Canada: Schools officially allow students to use alternate pronouns - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Mellowbloom;45157790]yes, making up an imaginary set of pronouns for them rather than just using the set they want to be referred to by is a good idea[/QUOTE] Believe it or not some people dont fall in the gender binary and prefer not to be described with either he or she

[QUOTE=oakman26;45159305]Why can't "It's not a phase mom" kids just [B]stop changing genders for attention and shitting up our society[/B]...[/QUOTE] except it isn't. your kind of attitude is why gender minorities feel anxiety in expressing themselves [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genderqueer[/url]

[QUOTE=A_Pigeon;45158973]Why don't I call you a butface[/QUOTE] because thats mean

[QUOTE=oakman26;45159305]Why can't "It's not a phase mom" kids just stop changing genders for attention and shitting up our society...[/QUOTE] having to refer to somebody with different words and people "changing genders" is shitting up society, yep!

[QUOTE] "We're standing up for kids and [B]making our schools safer[/B] and more inclusive,"[/QUOTE] yep changing part of the language we speak will keep our schools safer

This is the worst thing that has ever happened. Youths have never used trendy words for anything before, we're witnessing the beginning of the downfall of civilization. Our tax money goes to school boards [b]specifically[/b] to police pronoun use and nothing else, now they aren't even doing that anymore. I think we should rise up, hop on the bus, go to Denny's, and complain about this generation while getting angry at iphones and hiphop music.

[QUOTE=PredGD;45157796]why not just identify the transgender people with what they want instead?[/QUOTE] This is not how rationality works.

We should all just slur he/she pronouns into 'e, as in " 'e's over there." It's better than trying to create a new pronoun that no one knows how to properly pronounce.

[QUOTE=ColonelCorn;45160938]We should all just slur he/she pronouns into 'e, as in " 'e's over there." It's better than trying to create a new pronoun that no one knows how to properly pronounce.[/QUOTE] "They" works. And in an environment where everyone understands what "xe" means, it works as well.

We might be a bit far into it now but honestly human languages would be a lot better without genderised words of any kind, if you need to say this person/animal is a male/female that could just be tacked on in context rather than needing to be said with every other pronoun. Especially languages that have full "masculine/feminine" vocabulary or even change words entirely, fuck that shit. A whole other layer of totally unnecessary description, I really don't need to know that an unworn t-shirt is man apparently, it's just not useful information.

"Xe" hahaahaha how the fuck do you even pronounce that? "zee"?

I'm straight, cis, and cis. I want to be referred to as "he", as is usual. I won't excessively mind whatever anyone else wants to be called, unless these things overwrite the laws of society such that I can't be called "he" by default anymore. Which probably won't happen.

[QUOTE=Kylel999;45162469]"Xe" hahaahaha how the fuck do you even pronounce that? "zee"?[/QUOTE] I've observed it pronounced both "zee" and "gee", with the g from "rouge". Wiktionary says /zi/.

[QUOTE=Zeke129;45161060]"They" works. And in an environment where everyone understands what "xe" means, it works as well.[/QUOTE] Using "they" as a pronoun for ambiguous gender always sorta irked me. "They" is supposed to refer to more than one person. Technically, you can use "he" when referring to someone of an unknown or ambiguous gender and still be grammatically correct but people tend to replace it with "he or she". I can understand why one would want to replace "he" to avoid confusion. Also, with non-binary genders, it kinda puts us back at square one.

[QUOTE=Splash Attack;45163268]Using "they" as a pronoun for ambiguous gender always sorta irked me. [B]"They" is supposed to refer to more than one person. [/B]Technically, you can use "he" when referring to someone of an unknown or ambiguous gender and still be grammatically correct but people tend to replace it with "he or she". I can understand why one would want to replace "he" to avoid confusion. Also, with non-binary genders, it kinda puts us back at square one.[/QUOTE] "Some[B]one[/B] is knocking at the door. I wonder what [B]they[/B] want?" "They" is both singular and plural, as well as neutral. This is not a valid argument.

[QUOTE=ZestyLemons;45163436]"Some[B]one[/B] is knocking at the door. I wonder what [B]they[/B] want?" "They" is both singular and plural, as well as neutral. This is not a valid argument.[/QUOTE] It's used as both singular and plural, but I'm pretty certain usage as a singular is technically incorrect. It is largely ignored in most use, though.

All the people who say that 'they' shouldn't be used because it's not singular, please remember that before the French came to England, 'you' was exclusively a plural form for the second person, whereas 'thou' was used for all one-on-one discussions. Even after the Normans, 'thou' was still used to talk to your friends, close relatives, or those 'inferior' to you, and 'you' was still always the plural. But language [I]changed[/I], and now we use the once-plural 'you' for everything. If they is being used as a gender-neutral third-person singular, that won't stop it also being the third-person plural unless we adopt a new word one day- in which case there's no problem anyway. The whole LGBTQ movement is adding/ changing a lot of words in the vocabulary at the moment, and personally I find it quite exciting that we're living in the middle of a mini lingual revolution.

