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The Trans History of the Wild West

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Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#51

Post by iguy »

geofft wrote: post #40
weberc2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shouldn’t surprise you. Most people can infer gender from visual appearance alone with well over 99.99% accuracy without being explicitly told. If you know their name and other gendered indicators, it would be a marked anomaly NOT to know their gender.

I can also infer race from visual appearance with similar accuracy, but if I say "Can you hand this to that black person" would be super weird and quite likely objectionable, even if I was correct that the person was black. And nobody would want abbreviated pronouns on race - "I talked to whim and whe said to talk to blim" just seems sort of ... overly concerned with people's races. It's a linguistic quirk of English…

Here's the first-principles argument: Most people grow up and learn the language in a family group, which has a mix of ages and of sexes. Saying "he" vs "she" here usually cuts the number of people you could be talking about in half, it's very informative, one bit! It will often let you omit the name, or shorten the sentence elsewhere.

Whereas always marking what continent you're all living on, or what race you all are, usually doesn't convey any information. So it seems entirely unsurprising that languages tend not to build this in. Many do build in markers for what species, because again this was useful information, since most of our ancestors spent a long time farming.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#52

Post by weberc2 »

geofft wrote: post #40
weberc2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shouldn’t surprise you. Most people can infer gender from visual appearance alone with well over 99.99% accuracy without being explicitly told. If you know their name and other gendered indicators, it would be a marked anomaly NOT to know their gender.

I can also infer race from visual appearance with similar accuracy, but if I say "Can you hand this to that black person" would be super weird and quite likely objectionable, even if I was correct that the person was black. And nobody would want abbreviated pronouns on race - "I talked to whim and whe said to talk to blim" just seems sort of ... overly concerned with people's races. It's a linguistic quirk of English…

Race is fundamentally different than gender in many ways. Contrary to your claim, you can’t discern race as easily as gender—there are far more racially ambiguous people than there are gender ambiguous people. Unlike how gender proxies for biological sex, race doesn’t proxy for any interesting biological phenomena around which we might organize our culture—thus race is much less information-dense than gender. The likely reason you find racial qualifies objectionable is that your culture experienced racism in its history (e.g., the US’s historical oppression of African Americans), not because it is a completely useless disambiguator (although it can be if the circumstances are right—such as a group where all members share the same race). We don’t have specific pronouns for specific races because (in addition to the previously cited reasons) interactions with specific groups were rarely universal experiences. That said, we do have pronouns that can indicate membership to our people or the people across the river (originally “race” referred to a people or ethnic group—e.g., “the Celtic race”): “us” and “them”.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#53

Post by toasterlovin »

jimhefferon wrote: post #38
Rumperuu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my money the best thing that ever happened to English was abandoning grammatical gender/noun classes centuries ago - no more masculine, feminine or neuter, everything is ‘the’ or ‘a’.[0] Based on that, I propose we push for ‘it’ as a sole singular pronoun (and keep ‘they’ for plural, as knowing if someone is referring to one or many is far more useful in almost all contexts than knowing whether they are referring…

The well-known mathematician M Spivak is amoung those who has suggested 'e' (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun ). Somehow the deliberate proposals often seem not to succeed.

Interesting. Sounds like a French Canadian speaking English.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#54

Post by toasterlovin »

teddyh wrote: post #49
always4getpass wrote: post #2

I always get so confused when 'they' is used for a single person. Is there any alternative? Everything seems to sound silly

There were probably people saying very similar things around the time when the “thou”/“you” distinction was being replaced with always using “you”. Both changes of the language make some changes, but not very large changes, and you’ll probably get used to it.

The big difference, though, is that most people have no use for this usage of “they” because most people don’t deal with non-binary people on a regular basis, if ever.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#55

Post by toasterlovin »

rcthompson wrote: post #30
always4getpass wrote: post #2

I always get so confused when 'they' is used for a single person. Is there any alternative? Everything seems to sound silly

Yes, it feels grammatically weird, because e.g. you use "is" for he and she but "are" for they. But there's no option that isn't a compromise in some way. The alternative is coming up with an entirely new pronoun and convincing people to use it, and people have tried that as well. It seems that the singular they is much more widely recognized, though.

FWIW, I think new words are easier in this case. This new usage of “they” is really confusing when you come across it. Typical usage of first person “they” implies a degree of unfamiliarity with the person in question. So using “they” for someone who is known causes you to question your reading comprehension.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#56

Post by toasterlovin »

WAHa_06x36 wrote: post #7
always4getpass wrote: post #2

I always get so confused when 'they' is used for a single person. Is there any alternative? Everything seems to sound silly

You don't. It is standard English, and you and people around you use it all the time.

Not to refer to people who are familiar. If it were actually used like this already, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#57

Post by UncleMeat »

iguy wrote: post #51
geofft wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can also infer race from visual appearance with similar accuracy, but if I say "Can you hand this to that black person" would be super weird and quite likely objectionable, even if I was correct that the person was black. And nobody would want abbreviated pronouns on race - "I talked to whim and whe said to talk to blim" just seems sort of ... overly concerned with people's races. It's a linguistic quirk of English…

Here's the first-principles argument: Most people grow up and learn the language in a family group, which has a mix of ages and of sexes. Saying "he" vs "she" here usually cuts the number of people you could be talking about in half, it's very informative, one bit! It will often let you omit the name, or shorten the sentence elsewhere. Whereas always marking what continent you're all living on, or what race you all a…

This sounds like working backwards. Up this thread, people have suggested that the reason is that gender matters more to society than height (this is why we don't announce people's height). When this argument is defeated by race, it switches again to what "seems reasonable".

What evidence, beyond "this seems reasonable" is there for this argument?

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#59

Post by iguy »

UncleMeat wrote: post #57
iguy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the first-principles argument: Most people grow up and learn the language in a family group, which has a mix of ages and of sexes. Saying "he" vs "she" here usually cuts the number of people you could be talking about in half, it's very informative, one bit! It will often let you omit the name, or shorten the sentence elsewhere. Whereas always marking what continent you're all living on, or what race you all a…

This sounds like working backwards. Up this thread, people have suggested that the reason is that gender matters more to society than height (this is why we don't announce people's height). When this argument is defeated by race, it switches again to what "seems reasonable". What evidence, beyond "this seems reasonable" is there for this argument?

Sometimes multiple things are true, and none are "defeated". It seems beyond obvious that our ancestors 1000 years ago did a lot more gossiping about who was going to marry who, than about anything we'd today describe as racial distinctions.

Re: The Trans History of the Wild West

#60

Post by Terr_ »

always4getpass wrote: post #2

I always get so confused when 'they' is used for a single person. Is there any alternative? Everything seems to sound silly

To me it's very natural, perhaps because I've been argui-- er, interacting with so many people on the internet, whose true identities and genders are completely obscured behind an arbitrary username.

"I replied to always4getpass, and told them that the generic pronoun seems pretty normal, I hope they agree."

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