I lived for 14 years in Turkey, where the language has no gendered pronouns or grammatical gender at all. You can have a long conversation with someone without giving any clue about the gender of the person your discussing, and it won't count contrived at all. You can make a person's gender clear if you want or need to, but the language doesn't force your hand. Coming back to the US was kind of like walking into a minefield...
Most people I know who use gender neutral pronouns actually don’t share them a lot far as I know. They by large just state it in their social media bio and if the person in Dunkin Donuts or some old professor misgendered them they just won’t say anything. I imagine because it would be exhausting in everyday life and run the risk of encountering some mean people. And I’m in college art school (it won’t get any woker than that).
Oh hey, that’s me. Yeah, I don’t share unless there’s already a channel set up for me to do that (socmed bios, etc) OR I’m 110% sure it’ll go over well. Most situations… don’t fall into that.
same, in the art industry. I have a bunch of friends who are gender neutral. But almost all of their friends don't use their preferred pronoun of they/them. She/her just comes naturally, our brains are wired to categorize people as men and women, and I don't think you can just socially engineer society to change that aspect.
It would also be exhausting for the "old professor" or the clerk at Dunkin Donuts... the professor has hundreds of different students each term, it's hard enough to remember all of their names and faces... meanwhile the clerk deals with thousands of people a week, in order to not offend them, they would need to start every interaction with "hello, welcome to ... my I have your pronouns and order please?"
If you are buying something from Dunkin Donuts a pronoun is irrelevant anyway because you don't use someone's pronoun in direct conversation with them.
My step dad has asked me before if Spanish speakers think of objects as inherently masculine and feminine, and I've used a few different examples to explain it. My favorite is that "a beard" is feminine and "a dress" is masculine. A really good example that shows it's a purely grammatical category and has nothing to do with the objects themselves is that the same object might be feminine if you call it "a chair" but masculine if you call it "a seat." It's about the words, not the things themselves.
people studying the Sapir Whorf theory concluded that if the 'gender' of an object influences the way French/German speakers think of them it does so very minimally.
Yea but it's clear that they're masculine or feminine because people and animals actually ARE male or female. When you assign male or female gender to inanimate objects, it's arbitrary and stupid, but when assigning them to members of a sexually reproducing dimorphic species, through pronouns, it is a direct reference to their biological sex. Gendered pronouns don't refer to identities and never did, they refer to sex.
So I guess if you're a biological male your pronouns would be "he", and if you're a biological female your pronouns would be "she" regardless of how stereotypically feminine or masculine you seem to be ?
This whole issue reminds me of a friend from high school who made it her personal mission to break people from using, "you know," as filler in conversation. When someone dropped a meaningless "you know" she would interrupt the flow to say, "No, I don't know." After about a week no one would talk to her.
Haha I remember in high school I tried to get people to stop saying "like" and I didn't have enough self awareness to realize I was being insufferable and they were just using a different verbal tick than me.
Why we used the word woman, man, boy, girl? To give information about the sex of a personn + the maturity stage. Thoose words were linked to clear objective descriptions, criteras, ideas. Now we have a full mess cult where not even the "gender experts" are able to tell what links the people with each others within the group woman, demi boy, non binary and all the made up gender labels anymore. What information does it give you about the personn? Well, none. So the point? Its all feeling but you cant despcribe the feeling, nor give the criteras, its an empty concept. Its not about the "body" nor the "biology" yet the reassignment surgery are linked to man as male body and woman as female body. Words are used to communicate, to show ideas, concepts, to represent soemthing, that their fucking point. When you have an individual "name" its in order to other to be able to call you, to identify you, and talk about you, the idea is "this individual I must be able to refer in order to talk about/to him specifically", it has a PURPOSE. Wtf are the purpose of the "so important I call it hate speach when not respected" pronoun and gender words as gender cultist define them? What clear information, you can represent in your head, what does it tell about the individual? And now people compare it with "gender" of objects to justify it, while the use and the concepts arent the same at all because we never linked it to sex as its not LIVING things, but to other ideas like feminine if the word is about the matter and masculine if its the profession and other logics. But for human it was meaningfull and used to represent a concrete, visible reallity. It's such a crazy world where you have to be super carefull with labels which means nothing at all and an "identity" of 0 characteristics. Btw I'm a horse because I feel like a horse and feeling like a horse is feeling like a horse, and I'm christian while not believing in bible nor jesus while praising severals gods because I feel like christian and that what make me christian because its my self identity and I choose which word fit the best in my head to describe it under the label I feel the best with. Fuck the logic, fuck the purpose of thoose words, and the world have to bend.
But although an English pun in a silly cartoon, I think you'll find in reality Calvin and Hobbes both understood Latin so knew what the 'pro' prefix meant, as they grew up in Europe a few hundred years ago with Latin as the common intellectual language, not English. It's funny how stupid people like funny things that make them seem even more stupid when they parrot them!
"what are your pronouns?" "Use whatever you think will confuse the person you're talking to the least. The less time you spend discussing my pronouns, the more time you can spend calling me fat."
13:55 I'm so glad someone else is saying this. I started a new job before I was out, and during orientation, everyone went around introducing themselves with pronouns (all of which were obvious from their appearance). When it was my turn, I was the only person not to include pronouns... because at that point, it would've meant either misgendering myself, or outing myself to a bunch of strangers before I'd even told my family. Some of them probably thought I was taking a stand against inclusivity, even though there's a good chance I was the only member there of the group they thought they were including!
Aggressive inclusivity (I like that) is almost worse than non inclusive imho (I’m a trans woman) and I still don’t know how to feel about it. Just because someone proclaims their pronouns on introduction, if there is a genuine group of NB individuals with neopronouns, I’m sorry I can’t remember them as I am bad with names no less more things to remember on top of that, not for a lack if trying. When its a room of straight cis people it starts to wear on my resolve. GNC people share and I am for it. If you’re gender conforming I just wonder why….
this exact same thing happened to me. Every time I brought it up pre (and sometimes post!) transition I'd pretty much get yelled at for not understanding the plight of trans people (or later once I was out, for not understanding nonbinary people)...very frustrating! Normalizing people presenting their pronouns is one thing, demanding answers is quite another!
Man, I absolutely love your channel. As a language teacher I have always said “words matter” and that’s because they are the tools we use to build a world of meaning and understanding between us. At the foundation of our interactions has to be respect (a desire to uphold the dignity of yourself and the other person). Too often our conversations around this topic and honestly so many others are competitive not constructive. Thanks for educating us not just on how language works but giving us a world class lesson in respect. That’s how communication happens!
Why we used the word woman, man, boy, girl? To give information about the sex of a personn + the maturity stage. Thoose words were linked to clear objective descriptions, criteras, ideas. Now we have a full mess cult where not even the "gender experts" are able to tell what links the people with each others within the group woman, demi boy, non binary and all the made up gender labels anymore. What information does it give you about the personn? Well, none. So the point? Its all feeling but you cant despcribe the feeling, nor give the criteras, its an empty concept. Its not about the "body" nor the "biology" yet the reassignment surgery are linked to man as male body and woman as female body. Words are used to communicate, to show ideas, concepts, to represent soemthing, that their fucking point. When you have an individual "name" its in order to other to be able to call you, to identify you, and talk about you, the idea is "this individual I must be able to refer in order to talk about/to him specifically", it has a PURPOSE. Wtf are the purpose of the "so important I call it hate speach when not respected" pronoun and gender words as gender cultist define them? What clear information, you can represent in your head, what does it tell about the individual? And now people compare it with "gender" of objects to justify it, while the use and the concepts arent the same at all because we never linked it to sex as its not LIVING things, but to other ideas like feminine if the word is about the matter and masculine if its the profession and other logics. But for human it was meaningfull and used to represent a concrete, visible reallity. It's such a crazy world where you have to be super carefull with labels which means nothing at all and an "identity" of 0 characteristics. Btw I'm a horse because I feel like a horse and feeling like a horse is feeling like a horse, and I'm christian while not believing in bible nor jesus while praising severals gods because I feel like christian and that what make me christian because its my self identity and I choose which word fit the best in my head to describe it under the label I feel the best with. Fuck the logic, fuck the purpose of thoose words, and the world have to bend.
The funny thing is, the reason why people say this is because the word “pronoun” isn’t well understood by the general public, they’ve forgotten what it means because why would they need it. So when woke activists insist on using peoples pronouns, it’s always 3rd person pronouns they mention (for obvious reasons). So people with no linguistics education link 3P pronouns with just “pronouns”
Past the grammatical irony level, I love that because there are plenty of agender and other non-binary people who literally don't use third-person pronouns, so I will perform malicious compliance with transphobes who say that, congratulate them on speaking up about their pronoun non-usage, welcome them to the community, and affirm that I will only refer to them individually by their names and not he, she, or any other singular pronoun.
In Thai, the FIRST-person pronouns are the gendered ones and not usually third-person. Which makes more sense in a way: puts it on me, not others, to express my identity. On the other hand in practice I felt strange calling myself "pom" (masculine) but there is no neuter option except in close company (essentially a "royal we"). In music and poetry the feminine first-person is common regardless of the singer/speaker. But I LOVED that third-person was neuter: everyone is kao. Ter is an option to distinguish females. Ter is also "you" in romantic context. It's weird and neat that a girl can say "we love her" to her boyfriend and he can say it back. I definitely am a fan of respecting the listener first, so first- and second-person are key, and even the global "We", perhaps my truest identity and value, grows out of that.
beautiful! when i heard the point he made about “when we tell people our pronouns we’re telling them how they should talk about us to other people” i was curious if any language genders first or second-person pronouns differently. that’s awesome!!!
fellow countryman here, I use ผม (pom, "I (masculine)") only when I'm talking to those who are my elders. With my friends I use เรา (rao, "I / we") and with my sister I use เค้า (khao), which is the same word as, or a corruption of เขา, the gender neutral third-person pronoun. The great thing about Thai is that oftentimes we can bypass using ผม (pom) because the social relation between two persons takes precedence above everything else; talking to someone whose relationship to you is that he or she is a junior, you and your younger interlocutor simply refer to yourself and you as พี่ (phi, "term of address for someone older; senior") and you and the younger person self to them and themselves as น้อง (nong, "term of address for someone younger; junior"). When I talk to the lady selling food at the food market, she refers to me as หนู (nu, "term of address which someone who is old enough to be your aunt uses for you") and I refer to her as ป้า (pa, literal means "aunt").
alas, there's virtually no difference between English and German with regards to number. it's just that objects are gendered entirely arbitrarily; but that's about it.
As a male teacher I have been accidentally called Miss, Mrs, Mum, Auntie, and "Mi... uhhh... sir". I usually ignore it all, i know they are trying to communicate respect, and the respect is what matters, not the pronoun. if I were to correct them, then i would be communicating my authority over them, which is not necessary when they are trying to respect me already, and especially not necessary when they are trying to seek help. And that is what language is about, communication. When you use pronouns, what are you truly trying to communicate?
Why we used the word woman, man, boy, girl? To give information about the sex of a personn + the maturity stage. Thoose words were linked to clear objective descriptions, criteras, ideas. Now we have a full mess cult where not even the "gender experts" are able to tell what links the people with each others within the group woman, demi boy, non binary and all the made up gender labels anymore. What information does it give you about the personn? Well, none. So the point? Its all feeling but you cant despcribe the feeling, nor give the criteras, its an empty concept. Its not about the "body" nor the "biology" yet the reassignment surgery are linked to man as male body and woman as female body. Words are used to communicate, to show ideas, concepts, to represent soemthing, that their fucking point. When you have an individual "name" its in order to other to be able to call you, to identify you, and talk about you, the idea is "this individual I must be able to refer in order to talk about/to him specifically", it has a PURPOSE. Wtf are the purpose of the "so important I call it hate speach when not respected" pronoun and gender words as gender cultist define them? What clear information, you can represent in your head, what does it tell about the individual? And now people compare it with "gender" of objects to justify it, while the use and the concepts arent the same at all because we never linked it to sex as its not LIVING things, but to other ideas like feminine if the word is about the matter and masculine if its the profession and other logics. But for human it was meaningfull and used to represent a concrete, visible reallity. It's such a crazy world where you have to be super carefull with labels which means nothing at all and an "identity" of 0 characteristics. Btw I'm a horse because I feel like a horse and feeling like a horse is feeling like a horse, and I'm christian while not believing in bible nor jesus while praising severals gods because I feel like christian and that what make me christian because its my self identity and I choose which word fit the best in my head to describe it under the label I feel the best with. Fuck the logic, fuck the purpose of thoose words, and the world have to bend.