[QUOTE=Splash Attack;45163567]It's used as both singular and plural, but I'm pretty certain usage as a singular is technically incorrect. It is largely ignored in most use, though.[/QUOTE] Well the second dictionary definition of "they" according to google is "used to refer to a person of unspecified sex". More googling reveals that it's been used this way since at least the 15th century. As for invented gender-neutral pronouns, it appears that there have been attempts to introduce these to english since the late 1800s.

[quote]"xe, xem and xyr"[/quote] My only bitch about these pronouns is every time I use them I feel like I'm speaking fucking Martian. Which would be fine if I wasn't referring to humans. That's why I was cheering on the "hu" set (something like "hu, hus, hum") - that at least sounds human, like it might be from some Chinese dialect.

[QUOTE=lavacano;45163630]My only bitch about these pronouns is every time I use them I feel like I'm speaking fucking Martian. Which would be fine if I wasn't referring to humans. That's why I was cheering on the "hu" set (something like "hu, hus, hum") - that at least sounds human, like it might be from some Chinese dialect.[/QUOTE] I kinda liked the "hi, hir, hirs" set too, it (as does the "hu" set) kind of breaks convention by changing the vowel of the base instead of the consonant, but it feels a lot more natural since it's pretty similar to the normal terms and i sounds aren't too odd, compared to x which is the third least common letter in the English language. The "xe" stuff really does sound alien, kind of goes against the goal of being accepted as normal when you're rather clearly choosing words that sound as weird as possible.

I'm trying to be sensible about this but it's unfair if you expect people to use silly words like 'Xe' in conversation. They just sound unnatural.

I'd just like to say that this wouldn't even be an issue here in Ukraine, not because we're not progressive[sp]though we are totally not progressive,[/sp] but because Ukrainian and Russian are heavily gendered languages, and have always been throughout their entire existence. Genderfluid people with Ukrainian and Russian as their first language probably wouldn't even think of asking for their own pronouns, just because of how the languages are built. Besides, right now they have other problems to think of,[sp]like trying not to get curb-stomped by rowdy, unprogressive Slavs[/sp]

[QUOTE=Zeke129;45161060]"They" works. And in an environment where everyone understands what "xe" means, it works as well.[/QUOTE] I've always been for the increased usage of they. Saying he/she sounds awkward to say and on a note that probably less people care about, it's building on the notion that there's only 2 genders.

To be honest this whole "preffered pronoun" crap is getting annoying, just let people know what you want to be called stop trying to push policies forward to force people to use terminology they don't understand. I get that in some instances it is legitimate (Transgender people ect) but because of all the special snowflakes out there now we have bloody pronouns for people who relate to animals and others who think that they are like ten different people in one. Jesus this stuff has only really caught on over the past few years anyway, how can people expect us to change our dialect off the cuff like that.

[QUOTE=dai;45158185]gender is how your behavior and outward appearance (both chosen or passive) expresses yourself to define masculinity or femininity, whereas sex is your hard defined physical attributes. that's the actual definitions, they're not the interchangeable words we grew up thinking they were[/QUOTE] Exactly. Sex is binary; gender isn't

can i remind everyone, since apparently the thread didn't catch it the first three times, [B]this is an optional thing that people can optionally choose by their own whim[/B] following that, i pose a question: [B]who cares[/B] if the option is being offered? it's not being forced on anyone. if nobody takes it, nobody takes it.

[QUOTE=YogiTheWise;45164525]I'd just like to say that this wouldn't even be an issue here in Ukraine, not because we're not progressive[sp]though we are totally not progressive,[/sp] but because Ukrainian and Russian are heavily gendered languages, and have always been throughout their entire existence. Genderfluid people with Ukrainian and Russian as their first language probably wouldn't even think of asking for their own pronouns, just because of how the languages are built. Besides, right now they have other problems to think of,[sp]like trying not to get curb-stomped by rowdy, unprogressive Slavs[/sp][/QUOTE] Yeah, I can't imagine the pronoun issue being a thing in languages that make more extensive use of gender; once you get used to the pronoun assigned to an object having little effect on the object itself.

[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;45166152]Exactly. Sex is binary; gender isn't[/QUOTE] Neither are really binary, but sex is the closest to being binary.

[QUOTE=1legmidget;45166766]Neither are really binary, but sex is the closest to being binary.[/QUOTE] Gender definitely isn't binary, but I'm pretty sure you either have an X chromosome or a Y chromosome to determine your sex. Not a lot of room to argue that. (feel free to totally prove me wrong on that though)

[QUOTE=ZestyLemons;45171866]Gender definitely isn't binary, but I'm pretty sure you either have an X chromosome or a Y chromosome to determine your sex. Not a lot of room to argue that. (feel free to totally prove me wrong on that though)[/QUOTE] Approximately 1.7% of the global population is intersex or otherwise exhibits abnormal sex. This can range from abnormal kariotypes (like OX where O stands for a missing chromosome, XYY+ in "super males", etc.) to relatively slight hormonal imbalances. However, from an evolutionary/general biological standpoint, humans are indeed meant to have XX or XY as their sex chromosomes. It's just that this binary isn't as clear cut as most people assume.