I agree in theory, but I think the convenience of not having to learn a new pronoun (ve? xe? herm?) outways the inconvenience of the ambiguous they.
People already use the singular “they”, and if anything, inventing a new pronoun draws extra attention to non-binary identity in a way I’m not entirely comfortable with, while singular “they” sounds like slightly lazy speech.
Ideally, eventually non-gendered pronouns would be as uncontroversial as using Ms. rather than Miss or Mrs, but there’s far enough to go that I think a singular they is a decent half-step.
When you think about it though, genitalia is not used to denote gender in most social situations. I, for instance, have never seen the genitals of any of my co-workers, but am able to reliably gender all of them.
Bookbub has Garcia Marquez’s excellent Love in the Time of Cholera for $2.99 today. Probably his second best novel. If you’ve never read him, here’s your chance!
I’m kind of afraid to post this here because whenever I mention a book I am usually told what crap someone thinks it is but…it’s a good price and you can get at almost any shop you want to get it at !
I’ve never read a Pern novel; I think because I played this C64 Pern game many years ago that just seemed strange, you flew a dragon around and tried to avoid these colorful wormlike things falling from the sky. I think I just assumed they books couldn’t be any good. Am I wrong?
I didn’t read a lot of the. The White Dragon was pretty good, at least years ago. What I like about the Pern is the entire concept was kind of newish and well developed. I have no idea where it stacks with people who are, shall we say, high brow about their books. It was just neat. The board Game, which I have, was a little odd too… and had a lot of pieces!
I loved the Pern books as a kid. I especially loved, as an 11 year old boy, that there was sex in them:) But also dragons and acidic skysnakes and time travel and mini dragons. These are awesome books. I should pick them up just to reminisce.
Read them as a kid, I think the early ones stand up okay. Actually if I remember correctly I read Dragonflight first, which chronologically is the way to start, but might ruin the “mystery” of the early novels if you don’t know the plot at all.