As a fellow Sociolinguist and someone who has deep relationships with folks from across a very broad socio-political spectrum, I think this video is absolutely fantastic! Thoughtful, insightful, and respectful. Definitely subscribing and look forward to more of your content!
You clearly are not in touch with the whole political spectrum. You haven't even reached the centre, much less the Right wing. But keep pretending like you know what you're talking about.
Why we used the word woman, man, boy, girl? To give information about the sex of a personn + the maturity stage. Thoose words were linked to clear objective descriptions, criteras, ideas. Now we have a full mess cult where not even the "gender experts" are able to tell what links the people with each others within the group woman, demi boy, non binary and all the made up gender labels anymore. What information does it give you about the personn? Well, none. So the point? Its all feeling but you cant despcribe the feeling, nor give the criteras, its an empty concept. Its not about the "body" nor the "biology" yet the reassignment surgery are linked to man as male body and woman as female body. Words are used to communicate, to show ideas, concepts, to represent soemthing, that their fucking point. When you have an individual "name" its in order to other to be able to call you, to identify you, and talk about you, the idea is "this individual I must be able to refer in order to talk about/to him specifically", it has a PURPOSE. Wtf are the purpose of the "so important I call it hate speach when not respected" pronoun and gender words as gender cultist define them? What clear information, you can represent in your head, what does it tell about the individual? And now people compare it with "gender" of objects to justify it, while the use and the concepts arent the same at all because we never linked it to sex as its not LIVING things, but to other ideas like feminine if the word is about the matter and masculine if its the profession and other logics. But for human it was meaningfull and used to represent a concrete, visible reallity. It's such a crazy world where you have to be super carefull with labels which means nothing at all and an "identity" of 0 characteristics. Btw I'm a horse because I feel like a horse and feeling like a horse is feeling like a horse, and I'm christian while not believing in bible nor jesus while praising severals gods because I feel like christian and that what make me christian because its my self identity and I choose which word fit the best in my head to describe it under the label I feel the best with. Fuck the logic, fuck the purpose of thoose words, and the world have to bend.
In terms of grammatical gender in other languages, I love how "girl is neuter" is always the example for how German is illogical - it's actually one of the very few examples that follow a clear rule: the German word Mädchen is a diminutive of basically the same word as English "maid" for a young woman (so a very very young woman) and diminutives are always neuter in German. My favourite example of gender nonsense in German is actually cutlery - knife is neuter, spoon is male and fork is female :-)
The rule there isn't really what people think. German has genders and most of the time the gender comes from the ending. So, you get the rule that pretty much anything ending in -chein is neuter regardless of what the original word was. Similarly, the feminine word Frau becomes neuter when you attach -lein to the end, so Fräulein is neuter. Without a general rule like that, the language would be an absolute nightmare to speak or write without a computer as you'd have to memorize all the genders of the words rather than just a substantial minority of them. Also, I think it's unfortunate that the term gender was chosen to represent these changes as in very few, if any, languages is there a 1 to 1 match between gender of the word and gender of the object to which it refers.
@Eichhörnchen Wibbleflup If only Germans wouldn't re-interpret so much nonsense from the US... "das Gendern" with "*innen" is a bastardisation of language if I've ever seen one.
@Eichhörnchen Wibbleflup what if xe/xers tomorrow decide that all their words describing them should be neutral and end in "-ax"... das Täterax hat xer ermordet. How many inclusionary fantasies does one need to indulge before enough is enough b s.
@Eichhörnchen Wibbleflup slippery slope fallacy is about an alleged chain reaction. My argument wasn't a chain, it was simply that the same logic could apply to different scenarios. The underlying question is simple: Where are the limits of language inclusivity? It's not a slippery slope to shine light on a lack of clarity when it comes to the rules we apply. Not every event must have already occurred for us to account for it, otherwise any form of risk management would inherently be a slippery slope fallacy (which it isn't). But even if it were the case that an event must first occur before we consider its implications, then hereby I identify as a xe/xer and demand this language change in the name of inclusivity (I'm The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster of gender).
I'm kinda disappointed that this video didn't introduce any new ideas to me. I know that me and those around me can't account for everyone, but as part of the 'woke left,' most people I'm friends with understand almost everything you've said in this video.
Most of the woke left don't understand that another person using the pronouns you choose is a choice on their part, and not a right on yours. They also don't understand the point he made about not trying to force other people to categories themselves. "What are you pronouns?" Has become a question that people expect you to answer even if you don't want to. They also need to learn how to not go into attack-mode if someone makes a mistake and to not be so narcissistic in believing that they should have more of another persons mental energy than usual.
As a transwoman, this is the best video I've seen on the subject. Too many armchair youtubers weigh in on pronouns, so it's refreshing to see a linguist tackle a linguistic issue.
As a detransitioned still nonbinary linguist who wishes English would remove masc/fem and add inclusive/exclusive, same. If you reply to this, tagging me especially, knowingly disagreeing, without asking me questions about what I mean; I look down at you and feel not like an asshole for it. Use your brain, library, elders, and internet more.
Same! I though this was really interesting and made some good points. The only point I took issue with was when stating that he wouldn’t be offended if someone used she when referring to him. Let’s be real, MOST men, maybe not all, would quite unsterstandably take that as a dig against their masculinity and react negatively.
@@AmberPremo you might be right. I will say that at least in my personal circle of people, including me, my cis dude friends don't really have a pronoun preference either.
This is so interesting AND helpful! I've been learning Korean for a while, in part, through Zoom. When I go to class, I always try my best to assimilate as much as possible to the culture in my mannerisms, behavior, etc. because that informs the language. That said I do still always have my name and pronouns in my title because it's polite to do so here in America. One day, it was just me in class, and afterward my teacher asked me if I had time for a question. She asked why everyone has "she/her" etc. on Zooms and at conferences. Even though I'm comfortable with pronouns and discussion of them is very normal for the sub-cultures I exist in, and even though I was explaining in English, I was suddenly struggling to explain it to my Korean teacher and couldn't understand why. This video made me realize it must have been because I was having to explain this very Western & English individualist concept to someone from a community centered culture who speaks a language without gendered pronouns. The cultural component is definitely something we don't think about but it makes it all so much more interesting!!
In international situations the pronouns can help, because sometimes finding out the gender of a foreign person from the name is impossible. I agree with this, but as a speaker of a language without gendered pronouns, I do see the anglocentric pronoun discussion as a bit annoying.
So I'm Vietnamese American, and I'm so happy to have come across a video that so well articulates my experience and struggle with the whole debate around gender. I too am on the side of compassion and empathy (especially given that so many of my friends are trans or nonbinary), but I also have friends and family who really struggle with alternate pronouns. In my experience, Vietnamese culture is very collectivistic, while I think American culture tends more individualistic, which is something I've explained to friends before when talking about my upbringing, but I never thought about how that carries over into linguistics and pronouns specifically. Vietnamese pronouns, like in many other Asian cultures, specify the speaker's relationship to the subject, so it gets a bit more complicated than just he/she/they... Anyhow, this has got me thinking hahaha
How are "so many" of your friends trans or nonbinary, is it because you work at a trans club or something, or is this an example of the alleged social contagion some people are talking about? Also assuming that many of these people are not going to have heterosexual marriages, is the US going to face a population crunch soon?
@@rexsceleratorum1632 I just happen to run in a lot of very queer spaces hahaha. Online spaces especially (at least the ones I'm active in) tend to have a lot of folks who identify as lgbtq+. My area of study isn't population statistics or anthropology, so I'm not entirely confident on speculating on the USA's population growth, but I do believe it's slowing down, at least compared to the last century or so. I wouldn't ascribe that to the normalization of lgbtq+ necessarily though, but to a whole list of things.
@rexsceleratorum1632 since the mid-late 20th century the population grew bombastically, plus there is still a small amount of lgbt people in the real world. Population crunches can happen by very specific chains of biological or biologically-involved disasters (droughts, floods, famine, etc.)
Printer is male in German (drucker), but female in French (imprimante). Sometime I worry they might make baby printers together and put Xerox out of business.
Xerox won the battle to not have photocopying referred to as Xeroxing. Naturally, today saying you Xeroxed something would probably confuse most people. One would probably say that the item was “Canoned.”
@@RDFozz I still say it all the time! Occasionally, I have had to explain it to young folk. To me, saying I want to "copy" something, could mean I intend to whip out a pencil or pen and _copy_ the relevant info, so I say "I want to _xerox_ it" to ensure I am being clear that I need to bring it to a copy machine and will make an identical copy of it.
Why we used the word woman, man, boy, girl? To give information about the sex of a personn + the maturity stage. Thoose words were linked to clear objective descriptions, criteras, ideas. Now we have a full mess cult where not even the "gender experts" are able to tell what links the people with each others within the group woman, demi boy, non binary and all the made up gender labels anymore. What information does it give you about the personn? Well, none. So the point? Its all feeling but you cant despcribe the feeling, nor give the criteras, its an empty concept. Its not about the "body" nor the "biology" yet the reassignment surgery are linked to man as male body and woman as female body. Words are used to communicate, to show ideas, concepts, to represent soemthing, that their fucking point. When you have an individual "name" its in order to other to be able to call you, to identify you, and talk about you, the idea is "this individual I must be able to refer in order to talk about/to him specifically", it has a PURPOSE. Wtf are the purpose of the "so important I call it hate speach when not respected" pronoun and gender words as gender cultist define them? What clear information, you can represent in your head, what does it tell about the individual? And now people compare it with "gender" of objects to justify it, while the use and the concepts arent the same at all because we never linked it to sex as its not LIVING things, but to other ideas like feminine if the word is about the matter and masculine if its the profession and other logics. But for human it was meaningfull and used to represent a concrete, visible reallity. It's such a crazy world where you have to be super carefull with labels which means nothing at all and an "identity" of 0 characteristics. Btw I'm a horse because I feel like a horse and feeling like a horse is feeling like a horse, and I'm christian while not believing in bible nor jesus while praising severals gods because I feel like christian and that what make me christian because its my self identity and I choose which word fit the best in my head to describe it under the label I feel the best with. Fuck the logic, fuck the purpose of thoose words, and the world have to bend.
imprimante sounds like German Eindrückung, which would be feminine gender, but that's simply because the morphological part -ung is grammatically inherently feminine gender. And as we see -er in Drucker here as an object obviously doesn't mean that it's inherently biologically masculine, neither does Drucker as a person. For example the word Person in German is feminine gender, but nobody would say, only women are meant.
lol, that is a false assumption! I know what you're saying though. If someone seems to be trying then give them the benefit of the doubt. But a significant portion of this world has made it very clear that they will not respect anyone different.
@@EamonWillit's not an assumption set in stone, it's until you get to know the person better. It's simply presumption of innocence. If someone shows malice, obviously you stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. Presumption of innocence is the basic requirement for a civil society. When we let presumption of guilt run things you get chaos.
I got so accustomed to using gender neutral pronouns when I was younger because I didn’t want my brother to make fun when I was talking with girls. It just comes naturally now.
@@seanbirchthe idea that gender neutral pronouns are bad or weird is really really new. Using gender neutral pronouns has only become something people make fun of because gender issues became political issues. I don't think there was a single person who would argue with the use of singular they in english prior to the year 2000
@@sazji Which is why, usually, when referring to boys, we'll usually say "Drama King" instead. Which pretty much means, you're a guy, so "King", but you're acting like a drama queen regardless.
