I feel like there were loads of people (myself included) acknowledging your general point and then going on to play devil’s advocate to debate it because that’s what we do together. You don’t seem to see or acknowledge these diplomatic areas of agreement so you can focus on the war.
I think your style of coming on strong and sounding super-sure-of-yourself (which is funny as hell and I always enjoy reading) results in counter-arguments that also sound strong but maybe not necessarily because of disagreement so much as just matching the strength of your tone while trying to acknowledge the alternative point of view. We believe in empathy and being super sure of oneself might be a sign of close-mindedness. (This is definitely not liberals doing stupid shit. It’s the opposite.)
Plus this has been an extraordinarily hypothetical tangent with basically zero real-world application. As Thrag said, it was probably included in the original not-dumb post to underscore the general point of acceptance.
Just to repeat: if someone wanted me to use no pronouns, they would have an extreme uphill battle to get me onboard with that absurdity and I would probably make fun of them good-naturedly but relentlessly because that is pretty dumb. But I’m 99% sure of myself, not 100%. I’m probably not their community but maybe they could find that community in some corner of today’s world.
Matt_W
5141
You make it very hard to agree with you about anything. You define terms in the narrowest possible sense and then strawman your interlocutors. You’re hyperventilating at us about a totally hypothetical situation that is utterly low stakes and just doesn’t move the outrage meter for most of us. I’d much rather, for instance, deal with someone who wants to be referred to as “Their Royal Highness” than deal with an asshole who shouts spittle into my face or a dude who insists on making loud sexist jokes at a party. For me the social cost of accommodation here in this hypothetical situation is nearly zero and the social benefit is not being an asshole for no reason. I get that you make a different calculus and that’s fine. In the very unlikely event that we both find ourselves in a situation where it becomes relevant, we can respond differently.
People are weird. Weird pronoun preference seems like a very benign weirdness to me. It’s just not something that stirs me to even an ounce of anger. I have other issues.
I wouldn’t mind “Their Excellency” That sounds kind of cool.
Timex
5143
See, I think this is the difference here.
In the situation you describe here, refusing to call that person “Their Royal Highness” doesn’t make you an asshole.
They’re the asshole for making such a demand… and I see zero reason to indulge them.
I made a joke of this earlier, but there were (and probably still are) people enraged by the idea that a woman wanted to be called Ms. rather than Mrs. or Miss. Don’t be like those people.
No kidding, I still don’t understand the rules or the reasoning around Ms/Miss/Mrs and I’m just about 40.
From context I’m guessing “Ms” is basically “fuck my honorific being tied to my marital status” but man, I dunno. Young men used to be “Master” but that’s long since (and thankfully, obviously) gone away.
Matt_W
5146
Really? I rarely see Mrs/Miss in professional contexts anymore. Those sound pretty anachronistic to me at this point. Part of this is because we use first names much more than we did 2-3 decades ago, but part is because, yeah, women being referred to by their marital status is pretty 1950’s, particularly if it’s Mrs. John Smith or some other such nauseating formulation.
Yes, that’s transparently it. ‘Mr.’ isn’t tied to marital status, so why should a woman’s title be? Of course the answer is, traditionally, either that she’s someone’s possession or that she’s available to become someone’s possession, and her title tells you which one!
In any event, the point is that it’s no imposition at all to accommodate the request, so why resist or resent it?
Look guys, women who want to be called “Ms” are just assholes, okay? You’ve got Miss and Mrs, everyone knows what those mean. I see l i t e r a l l y no reason to indulge someone beyond that.
(/s)
You LITERALLY see no reason!
Love, honor, but what about obey? Will she obey?? 🤞
My favorite topple-the-patriarchy point I like to make in the classroom over the past few years has been, “Raise your hand if you know what phallic means.” (all hands) “Now raise your hand if you know the female equivalent of that word.” (no hands) “Fuck the patriarchy!”
But don’t LITERALLY fuck the patriarchy. That’s icky.
I mean, I never use honorifics for anyone in my daily. I don’t interact with strangers in formal contexts enough to have it be a thing I think about, like, ever.
Oh come now, the patriarchy wouldn’t have dressed that way if it didn’t want it.
You know how the patriarchy is.
Thrag
5156
It became unpopular mainly due to an active campaign against its use by the abolitionist Richard Bates.
TIL: Ol’ Dicky Bates is the real homie.
Matt_W
5158
Why does this keep coming back? Pairing it with ‘someone’ or ‘each’ or when gender is unknown or when the subject is ambiguous is definitely not new.
But, even that OED article states “the New Oxford American Dictionary (Third Edition, 2010) , calls singular they ‘generally accepted’ with indefinites, and ‘now common but less widely accepted’ with definite nouns, especially in formal contexts.” And I specifically said (and you quoted) that use of singular ‘they’ to refer to a definite subject is relatively new. “What does Lev want to drink? They want a whiskey.” You can probably find examples of that from before 10 years ago, but it wasn’t widespread. Even now those sentences sound less off than they did a couple of years ago. I’m getting used to it; language is changing. I’m on board.
Scuzz
5159
Just don’t ask us to call you Rolex!
