5080

To be clear, requesting use of “they” is fine in my book, although it may be harder to remember.

But if someone demanded that I use their full name every time I referred to them, I’m not interested in playing that game. Because really, that’s all it is at that point.

5081

What, you never wanted to do Fifth Element re-enactments? ^_^

5082

Now that I’m thinking on this. It actually sounds kind of fun to go by no pronoun. It would work with the whole caveman motif of my name and avatar.

Woops, wait, let’s do that again

Now that Thrag has thought about this. It actually sounds kind of fun to go by no pronoun. It would work totally with the whole caveman motif of my name and avatar.

5083

“Thrag’s name and avatar.” Not so easy my caveman friend, eh, eh?

5084

Sorry for the double post but this field is ripe with comedy.

So, you guys must hate Abbot and Costello.

5085

Yeah, that seems fine. You can’t know until you know. Otherwise, it’s no skin off anyone’s nose to call someone what they want to be called.

5086

I love them. And I relish the opportunity to post the greatest 4th wall breaking ever committed to film, at :55

5087

We have a pronoun thread. Can we shift all this discussion there?

5088

Oddly, no one has ever made a Monty Python, “I believe you’d finished.” meme.

5089

For me it goes the other way because using “they” as a singular is something people do all the time.

Now for English teachers and the like, I sort of get it, but I also never cared much about proper grammar when I was in school, and I sure as heck don’t care in common usage.

I get there can be some ambiguity, but really, people do it all the time and have since forever, much to the chagrin of aforementioned English teachers/majors.

Someone did a great TikTok on it pretending to be anti-trans where they find a wallet on a fence and start using all the “plural” pronouns singularly, but apparently I lost it.

5090

I think it’s more in that case the ridiculousness leads to comedy.
In actual day to day if you had to deal with conversations like Who’s on First you’d punch someone before the day ended.

5091

If you are genuinely confused what the mind state of these people could even be, maybe an analogy would help. When it comes to religion, fortunately that’s a thing most people can keep private in most of day to day life, but imagine for a moment it wasn’t. If every person (simplifying the possibilities here) had to have it constantly referenced either, ‘I believe in God’ or ‘I’m an atheist’. Sure, for most people that ultimately wouldn’t be much of an issue, but for some people either label would feel quite uncomfortable. Maybe it really is ‘one state of mind one day and next the other’, but more likely, they consider wrestling with the concept a deep and thorny issue.

Of course, I have also seen the very same sentiment that agnostics should just quit fucking around, pick what they actually mean and get on with it, so I guess your mileage may vary…

5092

Dude.

Better.

5093

Using ‘they’ to signify a definite singular (as opposed to an ambiguous or generic singular) is new, but also is lately ubiquitous, and to my ears less strange all the time. We’ve discussed this quite a bit in the other thread on this topic.

I confess to not being particularly agnostic sympathetic but I try.

I feel like most pronoun discussion involve a bunch of Xers and boomers grousing about hypotheticals, and then when we encounter actual humans (e.g. in my case, a few of my daughter’s friends) who prefer non-standard pronouns, it’s just not a big deal to use them. It’s a lot of sturm und drang over something that in real life doesn’t have any associated drama, especially for those of us whose sole stake is being asked to speak in a way that is slightly awkward to us.

5094

The bigger problem comes from the notion of not using pronouns at all.

Try to write or speak about someone in the third person, without using pronouns. It’s going to be incredibly cumbersome.

There’s a reason pronouns exist.

5095

Is there an actual human referenced in this discussion who has asked not to use pronouns at all?

5096

Whenever Timex writes something like this, I scratch my head and wonder what it is that bothers Timex about it. What can be going on in Timex’s head? What difference can it really make to Timex if Timex has to use peoples’ actual names?

It’s…not that hard.

5097

Yeah, just try that when the name is Rumplestiltskin.

5098

Ya, I posted a link about it… I understand your skepticism, because it’s crazy right?

Aren’t you an author? You don’t find that cumbersome and bad sounding, especially the cases where you need to reference a person, and then reference them again in the same sentence?

I mean, whatever dude, you can totally be the guy who goes along with it.

I’m not gonna. It’s bullshit. The sole reason is to feed some asshole’s ego. It has nothing to do with them being transgender.

5099

You posed a PFLAG explainer about what to do if, hypothetically, you encounter someone who asks you not to use pronouns at all. I’m sure this is probably a thing, but no example of a real-life human or even a social media person has been presented here. It’s a bunch of grousing about something that none of us will likely ever encounter, and even if we do, isn’t really a huge deal.