Thank you. For being brave and making this, but mostly for giving a well-educated and thought-out explanation of a difficult issue. This is the kind of discourse that makes us all better.
The internet is a perilous place to offer a thoughtful and nuanced analysis of hot button issues. This was really well done masha’Allah, particularly the balance between the linguistic and the social components. Thanks for all you put into this one. Subbed. 🎉
This is the first video I’ve ever heard recognize that FORCED pronoun sharing might force someone to out themselves. NO LGBTQ person I know has ever mentioned that to me like it’s actually a real issue. Thank you so much!
I'll say this as a trans person: I never force anyone to share pronouns. I will not ask unless it's obvious to me that they want me to ask,. and instead I will rely on others to share or correct if I assume the pronouns wrong. If someone is trans and comes out as trans to me, I will ask them which pronouns they would prefer I use, but that`;s the only time. I do this because I was forced to do exactly that situation at one point by someone who was attempting to be inclusive, and I did *not* like it. So for me, the most important thing is to let others provide to me how they would prefer I refer to them, assuming I didn't figure it out right away.
I have come across a few LGBTQ persons sharing their discomfort with forced pronouns for this reason, but it's certainly not something very many people are saying.
In case anyone isn't aware - Finnish has just one pronoun which doesn't differentiate between masculine or feminine - 'hän' (she/he) or colloquially 'se' (which actually originally meant 'it' but is used in conversation for he and she too). I believe it's a similar situation in Hungarian and Turkish.
I've gotta say that was really good. I'm a trans guy and there's actually another component the inclusive crowd gets really wrong with the whole "always use a person's correct pronouns all the time no matter what" rule and its safety. Every trans person decides who they tell, when, and how what their preferred forms of address are in a unique manner. The driving force of the differences is personal safety and mental/emotional safety. By insisting everyone always use the "correct" pronouns it robs us of the ability to navigate the process with the delicacy required.
yeah - a friend and former colleague is nonbinary but couldn't come out at work because their team would've harassed them for it and the corporate HR was useless. A diktat came down that pronouns could be added to email bios and it was optional, which was good - I added mine but my friend didn't have to lie or invite that harassment. (we're both working in better places now)
Thank you for that insight! Just because a friend identifies to me one way, I should know how they want to be identified in other settings outside of our relationship.
I would think that this would be quite obvious. Someone at my job kept coming over to my desk and ended up befriending me well it turns out the person is gay and was afraid in the workplace for anyone to know but trusted me. At that point I had already figured it out but totally understood the person's reluctance to reveal that. Besides that the person uses the pronoun that's traditionally assigned to that person sex but that's not the point it's the other person's prerogative to out themselves in certain situations, places, persons. And that is why I do not worry about pronouns if I misgender you, correct me, but do so politely. And I will be happy to come play. So far pronouns have not presented any problems in my life 🤷🏽♀️
Working in pharmacy over forty years, it was not difficult to understand the trans world concept. We dispense the medicines for those changes. The entire process from beginning to new beginnings are highly personal, sensitive, and involves being very vulnerable. It is delicate and many people do not understand. So when my university was asking students pronoun preferences to me this was a privacy violations, all out in the open. It was a mess. Everybody is not included unless they are. This was suppose to be assisting the community rather, it kind of exposed them. I felt some kind of way about it but could not articulate mainly from my perspective to confidentiality.
I feel like I knew all (or at least most) of these points and agree with them, but I've never been able to collate and express them so accurately and succinctly. Kudos for handling such a hot button topic so professionally and respectfully!
We, as a society, need more discussion like this. It’s refreshing to see someone handle a socially divisive topic with such wit, compassion, sincerity, and consideration to practicality. Thou art a pro at them nouns, yo.
I once tried to convince everyone around me of the superiority of the base 8 number system and why it would be better to use it than base 10. In order to practice what I preach, I started numbering all my lab work in base 8. But after a few weeks I couldn’t remember which samples were labeled in base 10, and which were based on 8, and so it fouled everything up. I feel that trying to get other people to use pronouns that are different from what they’re used to, is an equally productive exercise.
One thing I’ve thought about with pronouns that you skimmed right next to with new pronouns is that, if everyone has their own, then it would simply be easier to solely refer to people with their name. If you’re telling a story, or example, and there are six people in the story with their own pronouns, the only options would be to give a list of each person’s pronouns mid-story and hope that the listener remembers while risking the chance that they won’t follow the story at all, or just use the people’s names and exclude pronouns.
Yeah, and that just sounds ridiculous. I think that people who insist on having their own pronoun are a bit unreasonable, as that is just saying “you aren’t allowed to use any pronouns for me, and here is a second name you can use instead.” We should just as a society pick a whole set of neopronouns and use them when we need to
@Amarok eh, I can also see the usefulness of having xe/xim or something like it, essentially a genderless third person singular pronoun. The usefulness of differentiating it from they is that there wouldn’t be any confusion about referring to multiple people or just one. Or they could work because we already use it in a similar manner. I have a feeling there will eventually be a standard that naturally arises, and we’ll all just go with that
Generally I'm using pronouns to refer to a person when they aren't there. I'll stick with he, her or they. If the person in referencing wants stomething else, or I don't know their preferred pro nouns and they present in a non gendered or opposite gendered way, I'll use they. To me it's important to also be able to communicate clearly. And sometimes that means using pronouns the person I'm talking to understands, not who the person I'm taking about would prefer and is not present. My partner's sibling views themselves as non binary. I refer to them as they, and the other ways I've just mentioned. If for some reason they come up in a conversation I will try to stick to this unless it's going to cause confusion. People who don't know my partner's sibling will often be confused when I say my partner's sibling. And for an inconsequential conversation about a person that isn't there and will never meet the person I'm taking about, I'll just say sister or she. The conversation doesn't need to be derailed by a person going "huh" or me having to explain they are non binary, what that means and possibly an exchange of opinions on the whole trans thing. Especially if it's just a verbal conversation with a stranger about our familys and having partner's, x number of siblings, etc. Or a person who doesn't agree at all with pronouns and trans issues and has their mind made up and believes their opinion is right. (I'm just not interested in having a debate with a person who has made up their mind that trans people aren't people or don't exist or are trying to control and censor language. Especially when they are talking about my friends and family who I care about. I'm not going to provoke that reaction. Especially over a general question of "does your parter come from a big family?") Personally I think if someone is offended by how I use pronouns well that's a them problem to resolve. I'm being polite by using non gendered language where I can and it's appropriate. I use it also to avoid getting the he/she wrong. To me it is like swearing. Not everyone likes it. If I'm around a person who hates swearing then I won't swear. But when I'm not around them I'll swear as much as it suits me and is appropriate for the context I'm in. Or like calling a person a name they don't like. If the jerk doesn't like being called a jerk then I'm not going to call them that when they are around. I will say they are a jerk when they aren't present. (FYI I'm not claiming trans people are jerks. They aren't. PEOPLE can be jerks and and sometimes it is appropriate to communicate this to other people. Gender identity is irrelevant to how big of a jerk a person is). Yes it is respectful to call people what they want to be called. It's not the only important aspect in communicating. Sometimes clear communication is also important. Context of the situation is important. The audience of the conversation is also important. Or in short, multiple things can be important with different degrees of importance to balance. To me there is no point in telling a story where you have to hash out a list of who has what specific pronoun at the start of the story, to immediately lose your audience's understanding of what the story is all about. And there is doubly no point if the tangent becomes a trans debate instead of about the story you were trying to communicate.
I honestly enjoy the japanese ways of pronouns a lot, no one really misgenders you (mostly) cuz they just refer to you by your name or a different type of group which is normally not gender, and you your self can give personality to your first person pronoun.
I wish that was always the case but they do hit you with that -chan -kun. Nothing more painful than being called deadname-chan. It does help a lot that you can gender your speech a lot more though. The speech of a woman or a man is pretty identical in English, but in Japanese you can often tell the gender of someone just by seeing what they’ve said written down
I’ve always wanted to refer to myself as 俺 (in casual interactions, not at the office), but I would get some wild looks if I did that. The cognitive dissonance would be too much for people. I’ve always found Japanese 1st-person pronouns a little uncomfortable because none of them feel quite right for me. 🤔
@@ancalyme Most of the times kare and kanojo are not used though. Usually you put the persons name and then drop the topic like instead of saying “Sarah ate an apple. She thought it was good” they would say “Sarah ate an apple. Thought it was good” where is was implied that I am still talking about Sarah. Kanojo especially is avoided because it can also mean girlfriend so it is usually used in that sense. That is why Koyuki said mostly, because while they do have pronouns they don’t use them nearly as often as we do.
I was fully prepared to bristle at the "both sides are wrong, here's how normal people think about it" framing, but I was happily surprised by how broad, well-studied and informative this was. Thanks!
@@crinolynneendymion8755Tbf, the title is very inflammatory. It also uses the right's terms for both sides, rather than using each side's terms for each other, or using each side's terms for themselves.
@@justseffstuff3308 Yeah. For those who don't know, in English-speaking queer online spaces the term "gender critic" is generally understood as a euphemism transphobes use to make themselves look legitimate, and "woke" as a derogatory term for "the people we don't like". So many of us will see this video title and assume it's a video made by a right-wing transphobe apologist trying to pass as a centrist. A more neutral title would just say the left and right without any connotative qualifiers. But I'm willing to bet that as a cis het white man, the maker of this video is simply not at all part of the social circles where these words carry such a connotation. Plus, these words are great for engagement; I clicked the video, didn't I? 😅 So maybe it's fine to keep it like that.
@@DominoPivotI think you are trying to define a term that you did not coin. When the right (as I self-identify) uses the term 'woke' we are usually referring to a person's tendency to enforce compliance on others, rather than to refer to any personal belief the individual may have I person may be trans, but not be woke (in my terms) is they do not attempt to force others to comply with their beliefs. In my mind, 'gender critical' does not imply malice where 'transphobic' does. 'woke' may be used with or without implication of malice, but that's just my opinion
This video demonstrates EXACTLY why I re-thought my entire approach to explaining pronouns to people that are reluctant to change. I worked with a guy, James. He would always roll his eyes at different pronouns and such. I could have gone on a tirade to force him to use pronouns like many are wont to do, but that's not effective at all. Instead I broke it down like this. "One's pronouns are an extension of their identity, same way their name is. Your name is James, correct? Not J, not John, Jimmy, Jake, etc. Your name is James and you do not like it when people address you something else." He says yes. And from there I explained to him that exact feeling he gets when people don't respect calling him James is the exact way people like me feel when addressed as something else. And I further stressed that, "hey, you might not understand why people want to go by something else than what you perceive. But you don't have to. All they're asking is that you respect that they don't want to be called _____, in the same way you don't want to be called by a name other than James." And THAT resonated with him. Now he doesn't scoff or roll his eyes at pronoun usage. He still gets it wrong sometimes, but he makes an effort and is trying to respect others' preferences. And I think that makes all the difference.
Nice story, but you forgot the point in the video that points out that for some people it really is hard to process things like: Where is Alice? O there *they are. It IS not easy to change pronouns. It is like trying to speak a different accent or to force yourself to use youse for plural you. It is even worse if people are constantly correcting you if you misused you for more people, since it should be youse. Don't forget it is really really nice that people try to learn a new dialect just for one person and that you should be really really gratefull for that. Also, accept the fact that it is very very tiring for people to constantly speak that new dialect.
Problem is the entire world isn't gonna agree on this subject. People pushing back so extremely are as bad as those pushing preferred pronouns as a universal fact, even to those that aren't going to accept it. I do not, and will not use neo-pronouns, I also do not interact with people that identify as non-binary because I refuse to care about keeping on top of remembering to refer to them appropriately all the time, when these people will usually get angry or upset, when in reality they need to accept it is not a common way to refer to a singular person exclusively. I don't hate them, it's just too annoying to change my behaviour for the sake of someone I do not know nor do I interact with enough for it to stick.
