanor and the family and it's not immediately obvious what "they" is referring to in one or two spots. That said, singular-they is pretty much the best alternative to dealing with a number of issues that copy editors have struggled with for years.

Why can't we just make a new pronoun that is "they" but singular? Like "Theya". Theya is my friend. It's singular, non gendered, and then we can just get rid of every pronoun except "they" and "theya".

Because it's much easier to get people to use an existing pronoun in a way that historically would have been considered a bit sloppy than it is to get them to adopt a new non-sex gendered but non-neutral coined pronoun. (It's actually been tried in the past.)

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#193

Post by eigenmeister »

jkepler wrote: post #132
Arn_Thor wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, from an economic standpoint, at least on the surface. But what of the social and ecological benefits of keeping alive small communities and small fields with diverse crops? The problems with large-scale monoculture farming are well known. A counter-argument is that food is too cheap. That obviously doesn't feel correct for someone struggling to pay the bills each month, but still... Workers are being sq…

> Workers are being squeezed on one end and small farmers are being squeezed on the other, and the gains go somewhere else entirely while small communities fall into despair and die out. This seems to have all started when we turned the dollar into a melting iceberg jn 1913 (created the Federal Reserve, which is basicaly a cabal of private banksters with a veneer of government), and it intensified when we decided to…

Federal subsidies may contribute, but average farm size has increased, and employment decreased, over a much longer scale - century plus - than any farm program I'm aware of. It's a massive secular trend longer than the monetary items mentioned as well.

Technology/automation is a commonly cited cause, although in this context you'll see references to mechanization.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#194

Post by sgu999 »

roel_v wrote: post #127
sgu999 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From an economic standpoint, there is no sense in small scale farming. I don't think this is true everywhere. It likely requires the right supply chain to work, but here in France small family farms are doing fine for instance. They have to go sell their products to local markets on top of growing them, but it's a sustainable business.

Without subsidies none of those would survive, especially the French ones, who are notorious for their 'traditional' (i.e., inefficient) farming practices.

> notorious for their 'traditional' (i.e., inefficient) farming practices

Do you have sources?

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#195

Post by dctoedt »

pmelendez wrote: post #167
sgt wrote: post #163

> The question of what will become of the farm is a very complicated and painful one for Eleanor. They are an academic and a writer, and their family wants them to pursue their passions. Eleanor has no interest in farming themself, but they don’t want to see the farm disappear. They now live in New York State and miss home all the time. The family wants to hold on to the property, if at all possible, so they can live…

>This is getting pretty old. Well the singular use of "They" is actually pretty old [1]. I don't think it is confusing readers as they did mention a name. > I just can't help rolling my eyes at this nonsense. I get the frustration if you are not used to the usage of the pronoun in its singular form, but it is actually sensible [1] https://www.scu.edu/media/offices/provost/writing-center/res...

> Well the singular use of "They" is actually pretty old

The cardinal rule of writing is Serve the Reader — Don't Make Him/Her Do Needless Work. In modern parlance, "they" is an unobjectionable shortcut when you don't know who the person is, but it's just confusing to readers when it's about a known person. I'd be fine with a coined, gender-neutral singular pronoun, analogous to how feminists coined "Ms." decades ago and it's now practically universal.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#196

Post by dctoedt »

ghaff wrote: post #192
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't we just make a new pronoun that is "they" but singular? Like "Theya". Theya is my friend. It's singular, non gendered, and then we can just get rid of every pronoun except "they" and "theya".

Because it's much easier to get people to use an existing pronoun in a way that historically would have been considered a bit sloppy than it is to get them to adopt a new non-sex gendered but non-neutral coined pronoun. (It's actually been tried in the past.)

It worked pretty well with "Ms." back in the day. (I know, I know, it's not a pronoun.)

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#198

Post by sgt »

pmelendez wrote: post #167
sgt wrote: post #163

> The question of what will become of the farm is a very complicated and painful one for Eleanor. They are an academic and a writer, and their family wants them to pursue their passions. Eleanor has no interest in farming themself, but they don’t want to see the farm disappear. They now live in New York State and miss home all the time. The family wants to hold on to the property, if at all possible, so they can live…

>This is getting pretty old. Well the singular use of "They" is actually pretty old [1]. I don't think it is confusing readers as they did mention a name. > I just can't help rolling my eyes at this nonsense. I get the frustration if you are not used to the usage of the pronoun in its singular form, but it is actually sensible [1] https://www.scu.edu/media/offices/provost/writing-center/res...

The OED reference is very vague. We're not even sure in what context "they" was used 600 years ago. Care to elaborate?

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#199

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

golergka wrote: post #188
crtified wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a minority of people have an aptitude for work consisting of an 8-hour hard-focused physical workout every day. In the same way that only a minority of people have an aptitude for work consisting of an 8-hour hard-focused (e.g.) mathematical workout every day. The difference is that the former tends to come with a sub-cultural attitude of "people who can't/won't are Lazy", which is unfortunate and misguided, in…

Only a few generations ago, an overwhelming majority of humans were farmers, having 8-hour hard-focused physical workout every day. Do you think we lost natural ability for it in such a short timespan?

Why do you think there was ever a natural ability for it? If that's the only option available, you suck it up and do the work.

Re: The last days of a 350-year-old family farm

#200

Post by klodolph »

boringg wrote: post #175
klodolph wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you have to give it time. That said, the particular paragraph has some problems with antecedents. It could equally have those same problems if you were using other pronouns, like he, she, or it.

It would seem that if there was another word that was gender neutral and that people like to use instead of they would reduce the plural confusion reading problem. I realize that isn’t likely to happen but would solve the technical issue.

Sure. But it is equally possible to reword things to clarify. There are plenty of languages out there that never made the he/she/they distinction in the first place, and plenty of pro-drop languages where you would normally omit the subject of a sentence entirely, if you expect that the listener/reader can infer the subject.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language

It is hard to make the argument that singular “they” is somehow an inherently confusing construct, especially given how prevalent it is in English, and how prevalent it has been for centuries.

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