Gender Neutral Pronouns

[Gaze]

anti-gender bias is a little disturbing. Why do we have to completely dismiss gender distinctions to have equality? We often seem to confuse gender difference with gender roles and expectations. There are differences but they are not necessarily negative or positive differences. Those differences are NOT a matter of inferiority or superiority.

Gender neutral pronouns are already in our vocabulary. "One" is an example although it's considered an older English pronoun, rarely used except in older literature or philosophical texts.

Gender is gender. It's the meaning we assign to the differences which are the problem, not the existence of gender itself.

 

[Apone]

I think the main thing about GNP is that the masculine has always been the default for talking generally about things like positions of power, the human race eg: the boss should always feel free to exercise his power in any manner he sees fit', mankind, which in a way does actively perpetuate a bias against women in the implication that only a man could possibly be the boss, or that the progress of the human race is necessarily spearheaded by men.

I don't think that the issue is so much about denying that gender exists so much as accepting that a lot of the things we used to see as inherently masculine are now inherently neutral. I don't think people need to run wild with the idea but I do think it's more progressive and just generally more appropriate to use them tastefully.

I mostly just use 'they' and use 'their' for the possessive form-- like 'the CEO of Company X must be pretty successful if they can retire to a private island on their 35th birthday' (assuming the gender of said CEO is unknown). It's really not so hard... but it is pretty annoying to always have to write 'his or her', and too pretentious to write 'one' or 'one's'... and there is sometimes confusion over whether or not you're talking about the plural form. Still, I don't think they're the assault on good taste/decency that some people seem to think.

 

[Reon]

anti-gender bias is a little disturbing. Why do we have to completely dismiss gender distinctions to have equality? We often seem to confuse gender difference with gender roles and expectations. There are differences but they are not necessarily negative or positive differences. Those differences are NOT a matter of inferiority or superiority.

Gender neutral pronouns are already in our vocabulary. "One" is an example although it's considered an older English pronoun, rarely used except in older literature or philosophical texts.

Gender is gender. It's the meaning we assign to the differences which are the problem, not the existence of gender itself.

I think that there are some people who want to remove gendered pronouns because they feel that being a "woman" is somehow not a good as being a man. Some people are cisgendered and that's good for them. We shouldn't remove their ability to be cisgendered.