That's how I was convinced to use and respect pronouns that didn't match what I saw at first glance. It's a great empathy excercise, I find it helps you see clearly how the other person is feeling and why it's important to them. I would add that, yes, for us it is hard to adapt because we have to think harder when we interact with that particular person, but maybe they get misgendered all day. We don't realize our collective impact on people who get misgendered often. It's definitely worth it making the effort and being a little uncomfortable from time to time, for the sake of other people who perhaps are doing far worse than we know.
I have a cousin who came out as trans to me and my brother, but didn't want the rest of our family to know. So I've been making mental gymnastics to cover him when there's family around and then switch pronouns when we are alone. It's possible to do this but it's really hard to nail it every single time I talk about him or to him. Especially since we talk in spanish and adjectives don't make this any easier
I feel at home with this comment! I would not intentionally use a pronoun that would hurt who I am talking to, but please if I ever end up doing that, don't jump to the conclusion that I am descriminating you, there are just days where my brain is a representation of a leaky sieve. I too have been exposed to a society that made me associate certain features of a person with a certain gender, and sometimes that understanding is woven into my subconscious. I am trying my best. It's amazing that you were keeping up with the pronouns situation honestly, I don't know if I would do well with that.
Yeah, I'm in a similar position in a couple of situations, the trans people I know are actually pretty easy-going about pronouns but I'm from a generally pretty traditional Christian community and so if they come up in conversation I'm constantly having to make judgment calls about whether it is safe to use people's preferred pronouns out of respect and support for them, or whether doing so would actually bring more trouble their way than it would be worth.
As a trans guy myself, I’m sure your cousin appreciates you immensely. My mother has to do the same thing with me around certain unaccepting family members and it gets exhausting for everyone. I wish we just lived in a world where trans people could just exist without having to hide their transness, but unfortunately that’s not the world we live in. I’m sure your cousin feels the same, he’s lucky to have such supportive family around him who’s willing to put in the effort to show him he’s respected and loved.
I am a high school teacher in a roman language country. I had a student with a female name and wanted to be refered not only with male pronouns but with male articles. I was so difficult for me because after saying a clearly gendered noun my articles would follow as female. He complained several times because I would slip and use female articles. . . . I avoided refering to him as much as possible. I have no problem with him wanting to be refered as male, but the mental gimnastics to change the articles was exhausting. . . . I refered as "him" all this time with no problem in english. On the other hand, Another trans student changed his name to a masculine one and I didn't even noticed he was trans at first. I could use all the articles and pronouns correctly without even thinking. I understand the struggle of the trans people, but it is greatly appreciated when you make it easy to be respectuful to you. Great video by the way.
@@janegardener1662Not always. Sometimes people have a name that’s most commonly used for the other gender. I had a boy in my class in school named Irinel, which is a male name in my region of the country, but a female name in another region of the country. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but there were some professors who kept making the mistake of referring to him as a girl - either by using feminine pronouns or calling “miss Irinel” to the blackboard. Now as a boy, this was annoying to him, although by the end he was already used to it and wasn’t phasing him anymore. But do you think that his annoyance was because he wanted deference, or just because he didn’t like being called a girl when he wasn’t one?
@@El3ctr0Lun4 My given name is also gender neutral. It never bothered me when people misgendered me. I corrected them and we all moved on. They made a simple mistake and I offered a simple correction. No feelings were hurt during this interaction.
In Finnish we don't have gendered third person singular pronouns, just one formal (hän) and one informal (se) neutral pronoun for everyone. The informal one translates to "it" so yeah, we go around calling each other "it" and nobody bats an eye. In Finnish we usually automatically assume that whoever is mentioned first is also being mentioned first in the following sentence. So if I say "Mark didn't like what Pete said, so he hit him" I would automatically assume that Mark is the one doing the hitting. In cases where they are not mentioned in the same order, we would specify it by using the name again in the next sentence, like for example "Pete said something Mark didn't like, so Mark hit him". As for the "Alice in the mirror" part, we would likely say "Alice saw [one's self] in the mirror and liked [what one saw]". The fact that romance languages insist on gendering such simple, everyday statements feels so weird from a Finnish viewpoint!
Finnish grammar is a beautiful thing. Most speakers of other European languages (excluding Estonian and Hungarian and presumably the Sapmi languages) see Finnish and only think it looks impossibly difficult. They are wrong. It's music.
I have no problems remembering someone's gender, but I do sometimes have trouble remembering someone's pronouns. So if the pronouns align with the gender (he/him for male, they/them for non-binary, and she/her for female) then I will automatically choose the right pronouns. If they have chosen different pronouns it gets difficult, especially since almost no one chooses pronouns in all the languages of the world , only in their native language. And since I'm bilingual I've got to translate those pronouns too (which with more obscure pronouns is simply impossible) ;). Also , I'm a bit autistic and was bullied before, so 'doing things wrong in social interactions' freaks me out..
That's mostly because people are inventing new ways of doing it that lack any sort of standards. We've had basically 4 pronouns for the 3rd person in English for quite a while now, we have he, she, it and they. (As in the singular they, not the plural they) A lot of it looks suspiciously like an attempt at trolling as one would need to be specifically educated in not just what it means, but also how to pronounce them.
@Chris L As an older person, I struggle using 'it' as a pronoun for a person. 'It' is for inanimate objects, or an insult. I don't even use 'it' for animals.
@@reachandler3655 For me, using "it" when referring to someone when I was growing up was considered incredibly rude, hurtful, and hateful. "It" meant that the person in question wasn't considered fit enough to even be referred to as human- you were useless and unwanted. I don't personally know anyone who goes by "it", but if I did, I would feel I was being unkind to them. Edited because that was a syntactical mess. T-T
I can definitely relate with point 6. At my old school, there was a girl who asked me my pronouns. Not wanting to out myself as trans and also not wanting this person to only ever use she/her, I said any pronouns are fine really. She proceeded to ask me persistently, as if my answer wasn’t good enough. I’m at a different school right now, my friends mostly all use he/him for me :)
I’d say it potentially outs you as either (1) trans, (2) an anti-trans bigot, (3) a cis ally to trans people, or (4) someone who doesn’t really care, because all four of those groups could have reasons for saying any pronouns are fine. If someone told me that any pronouns are fine, I’d be racking my brain trying to figure out which of those categories they are in.
Thank you for 1) sharing your expertise 2) being just a kind human & 3) giving something to ponder on. I’m with you, I try to be respectful. Most people are kind and gracious and give grace whenever they see one trying. Be kind. Really cool content. I learned a lot and didn’t understand even more 😂
I've always found the notion of "preferred" pronouns, or presently the term "my" pronouns a little bizarre at best. After all, _I_ don't have pronouns, languages have pronouns and they're basically designed to be grammatical tools, as you clearly explained here, they are used to replace nouns in sentences. Also, the term "preferred" implies that someone's identity is just a preference and not something that is intrinsic to them as a person. Which is likely why the term "preferred" is no longer used when referring to pronoun usage.
That's because it's a massive imposition for a tiny group of people who individually may or may not even care. Asking somebody for their pronouns is rude and really needs to stop. It's very much the same basic idea as asking if somebody is gay or lesbian. It's not something that we would generally do except in some pretty specific circumstances and doing so forces people to make an up or down vote as to whether they're out or not. By all means, if somebody gives you a preferred pronoun or a different name from what you were expecting do your best to respect their request, but people shouldn't be rooting around in case there is some other preference. When people say that you shouldn't assume somebody's gender, that's not really what they mean, what they mean is that you should ask if it's not clear, not that you need to personally ask absolutely everybody, including those that are very clearly one gender or another or if it's not even relevant to what's going on.
Yeah, that knife cuts both ways depending on the group/ context you're dealing with. Personally, i tend to default towards preferred because A) I'm an old fuck and it was the first one I learned; B) When describing someone's pronouns to others it feels much more respectful to the one being described to say "They *_prefer_* you say X" than "They *_are_* a X". Keeps the focus on the fact that they're a person capable of making decisions as opposed to an object for everyone else to describe either correctly or incorrectly (I know we do that all the time with cis-folk, race, nationality, etc, but it seems to me like a subject where respect is easier to forget for some folks and I'd rather err on the side of giving them an extra couple straws to grasp at); And C) I have no actual power to force a third-party speaker to do anything. If the discussed person's preference isn't enough to make the third party care, then that third party was never gonna care anyway...
@DBSTKjS I didn't say anything about names. Names are not pronouns, which shouldn't even need to be stated, but here I am. Names are not grammatical tools like pronouns are.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade I think as younger folks are moving away from gender norms, it's completely impossible to know for sure. I know a few people for whom I would have defaulted to he or she quite without hesitation by visual reading if not for them indicating a 'they/them' preference. Now I am in a position (theater/stage management) where we do paperwork that includes names and identifiers (like contact sheets) where we do ask to get ahead of an in person meetup and to properly write about the performers and designers with preferred pronouns on anything written where pronouns might be used. I have noticed a tiny bit of 'whatever's respectful' as well, indicating a complete detachment from a preference.
I refer to everyone as guy or girl non withstanding of their actual gender nor does it matter at all Worst of all a woman can use he pronouns and still be a woman but I would be confused because the pronoun she chose doesn’t describe her actual gender I’ve never seen a guy get angry being called a she nor does it matter, especially since they’re 99% of the time not there to hear it It’s like what
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! I try (and maybe don't always succeed) to model having these discussions in ways that are a little more calm, while taking people's concerns seriously
Awesome explanation! As a retired linguistic anthropologist I go crazy sometimes with people’s confusion. And love your sense of humor. I hope you’re going viral! 🎉
Great video. I've felt like the whole conversation wasn't really a conversation... but I couldn't put my finger on why. You've totally nailed it here. Thanks!
I get asked why I have my pronouns on my work email. The reasons are my name is gender neutral and I work with mostly women. I didn't mind the occasional "good morning ladies" at meetings, but since I work at home mostly people were referring to me as a woman and would tell the clients I'm a woman. When, I would call the clients some thought I was a scammer, because my voice is the opposite of what a woman would sound like. The he/him pronouns helped.
That's very thoughtful of you. I had quite a bit of trouble figuring out whether to use Mr or Ms when referring to someone I've never seen in person... now I'm also wondering how to refer to someone who's pronouns are they/them🤔 are they Mr, Ms or some new variant, I saw Mx once, but since English is my second language I'm not sure
@@stacykrasnikova7744Mx is a gender neutral equivalent of Mr or Ms that some non-binary people use. It's usually pronounced like the word "mix" or "mucks". It's a relatively new thing but it's becoming more common.
I like this take on pronouns! In german we have it even worse / more complicated, since there is no german translation for they/them. For one friend, we use the pronoun "es", which most closely translates to "it", but they wanted to use a gender neutral pronoun that people are already used to, so "it" was really the only choice available. In my circles and friend group, we mostly do it exactly as you described in the end. Pronouns are an optional specification for us; Many of us couldn't care less which pronouns are used to refer to us as long as it's understandable and we respect the choice of those to whom it is important. And when referring to them when speaking to my grandparents for example, I normally use "she" instead, because it's more important to bring the point of my stories accross, than to force my 80 year old grandparents to relearn pronouns for a friend of mine they'll never meet. All in all great video and a very thoughtful and informed take on this topic. Too many people appear to shut off their brains and start shouting when pronouns are even mentioned. (sorry for possible grammatical errors, it's my second language and quite late ^^)
@@MrKoalaburger "Sie"/"ihnen" are the third person plural pronouns, so those would be closest translation of "they"/"them". But yes, it doesn't work that well, because the third person feminine pronouns are "sie"/"ihr" (so in the nominative and accusative it would sound like you're referring to a woman/girl) and verbs also have plural inflections, so rather than e.g. "she is tall"/"they are tall" you have "sie _ist_ groß"/"sie _sind_ groß". And "es" is neuter, but it's only really used for inanimate objects, animals and children ("das Kind"/"das Mädchen"), so it's not ideal either... Hope you're enjoying learning German!
@@MrKoalaburger Yeah, the problem is that our "they" is the exact same word as "she": "sie", which is also the current polite way to adress someone, our formal "you". "Ihr" was actually used for that purpose until around 1800 or 1900. We also use "ihr" for saying "her", as in "her book/ihr Buch", and it's also the plural form of "you". So yeah, every immediate alternative is gendered or has unfitting connotations already :/ we kind of just dance around the terms for now. My nonbinary friend knows the struggle better than we do and that we love them the way they are, with or without proper german pronouns. 🥰 Oh and also: good luck, don't give up. We know it's a hard language, respect for learning it!
@@rainghostly yeah... I was thinking ihr as in "plural you" (or they, in a way) would be a workaround, but yeah that's my English brain speaking. Doesn't actually work at all lol.
Appreciate the dog-whistle terms in this video's title that will hopefully prompt people of all sides of the political spectrum to watch it and learn the objective truth about this topic--very well done video!
I really like your take on this. I think the "know your audience" thing can go both ways. You don't want to confuse/alienate the person you're speaking to in the moment. But you also don't want to out the person you're talking about if you don't know whether or not your conversation parter is safe. Also, my method of allyship (I'm not trans, but I am queer and use any pronouns) is sharing my pronouns when introducing myself, instead of asking someone what theirs are. That gives the other person the opportunity to decide if they also want to share or not. I'm mostly in the habit now of using neutral they/them for people who haven't told me, even if they appear very masc/femme. Some people, even cis, don't present as the gender they are.
I like this, to share one's pronouns but don't ask. As he said, we don't ask other kinds of personal information, and that's really sensitive and personal to people oftentimes, for a number of reasons, outing oneself or being socially forced to lie being one. I wish the trans community and allies especially (particularly younger ones who sometimes feel almost aggressive) would not ask. I know cis/het people who are fine with other people identifying with whatever (or no) gender they are who HATE being asked their pronouns. I guess if you are a feminine cishet woman being asked makes you wonder-do I look masculine or something? Or a man--can't you tell I'm a guy? I bet that bugs some (cis-het) men even more than women. Why alienate (even subsconsiously) potential allies?
Well I think that using neutral pronouns until a person tells you is stupid! For one, 99.9-something percent of people will line up with the way they look, and for two, asking many of those people what their pronouns are is going to piss them off. I for sure, if you asked me my pronouns, would without a doubt be slightly offended, as the prior commenter got at. Just assume the pronoun unless youre genuinely confused or until someone tells you otherwise, cause we all need to 1) stop being so afraid of offending someone and 2) stop getting offended. If you misgender someone and they freak out, obviously theyre a nutcase that you dont want to associate with anyway.
@@michaelcherokee8906 Clearly you just said that being misgendered would offend you. As I said in my comment, I don't ask people what their pronouns are. I only give mine and if they respond with their own, I use those pronouns when referring to them. If they don't share their pronouns, I usually default to the neutral they/them, because at worst, it may annoy a handful of cis people (who should probably think about why they're so bothered by it). I think that's an acceptable consequence of respecting differences in gender presentation. Finally, I have no idea where you got your 99.9 statistic. Even if that number is correct (it's not), that's still 8,100,000 people. Maybe assumption works for you, but I'm often surrounded by queer and non-conforming people so I find the neutral method works for me.
If a person misgenders you and it matters, you should correct them. I am misgendered on the phone because of the tone of my voice, it's not a big deal.
I've never heard something that made such pure and simple sense as this video. You encapsulate everything I've ever wanted to say about the gender debate but was never able to fully articulate. I especially resonated with "If someone tells me what pronouns they believe they should be addressed as, I'll do it out of politeness, even if I don't fully understand it", and "don't force people to categorise themselves". I also like your idea of prioritising respect for your listener and using pronouns they'll understand rather than intentionally using a pronoun you know won't be understood. That will just cause a breakdown in communication, for what is in my opinion no good reason.
Same. Personally, I believe there are only two genders that can't be changed but I'm not going out of my way to disrespect others because of my personal beliefs. And no, it does not make one bigoted or hateful simply for having a different *personal* opinion, that is generally only applicable if you hate or are vitriolic to others for some arbitrary reason. I'll try my best to use people's pronouns and however they chose to identify is fine. As long as they are not hurting others, they have the freedom to do so and I feel compelled to give everyone basic respect and dignity.
@@adriant240 Well there's one thing you said that I agree with - I don't personally agree with having lots of new invented pronouns to describe everyone's own interpretation of what gender means, a simple "they" is fine for people who don't feel like they fit the binary. But when you start your comment with "I didn't watch the video but I believe X about it", you don't really give yourself a leg to stand on. Plus insulting people randomly is never gonna make anyone wanna listen to your point. I also automatically put anyone who uses the phrase "woke" in the bin because it's literally only used by bigots to define any aspect of being more accepting to people that they don't personally like. Society has moved on to a point where you're not allowed to say n word or f word or the like, so you just call them "woke" instead because the meaning of that word is ephemeral enough to be publically allowed but everyone still knows you're just using it in place of a slur.
@@Jon0007723 I want to be polite, but we are far past that point. Believe me. Society has gone insane and extremely dumb (people like you) and at this point I'm all out of patience. I apologize but that's just how it is. It just needs to be said, no more sugar coating and being nice.
First, love the sweater! Second, great video. Thank you for the information and the clear and sensitive way you discussed this subject. Number 6 is an interesting one. As an 'out' member of the lgbtq+ community, coming out becomes a way of life. It seems like a singular event, but in reality, we are always coming out because (in my observation) folks assume a hetero-normative stance in conversations, 'What does your wife do for a living?' It can be challenging. Every time it happens, it feels like a splash of cold water in the face, and every time, I have to make a quick decision on how to answer. What are the odds this person will shoot me if I say 'My husband...' etc. It is a complicated subject, and I really appreciate your willingness to chime in with some good science. :-)
Heh. thy "heteronormative" observation reminds me of a time when I (male) had a male roommate and one day I answered the phone and the caller said, "Hi! Could I speak to Mrs. (Roommate's last name)?" I'm possessed of quite a deep voice (not to mention a twisted sense of humor), so I said, "Speaking." which was greeted with, "Oh.um..wel......um......" (Click....buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz). Makes me laugh to this day.
As a trans woman, my general rules of thumb have been: -when referring to a stranger, I generally default to what they seem to present as--whether that's masculine, feminine, or androgynous/non-conforming. If I get acquainted with a non-conforming-seeming person, I like to ask what they want me to call them by because I want them to feel comfortable/safe with me. -when strangers refer to me, I generally don't correct them. I get misgendered often over the phone, but oftentimes I'm never going to speak to that person again, they don't have any reason to know better or come to know better, so it's not worth the trouble for me. If I get acquainted or expect to become acquainted, I'll inform them of my pronouns. If they don't respect them, I deem them unworthy of my company, but that's been very rare.
Same. I work in a place that I am using the phone a lot. I generally don’t bother trying to fix assumptions of those I’ll not have to see again. It’s my coworkers that refer to me as the wrong gender that frustrates me.
As I said in my main comment, in my main language (Brazilian Portuguese), we have genders for absolutely all nouns. I see this pronoun fight as unnecessary because "a person", in my language for example, is feminine, but it doesn't offend any men because you use a feminine pronoun or noun to describe both a man and a woman. Pronouns as they are, arose because of the natural development of a language, and there have been efforts to create neutral languages, but they usually fail because the reasons are completely irrational and subjective. This arrived in Brazil and is affecting everyone because mostly emotionally sensitive people think they need to change the grammar of the language to speak to people without offending them. My tip is, don't be offended by a word if the intention is not to offend you. If the goal is to offend, there is no reason to use cute pronouns in place of insults. This is too much effort for a waste of time.
@@brunnomenxathere are languages that are already, naturally neutral. for example, in my dad's native language, Swahili, there are no gendered pronouns, and most nouns do not imply what a person's gender/sex is. You can have a whole conversation about someone without ever implying what their gender is. There are 9 noun classes, but it works very differently from the 2 grammatical genders in romance languages.
@@andiiiiiiiiiii, Yes indeed. My point is that non-gender neutral languages don't need to change grammar to satisfy specific people, because the language naturally developed that way. In my language there are words that change meaning with gender. For example: "a caixa" (fem.) means "the box", but "o caixa" (masc.) means "the cashier". Trying to change this is basically killing a language and building an artificial one for an empty cause.
This was a really interesting linguistic video, thank you! As an ally I absolutely agree that the asking for people's pronouns can be allyship taken too far -- especially when it becomes a demand. I've heard several trans people make the same argument as you about how it can accidentally out people when we are too aggressive with it. Instead of asking other people's pronouns, I've found it's better to simply share my own (she/her) with no expectation of that in return. It's simply an indicator to the other person of my views and that I'm a safe person to come out to, if they choose to do so. Another interesting point you made is about how gender is just one part of our identity, and for many people it's not an important part. As a cis woman who looks feminine the only times I've been misgendered are either clearly slips of the tongue or online where someone is making an incorrect assumption. It's honestly funny to me in those situations, it's never going to really bother me. But I can understand that if you are constantly being misgendered, maybe because you are trans, or because you don't look like what people expect a man/woman to look like, or just because other people think it's a funny way to insult you.....that's going to be much more painful. So even though for me personally misgendering isn't a big deal, I don't let that trick me into thinking that everyone else has the same experience.
>stop asking people their pronouns and share your own instead This right here is what I want. When someone outlines how they wish to be addressed in this manner, it marks them in my mind as a safe person and encourages me to share rather than making me approach the conversation as an interrogation. That might not seem too huge for those who do align with the gender they were assigned, but this is huge for a lady in an unfriendly part of the US. As a more broad comment, I've never encountered this channel before now, and I clicked on this video while regrettably assuming this bearded man in a plain tshirt was going to disrespect my existence like many other bearded men in plain tshirts on the internet. What I heard instead was Dr. Jones separate the "issue" of gender diversity from the confusion surrounding pronoun usage. Many people in the US fail to do that for themselves, either because mainstream media conflates the two or they're simply unwilling to admit their true biases. That's why I'm glad Dr. Jones made this video, and I'll be sharing it with my parents soon.
@@oinkerbob2 Nobody addresses anybody with third person pronouns. Third person pronouns are used when the person being referred to isn't there. That's why they're called "third person pronouns".
@@janegardener1662 I: Except all the conversations that involve more than two participants, in which it is completely natural and common to refer to one of the speakers in third-person in their presence Given all your other comments under this vid, you're just being obtuse on purpose
@@iamnohere Adults don't speak about other adults when they are present, except under certain conditions, like introductions: "Bill, this is Jane. She is my colleague at work". Adults do speak for children or incapacitated adults when they are present: "My son would like the waffles this morning. Could you also bring him an orange juice? Thank you." "My mother needs to go to the doctor. Can you take her today?" Otherwise adults let other adults speak for themselves. We don't talk about other people as if they're not there, because that is rude.
@@janegardener1662 I: I can think of plenty scenarios where speaking about someone is still perfectly natural: "Kay told me all about you; they praised you highly." / "Mary said I could join, so I've accepted her invitation." / et cetera, et cetera. Also - even if children and incapacitated adults _were_ the only case, would they _not_ still need the pronouns?
Appreciate this video. I think you hit the nail on the head: any meaningful interaction regarding anything tangentially related to this topic has to start with kindness.
I was just thinking about this a couple weeks ago. I'll always respect people's preferred pronouns but if anybody asks me what my pronouns are I'd say I literally do not care as long as you are consistent with it and people know you're referring to me. Because pronouns are a linguistic tool, not my identity, not my name.
@@ijustdocomments6777 not all lesbians are like that. For instance, my best friend of almost 40 years won't talk to me anymore since I became a left-wing gender critical. Many people don't know this, but even the founder of gay pride following the stonewall riots, Fred Sargeant, is gender critical. He's been banned from twitter and assaulted by trans rights activists on numerous occasions. It's sad what the T is doing to society, with women and LGB people as its primary victims.
Filipino (or Tagalog) and almost all dialect in the Philippines are genderless languages. Pronouns do not have a classified gender. For example, the pronoun "siya" (he/she) or possesive pronoun "sa kanya" (his/hers) can be used to refer to anyone regardless of gender. The word "anak" (child) can also be used to refer to a son or daughter.
Thanks for pointing this out, I had a good friend from the Philippines who I thought was mixing up the English pronouns when he would call his daughter "he". It is amazing the me that when you learn other languages you learn that not every language handles the parts of speech the same way. And how the mistakes we make in languages that are not our native tongue come about.
Great video. I especially appreciate the discussion of the individualist--collectivist spectrum. Of course it's important to respect someone's asserted identity, but it's equally important to recognise that identity is negotiated within a community. Finding a path through this conflicted terrain is not easy, and your discussion provides a really helpful framework for thinking through these questions with compassion and respect
I’m a CIS male married to a CIS female with three children. An adult trans woman, an adult non binary youth, and a CIS male older teen. Pronouns in our life over the last 4-5 years have been quite an adventure. I disclose this only to clarify the points I’m making in this post. Usually, I introduce my family as my wife, daughter, mid-kid, and son. To learn to refer to our trans daughter as she/her with her new name took quite a bit of time, but I feel that we have done so. I can easily now refer to my daughter and her girlfriend in (insert other city here, trying not to dox ourselves too much). I don’t use the term trans on a regular basis. She’s my daughter. With my youngest, there isn’t anything to modify. He’s my son. It was a bit problematic with my non binary second born who prefers the pronouns they/them. With time I learned to use they/them frequently, but often slip and use their dead pronouns. The other issue was what to use in place of son/daughter. They suggested child, but I felt that child was a bit diminutive. They will always be my baby, but after all they are an adult now. I wanted to respect that. Being a middle child, married to a middle child, and addressing my middle child, I never miss a chance to bring that fact up. (It’s a middle child thing.) We came up with Mid-kid and love it. Most people understand it as well. It’s interesting that I can now discuss my mid-kid without bringing gender into the conversation at all. For them gender doesn’t matter. For those I talk to, I don’t press the issue of pronouns for them (those I’m talking to). Many that knew them before will continue to use the dead pronouns, others will just pick a pronoun set and go with it. I know that I’m doing well when someone chooses the opposite pronouns. I don’t correct them, I let them run with it. I loved your discussion in this video; you have great suggestions about how to look at the issue from all angles. There is one great angle that you brought up that I had never actively considered before: the way I use pronouns for someone not present while considering the person to whom I am speaking. In these situations I have always been concerned about continuing to use the correct pronoun set. Some times it is uncomfortable when I am speaking to someone that knew my kids when they were younger. I still feel compelled to use the correct pronoun set, but now understand that in some instances, I do owe the courtesy to my listeners to at least acknowledge my selection of pronouns. I agree that it is inconsiderate to leave my listener confused. It’s also ineffective communication. Thanks for your explanation.
I love your candor and approach to the issue within your family! It’s refreshing to see people face the pronoun puzzle with such respect and a sprinkling of humor. We are all learning - some more willingly than others (looking at the folks referenced around 16:10 in). 😊👍🏼
CIS male => what we used to call man, a male human, or as he's teen, a boy. trans woman => what we used to call a trans boy, a male human who perform and act in society to "look like" a woman (a female human). non-binary => doesnt give any information about the personn so theres really 0 point to say "non binary". Could be a male or a female. Can appear with social norms of a man or a woman, a total mess worse than the two ideas above. Why we used the word woman, man, boy, girl? To give information about the sex of a personn + the maturity stage. Thoose words were linked to clear objective descriptions, criteras, ideas. Now we have a full mess cult where not even the "gender experts" are able to tell what links the people with each others within the group woman, demi boy, non binary and all the made up gender labels anymore. What information does it give you about the personn? Well, none. So the point? Its all feeling but you cant despcribe the feeling, nor give the criteras, its an empty concept. Its not about the "body" nor the "biology" yet the reassignment surgery are linked to man as male body and woman as female body. And now people compare it with "gender" of objects to justify it while the use and the concepts arent the same at all...have fun with your gender fanatics family, where you have to be super carefull with labels which means nothing and an "identity" of 0 characteristics. Btw I'm a horse because I feel like a horse and feeling like a horse is feeling like a horse, and I'm christian while not believing in bible nor jesus while believing theres severals gods because I feel like christian and that what make me christian because its my self identity and I choose which word fit the best in my head to describe it.
I’m a trans woman, and something that causes a lot of confusion for new people I meet is when people I have known since before I came out sometimes refer to me as ”he”. In turn, that makes those new people stop and think for a second and then eventually decide to go with he, which perpetuates the cycle. The amount of distress that misgendering causes is not as bad as it used to be, but it’s still harmful as not everyone I meet needs to know I am trans. Some people knowing it can be very dangerous for me. All because someone in my family either doesn’t care enough to use she or someone wants to demonstrate that I am not ”fooling them”. It’s beyond childish to claim that changing what pronouns you use for someone is difficult (Which certain family members and a lot of grown ups do)
I'm really sorry that you have to deal with those people, they are definitely acting in bad faith. People who act in good faith can still genuinely have a hard time changing what pronouns they use though, because most people have never really needed to actively think about pronouns, they just use them automatically. Switching from passively doing something out of habit to actively doing the opposite of that can genuinely be challenging for a lot of people. It's not a childish claim at all, it's just true. It's a childish excuse for not making an effort, though. I'm neurodivergent, and I'm of a type who can really struggle with this kind of thing, but I put in a ton of effort to handle that struggle for the sake of my friends who need me to do that. I can't count the amount of times my brain has come to a screeching halt just in time to stop myself from misgendering my trans friend. So it's absolutely true that changing how I use pronouns is difficult for me, but I'd never use that as an excuse to not try.
@@josephquesnel1737If a person is PURPOSELY do it, yes it is childish and transphobic. If it is done by accident it's not. I have trans people in my life and when I accidentally misgender them because my brain fuck up my grammar I immediately correct myself. But it's a completely different situation if a person doesn't make the effort to use the correct ones and then pathetically says "it's too difficult". Like, come on
There is an interesting situation here in Norway rn because of the use of "they". The norwegian male pronoun is "han", and the Norwegian female pronoun is "hun", and a few years ago, a third gender neutral pronoun was added: "hen". However, because of all of the screaming about "they" on the internet. A lot of teens are directly translating the word they and using the norwegian word "de". Which is very confusing because in norwegian "de" is only used singular in second person formal. Otherwise it is plural third person. Therefore, when people use the word "de" about someone in Norwegian it makes the person sound like they have a personality disorder or something.
Which is very confusing because in norwegian "de" is only used singular in second person formal. Otherwise it is plural third person. It is the similar in english. Third person plural. Second person they is only used for an unknown subject. It is just as much madness in English.
I'm not a native English speaker, so I don't have English engraved in my brain. So, just like I costantly learn new things about the language and start using them, it could potentially be easier for me to use the singular they to refer to a non-binary person. However that's not the case. This is because I don't have any non-binary person to talk to or about, therefore this special use of the word is so rare that it's impractical. It's like having a very fancy avocado slicer, bought specifically to slice avocado and only avocado. But you don't ever buy avocados, and when you do it occasionally, you forget you had the avocado slicer and use a normal knife instead.
@@thomgizziz "a third gender neutral pronoun was added: "hen"." I don't use that ridiculous term, and neither should anyone else. "in norwegian "de" is only used singular in second person formal." No, Norwegian (capitalised). That would be "De" (capitalised). Though it doesn't affect the pronunciation. But the objective form is "Dem" (as opposed to "dem" for third person plural). .
"requiring people to share their pronouns means that you either force people to out themselves or choose to be in the closet" YES. Honestly I struggle to wrap my head around why so many people think that there is anything remotely appropriate about wanting to "normalize the practice of everyone sharing their pronouns." The youtube search that led me to this video was sparked after I had an uncomfortable experience where I was suddenly asked for my pronouns by a new customer at work. It was literally the first thing they asked me upon our meeting. For context, I'm a cis woman with very short hair and my work clothes are androgynous simply for functional reasons. I'd never been asked that question before in my life. Moreover, I'd also never really thought much about my gender in terms of me being at my job. I stuttered and just told them to use whatever they felt comfortable with and moved onto the actual content of the business interaction, but in my head I was just thinking "why on earth is my gender identity relevant to you in this situation???" As you said, it felt similar to "where are you really from" questions regarding ethnicity and race. Like you, I'm not going to tell a stranger "my pronouns are she/her" because that would be implying that I give a crap whether people view me as a woman in every context, which I don't. Anyway my point here is this: to add to your point of not forcing people to out/closet themselves, I think another big problem with the normalization of "asking for other people's pronouns" is that it actually undermines the whole goal of gender equality, which is that gender honestly SHOULDN'T be relevant in most contexts. Other than my husband (for hopefully obvious reasons) and maybe some of the people closest to me in my life, I couldn't care less if other people recognize my gender identity, as long as they aren't being mean or judgmental on the grounds of gender. My gender is the most boring and innocuous aspect of my personhood and I'm not going to contribute to this weird assumption that a lot of left-wing echo chamber inhabits have that "being cis means having a deep connection to the gender you were assigned at birth." Sorry, but it's just not true and I'm not going to pretend that my womanhood is deeply important to me in all social/professional contexts if that isn't the case.
Hi, I totally agree with your critique of asking about pronouns, and your statement that your gender as a cis person not being important or relevant in most contexts is highlights something incredibly valuable. I think one aspect that is often overlooked is the level at which personal pronouns and personal gender affects one another. For you, you made it clear that they are innately interlinked, the fact that you identify as a cis woman informs the internal answer to "what are your pronouns?". However, to many people, their gender and their pronouns are not inherently linked, take for example someone that might use they/them but strongly identify as a feminine woman. If they are asked what their pronouns are, it may not activate an internal analysis of their gender, it could be akin to asking what their name is. I think this plurality of the link between gender and terminology is what makes people react quite differently to a deceptively simple question. To a certain extent, we have all faced prejudice/bias based on perceived gender, and I think that is the cause of why this is a difficult subject. I'm interested in your thoughts on all of this, and whether you believe there is a respectful way to approach pronouns for everyone, trans or otherwise. Would it be enough if someone asked you "if you are comfortable, what are your pronouns?", or would that still feel invasive or unnecessary?
@@KazarooniBallooni thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think it would still be invasive and unnecessary because it still carries an implication of questioning someone's gender without a reasonable intent. I actually think it's potentially more harmful in the context of asking a trans person, because maybe they are putting in a lot of effort to pass and could view the experience of being asked this question as a sign that their efforts to pass are not successful. It's much better to just wait for more context clues or wait until the conversation has reached a casual enough level that it would feel more natural. As far as asking a stranger immediately upon meeting them, I can't see a scenario where it would be appropriate. And just to reply to something else in your comment, you gave the example of a person who uses they/them pronouns but identifies as a feminine woman. If I'm being frank, an example like this kind of demonstrates why i dont even really agree with the idea that we each even "have" our own third person pronouns in the first place. I don't see myself as "having" pronouns - when i present as I typically do as female, people refer to me as she, and when I'm in my androgenous work clothes, I wouldnt be surprised or offended if some people referred to me as "he" since it can be understandably hard to tell unless we are up close and chatting. In the English language, people generally passively pick which third person pronouns to use in their speech based on how they percieve a given person's gender presentation. By that logic, it fundamentally doesn't make sense for the person in your example to "not use" female pronouns if they are someone who in fact chooses present as what the average person would describe with female pronouns. I think in the example you gave, this person interprets this entire aspect of English grammar in an unconventional way, and it isn't fair to expect the average people they encounter in the world around them to align with that perspective of gender. The fact of the matter is that third person pronouns do not share the same grammatical function as a name or nickname, and if someone sees it that way then they must understand that their views are unconventional and so most people dont link any personal meaning whatsoever to the third person pronouns that pop out of their mouth when they are describing someone. It is totally valid however if this person chooses to primarily spend time with other people who share their interpretations of how third person pronouns function.
@@DSS712yeah most cis people don't think about the third person pronouns because people seldom get them wrong, and when they do, the person doesn't double down and INSIST that you ARE a man. Most cis people will never have that experience, and while it might seem easy to ignore that type of incident, it gets harder to be okay after the thirtieth time it happens? When we say you're cis because you have a deep connection with your assigned gender, it's specifically because that connection runs so deep that you don't HAVE to think about it, it's just how things are.
Yeah, trans women here, and I hate whenever people on social media bully people into putting their pronouns in their bio. Not everyone, even in the queer community is comfortable with that and may themselves be closeted and not ready to say one way or another. It was a stupid trend that was going on and I am glad it has been happening less.
@@ArynWellspring honestly, it's such a cluster truck of nonsense (not pronouns themselves, the whole fight/discourse around them and genders & gender identities in general). It's like DSS said above: if someone is talking to me... why would they even use he/she/they in the first place? I'm pretty sure we only use I and You when we're two people speaking. So... asking for pronouns is like asking "what do I call you when I speak about you (to others)." It also cognates in my mind, like DSS said, with the " where are you from *really?* " type question. But even then, it's kind of a "meh" issue (to me). But what really grind my gears, so to speak, are two main things: sex erasure, and the neo/xeno-pronouns craze. The whole "gender" and derived terms are kinda simple to grasp (at least I personally think they are) when you read their definitions: Gender: "includes social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of femininity, masculinity or other gender identity." So far, nothing complicated to me, but (and I know I'm the weirdo here and "normal people" don't read it like this, but) when I read "gender" I'm just automatically brought to its etymology in my head; gender is from "genus", meaning "kind, sort (of)." So "What gender are you?" is basically "What kind/sort (of human) are you?" and the above definition makes it easy to understand it's a sex based (male, female, and nonbinary/neutral) division. Gender identity: "the personal sense of your gender which can correlate with your observed sex or can differ from it." Just that bit does not *not* make sense either... it's simple. It's basically "the personal sense of your social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of femininity, masculinity or other gender identity which can correlate with your observed sex or can differ from it." It is what I understand. And again, the definition reinforces that genders and gender identities are sex based divisions. Gender expression: "the external manifestation of your gender identity through behavior, mannerisms, and appearance that are socially associated with femininity, masculinity or other gender identity." So I understand this as "the external manifestation of your personal sense of your social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of femininity, masculinity or other gender identity which can correlate with your observed sex or can differ from it through behavior, mannerisms, and appearance that are socially associated with femininity, masculinity or other gender identity." It still makes sense (to me), even though replacing "gender" and "gender identity" with their own definitions inside the definition of "gender expression" makes it very clunky to read as is, and somewhat repetitive. But it's still comprehensible (to me), but it again reinforces genders, identities, and expressions as sex based divisions. And here comes my first problem in this whole discourse... sex erasure. I've read, listened to, and watched a lot of the same people who've relentlessly hammered in that "sex and gender are different" things now conflating the two terms, and often having gender just replace entirely sex in discussions and definitions. And that's the whole issue I got: how can sex and gender be two different concepts but be interchangeable? And if you try to erase/replace the concept of "sex" with "gender," what does gender mean? "Sex" is part of gender's definition itself. But if the gender (kind/sort) of Humans is not a sex based division, then it needs another term of reference, or else gender loses all meaning. Like... I don't remember which nation/people, but there's a people whose genders are "Life" based. So "humans, leaves on a tree, feathers, an animal, etc." are not "masculine/feminine" but "alive," and "rocks, trees, house, etc." are "non-alive" or something like that. If we don't want "genders" to be sex based divisions, well, we need to find another concept to base the division... or else "gender" just means nothing! If we want it sex based, life/non-life based, age based, etc. let's go for it! But it still needs a common concept, denominator for the definitions to make sense. Let's take age for example. If genders were age based divisions, then the definition for gender expression would become something like: "the external manifestation of your personal sense of your social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of *youngness, adulthood, seniority or other gender identity* which can correlate with your observed *age* or can differ from it through behavior, mannerisms, and appearance that are socially associated with youngness, adulthood, seniority or other gender identity." See what I mean? And this brings in my second problem with the discourse... the goddamn neo/xenogenders/pronouns. Xir/xer? Fae/faer? Cat/catself? Tree/treeself? God/godself? What the fuuuuuuuuu-- It's completely chaotic! There's no logic, no sense! How can someone's gender/pronoun be "cat" or "fairy" or "god" ??? What's their common denominator? Where is the division? What's the linking coincept between those nonsensical "pronouns?" A defined and shared theme must be the base of gender divisions: for male/female/enby, it's sex; for youngness/adulthood/seniority, it's age/time; and for alive/non-alive, it's life. What is the shared concept linking cat, fairy, xir, and god!? How can your Human gender (kind/sort) be "cat" ? A Human man? Makes sense. A Human senior? Makes sense. A Human alive? Still makes sense! A Human cat? WTF!? Cats are animals... Humans are animals! How can one's gender (kind/sort) be another animal when we are already an animal? It's just wild and nonsensical! Honestly, those "neo/xenogenders/pronouns" really sound like attention-seeking tools, or rather... attempts at some sort of hyper individualization & dehumanization. Forget having to identify as male, female or intersex or nonbinary, it's... it's almost like they just don't want to identify as humans at all! I mean... what the hell are the "social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of a fae? Or a cat? Or a plant? Or god?" That's where I am completely flabbergasted and cannot wrap my mind around the heck those "neo/xenogenders/pronouns" are supposed to convey. Some folks conflate sexes and genders by accident because the definitions are linked by one's birth sex, and it's understandable... but some really, really want and dream of abolishing the concept of "sex" altogether and replace it with gender, but they don't replace "sex" in the definition of gender for another thematic concept; they don't attempt to give a coherent definition at times. And I can't shake off the feeling it's all because the majority of people have drastically bad literary and reading comprehensions. I have the impression lots of people into "xenogenders" are trying to convey... personality traits? Characteristics? Like... if someone says their gender is "cat/catself," it feels like they try to convey "I am feline" and not literally (at least I hope not literally) "I am a cat." I fail to see how any of these can even make sense as "genders," and it really, really gives out vibes of trying to be "personality/character traits" if my vision/explication of it makes sense. I'd very much like your impressions on the topic if you have any, and if you feel like sharing :P Sorry for the novel, but it's just impossible to talk about this stuff in just 4000 characters lol I've echoed a lot of my best friend's fiancée (transwoman too) here, and she's even more critical of everything around transgenderism, pronouns, genders, etc. than any of our group friend. Thanks for taking your time to read/listen 🙇♂
I confess that ever since it became an issue about 10 years ago now... My answer to the pronoun question and its variants has always been, "I don't care... you choose." Edit Paused at 12:45... It felt good to hear someone else say this.
I just yesterday participated in RUclips comments discussion about pronouns (I was bored and sometimes it’s fun). I was so excited while watching this video because the points are spot on. I especially liked how you pointed out how difficult it is to basically remap the referential point of some pronouns. That not something that people often consciously do in their native language, and it’s kinda hard. And now couple of side-comment non sequiturs: Your friend with the “N--a” pronoun is seriously GOD-TEIR. I wish I were at that conference to hear the discussions that came out of that.👏 That “zaddy” came out of nowhere and cracked me up! 😂
@@aaaaaaaa9189 Again, though, as Doctor Jones says, you cater what you say to your audience (within reason). If 'Xe' is not going to land and people won't understand what you're talking about, you can either preface it with a little explanation, if you have an opportunity, or you go with a more straightforward substitution like 'they'. Not saying people who deliberately deadname or misgender you behind your back, specifically because you're not there, are in the right.
Excellent video! The current debate on preferred pronouns and possessive adjectives (his/her/their) is something which seems to be more linguistically relevant in the Anglosphere than in other languages. In Italian, personal pronouns are not the main indicators of gender. The pronoun is often omitted when it is in the nominative case and it is clear from context who we are talking about. E.g.: "Alex ha 28 anni. Insegna francese" (Alex is 28. [He/she] teaches French. It is not specified whether Alex is a man or a woman). The possessive adjective takes the grammatical gender of the object, NOT of the person who owns it. So, "la sua valigia" means "his/her suitcase"; "sua" is feminine because valigia is fem. "Il suo ombrello" means his/her umbrella, "suo" is masculine. On the other hand, all Italian nouns and adjectives have masculine and feminine desinences, so it would be impossible to talk at length about a person without disclosing his/her/their gender.
In Czech, possessive pronouns are on a "gender matrix": You need to pick the right combination of the gender of the object and the gender of the owner. It is a challenge even for the native speakers. (Plus, there are 4 grammatical genders in Czech.)
@@adam_sporka same in German. If applied correctly, you will know both the gender of the possessor, as well as of the object in question, from the possessive pronouns/article. I like it, it seems more precise to me. Since most people use the pronoun you d expect for themselves, anyway, it works very well, overall. It's sth i don't love about Italian / Spanish, this increased ambiguity from the skipped pronouns. It sometimes seems a bit sloppy to me. Woke texts with an overabundance of singular use they/them just end up being confusing and way less precise, usually, where relatively often i lose track of who is being referred to, completely needlessly.
As a Spanish native speaker the problem comes with the gender suffixes, girls a, boys o, non-binary e, x or even @ used in adjectives. Possessives we have su, we don't care for the gender of object or subject. Pronouns are usually dropped anyway.
@@Wandering.Homebody I am learning German as a Spanish speaker and I can see what you mean we support ourselves on the verb for a lot of things, German is more precise in a lot of things by the use of other parts of the sentence.
My hobby of learning six languages has left me feeling out of place and even lonely in our native monolingual USA. So glad to have found your program on RUclips. I am not completely alone any more! Thanks 👍👍
The United States and Canada are (or were) home ot more than 300 different indigenous languages! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas#/media/File:Langs_N.Amer.svg
Omg yes, people really do oversell how “easy” learning to use gender pronouns naturally can be. Like I don’t want to call you something that makes you uncomfortable either but it took me years to not use he and she interchangeably even tho I was fluent in every other dimension of English because my mother tongue is Cantonese and we don’t have gendered pronouns period. We use the same word 佢 for everything, be you a man or a woman or a table. A lot of my friends and family till this day haven’t gotten the he and she thing down either. The insistence that pronouns can be learnt easily just seems incredibly English-centric.
Nuance, Intention, Consent, and Empathy are how I try to approach everything. And yes I made it a cute little acronym for y'all. If a word interferes with a person's life and they express that to me, it's out of my lexicon for that person. The learning curve is a worthy sacrifice for me! _There's a period of grace for well-intentioned people during adjustment periods._ If my friend Katherine wants to be called Katie now, it will take a minute, but I'll do my dangedest to learn.
This is how I try to do it. I'm honestly shocked and pleasantly surprised that someone mentioned intention at all. It seems like lately people are more interested in arguing than considering the possibility that someone who disagrees with you simply sees things differently from you and doesn't mean any harm. You just keep being you.
What if someone asks you to refrain from using “cis?” Luckily, the prefix can be easily removed without altering the meaning of the word, at least in regard to cismen or ciswomen, (which has now been expanded to cismale & cisfemale). However, when it comes to respect, feelings, or empathy, it’s usually one-sided. Those who demand respect very rarely extends it to others.
@@name02 A lot of trans people would rather not be called "trans" but we still do it anyway. I don't see how it's one-sided. Maybe this is a big city/blue state issue I'll never be able to wrap my head around??
@@name02 If someone asked me in good faith not to describe them that way, I would absolutely abide! However, most people don't request that because 1) like you mentioned, "cis" is the implied default and is usually only used when specifying that someone is NOT cis; 2) "cis" and "trans" are considered neutral descriptors, like tall, short, fat, thin, blonde, bald, human, or two-legged. Maybe you don't like being called fat, so you might use other terms like chunky/obese/marshmallow bouncy house. We work around the words out of respect to individuals (in the event they even need describing). But none of these adjectives are inherently negative beyond what stigma is around at the time. It's not like calling someone spiteful or violent or even loyal or saintly. Just neutral adjectivity. So, even if you're hairless and don't want to be described as bald, I'll respect that, even though I probably wasn't focused on your hair count in the first place. 💇♀💇♂💇👱♂ Also, I'm sorry you've encountered so many people to whom you've shown respect but didn't feel it back. That's absolutely irritating! My hope for you is that when you encounter this, you continue to be the bigger (read: marshmallow bouncy house) person and keep being respectful anyway. I truly respect your respect thus far and appreciate you reading my blahblahs.🤎
I feel like this is one of those issues where the problem is exacerbated by media (both social and traditional) amplifying extreme opinions. In reality I've never met anyone who got angry if someone used the wrong pronouns for them, provided they weren't doing it deliberately to cause hurt or make a point. (This isn't to say it didn't upset them to be misgendered, but they didn't take this out on the other person if it was perceived to be an honest mistake.) Similarly, I haven't actually met anyone who would deliberately use the wrong pronouns for someone when they'd been made aware of the correct ones, even if they actually didn't "believe" in trans or gender non conforming people. I'm not saying these two people don't exist, but reading the arguments put forward in mainstream media could lead you to believe that everyone on the planet could be categorised either as a respectful human being who always does their best to get everyone's pronouns right or one of these two types of people I've never met.
Exactly!! I have people misgendering me, even calling me a woman outright, not just "she" but only one single person does it to make a point. Everyone else simply isn't capable of understanding the subject (I'm autistic myself so I'm constantly around people with differently functioning brains) I let them. In fact, I'm the one who told them it's okay. I did ask that they refrain from using any gendered terms other than pronouns, like "woman" since those aren't needed while not using gendered pronouns in German is linguistic heII (it feels too awkward and I respect that, and I can't afford to 'fix' my body so it's difficult to remember I prefer "he") but I get that they just can't remember and I tell the people that do use the correct terms that I greatly appreciate them, but also that there's no need to correct anyone because I know they don't have bad intentions. Even the one who does it to make a point ( and also might be waiting for me to negatively react) is autistic. I know the reason he's so rightist and so severely against trans people is because he whole heartedly believes that biology is all there is and humans aren't anything more than our outer shells
@@rigure I wonder if you can find a way to prompt "the one who does it to make a point" to go on an "autistic special interest" dive into the intricacies of biological sex (the myriad forms of intersexuality in humans, sex in other species, etc.). Might change the outlook, indirectly??? :)
@@DavidLindes Hehe I guess I could try to get him interested ^-^ I do think his aversion to a lot of humans is quite deeply rooted, so I'm not sure he won't just fight any interest he might get, but it may be worth a shot!
Definitely. Offline, politeness tends to win. I don't 'believe' in gender identity or trans and still happily use people's preferred pronouns, because why wouldn't I? They're just trying to live their best life and be comfortable, only an asshole would deliberately undermine that.
The comment around the 10:20 minute mark that “you might deeply offend your listener” is obviously not the case except for the most inane of tumblr/twitter trolls. Most trans people are not going to be offended by accidental misgendering. It is only a deliberate disregard for someone’s desired gender identity that is truly offensive. A simple example is if you were a cis guy and someone kept calling you by she/her deliberately because they saw you cry. They are imposing their sense of masculine standards on you and intentionally stating that they do not consider you a part of the gender you identify as.
"offend" is probably the wrong word, but you could easily make someone feel deeply uncomfortable. For instance by accidentally pointing out that they don't present as the gender they want to as well as they think they do.
@ellies_music It's not just about presenting, though. I know very few people who are trying to pass as cisgender. If it's a stranger, the most it could tell me about my presentation is how much I look transgender. It's more about the other person's conceptions; when someone misgenders you, it tells you about them, their current handle on internalizing pronouns, how they see you, and/or whether they're affirming of your identity.
@@gwensmosh5532 I would feel uncomfortable but if you transition anywhere near the public eye you get used to it pretty quickly. I certainly wouldn't be offended unless it was done with malice. And I guess we hang out in pretty different circles because most trans people I know do want to "pass". I sure do and I'm pretty happy that's tge default for me now.
@@gwensmosh5532 Everybody knows what sex you are. People start learning to tell the sexes apart when they are babies. That's why even the slowest language learner picks up all the correct pronouns by age the age of four or five.
15:11 I've met several people who prefer to be referred to as "it". Meanwhile, a lot of transphobes refer to trans people as "it" in order to dehumanize them. This understandably has caused tension.
I very much appreciate your balanced look at the issue. As I’ve been exploring what it means to have an identity, I’ve been really struggling to understand pronouns as a function within myself and those around me (neopronouns being the hardest to understand), and I really like the approach of “show love and respect regardless of whether it’s your pronouns or someone else’s”. I was born male and present very masculine, so people who see me IRL almost universally call me by masculine pronouns, but since my customer service voice was feminine, working at a call center made people call me all sorts of pronouns. It never made me upset (although I thought to myself then that it probably should have), but you making the argument that pronouns function as a way to relate to someone else makes it fine if someone misgenders me without it being an inclusivity issue. Not really sure where my journey of self discovery will take me but it feels like I’m never gonna be upset by someone using pronouns I don’t identify with, and I really appreciate your care and concern in dealing with a really divisive topic!
This is by far the most nuanced take on pronouns I've seen yet. And you're absolutely right that it's not really about pronouns, it's about acceptance. I also adore the little detail at 20:48! Even with all the talk over choosing how you're referred to, being respectful is still just, nice, isn't it?
that's the issue. You don't have a right to force people to go along with what YOU believe. It has nothing to do with respect any more than a religious person forcing someone to pray does.
@@alexthompson8977 nobody is forcing you to get their pronouns right tho? You have free will and freedom of speech, you don’t have to say someone’s preferred pronouns. But there will still be consequences for doing that.
@@ChespinCraft " But there will still be consequences for doing that." There being "consequences" for not conforming to your personal belief is the root of the issue. It literally is against free speech to ruin someone's life over not wanting to go along with a specific political ideology(and yes it is political).
@@ChespinCraft they do force us. Parents in Canada can go to jail for not using the pronouns a teacher gave to their child, for example. Ideologues want to bring the same law to the UK. You guys claim it is about respect and inclusion but you are the most hateful, intolerant people on the planet. Do you think we can't see what you're doing when the OP says "choosing how you're referred to" and you pretend they are just "someone’s preferred pronouns"? It's called the "motte and bailey" technique - they are being authoritarian in the bailey but you withdraw to the motte when challenged and claim the goal is merely to be kind.
@wolfblaide Progressive left would be more accurate, my guess is that it was to draw attention tbf. Far right people are more likely to click and listen if they think it's criticizing "woke people". Lol
@@Kjalarrr Well yes, but I don't think "progressive" captures the full intent for the video. "Woke" seems to be better, as it come across initially as wrong or potentially offensive, then you realise it isn't. That fits very well with the video.
This is super helpful, and like anything helpful, is balanced and nuanced and very educational. I'm a therapist who nowadays has been helping a lot of transgender/non-binary teens. While I advocate for them, support them and respect their pronouns...I also remind them that they are asking their family members to make a lot of linguistic shifts and changes, and that the struggle is not the same as rejection. I appreciate that you acknowledge that the tension is normal and necessary, and "dignity" and "respect" is key to bridging the gaps.
No, some fanatics do know, but they find their culture is the most important one. I have been having such conversations and it was quite annoying. I speak English, Dutch, Chinese and they are all quite different and it is fun to have different views and cultures, but the fanatics just don't care, their view is the only correct one. I do say FANATICS, so they are the minority for now.
THANK you for making the distinction between linguistic genders and social science genders and tackling/explaining this from a linguistic perspective. Fantastic video!
Fascinating and insightful. Love that you (3rd p. he/him) always present with a a wry sense of humor as well. Me: (gay male, he/him) PH. D. in Slavic Langs & Lits--Russ/Pol, but also studied German, French, Latin, Italian, Mandarin...
Good video. I get aggravated with a call-in show I watch on occasion where the hosts ask each caller their pronouns. If a caller refuses to provide them, the hosts start grilling them over why they refused it instead of just focusing on the question the caller wants to ask which has nothing to do with pronouns, gender, etc.
@@bayrum9803 I'm curious as to what parts of gender radicalism you regard as toxic. I'm... not super well versed, this isn't meant to be provocative or anything. I just wanna learn some more perspectives where I can
@@firenzeval As a trans person who hasn't transitioned yet, it's as he says. When pronouns are a required part of the introduction, I'm either forced to out myself, which isn't something I want to do casually, or I have to tell people to use the wrong pronouns. I assume they'll use the wrong pronouns regardless, but I hate to be the one requesting them. It's like punching myself in the gut. I've managed to almost completely avoid misgendering myself for most of my life, but the required pronouns in introductions make it impossible. It's not the end of the world, just unpleasant.
I realize this is irrelevant to the important issues being discussed here, but I've become hyper aware of avoiding ambiguous pronouns while speaking, and have gotten more comfortable repeating proper nouns in sentences. Since I've been doing that, I've gotten a lot of compliments about how clearly I communicate from people who don't even catch what I'm doing. Even if it wouldn't be totally ambiguous when written down, people often lose track of syntax while listening. Fewer pronouns makes for better communication. It also helps to get into the habit of sharing information specific to individuals first. 'Frank hit Steve after they argued.' instead of 'Frank and Steve argued and he hit him.' Thanks for a great video!
This is interesting. One workaround for subject verb agreement error elimination is to revise the sentence structure for improved reference. I hadn't thought about it as a way of clarifying pronoun / gender reference.
If I'm writing or talking for a long time I'll just repeat proper nouns so I don't make a mistake. It also makes the re-read easier if I choose to do so. It's a very convenient "waste" of 2-3 seconds lol.
As someone who is trying to overcome the very bad habit of over-using pronouns (i.e., start of conversation me: "so he said..." everyone: "who???"), this is good advice.
I never thought about that, but that makes perfect sense. It also cuts down massively on word usage, which keeps someone's attention better. It also brings the important part up first, which is that Frank hit Steve and then explains why the occurrence took place. Basically with the Alice example, you'd just rephrase it to fit as one condensed person "Upon seeing the reflection, Alice is/was please with what is see/what was/is there" That one is harder when talking about singular specificity to a person. I spent a few minutes trying to retool his example and that's about the most satisfying one I constructed. It was very hard to not right "what they/he/she saw."
yeah, I do that sometimes when i'm not sure. I also do the exact same thing with articles when I speak German (which I can only speak a bit of), so I wind up saying like "də" instead of der, die, das
Love your work, and this video brings a lot of great ideas, knowledge, and context. One small critique, identifying gender and genre only and overlooking the social literature missed the boat. That might be true for some languages that have neutered OR too many genres to count on one hand. However, there’s a wealth of sociology research linking languages with genders that refer to sex and gendered nouns creating more gender bias in the culture. I wish this point had been made. I also wish the video acknowledged the prejudice that exists toward females in studies where online communications are identical, but the gender of the speaker is switched.
As someone at least way more interested in linguistics than social subjects, this makes so much sense why our arguments go right past each other as wrong & irrelevant.
I should caution that it is very rare to see people on the right arguing in good faith. Linguistics is inherently a social subject, or at the very least a science whose fabric is composed of human communication and interaction. I would argue that every science and philosophy is, in some regard, social. Even something so remote as, say, chemistry. It is rendered thus by the role of pedagogy in sharing information, in which every teacher must first be taught. Whether or not you can follow this causal chain back to our first analogous, conscious ancestor - wherein said being is an isolated occurrence, which is an assumption that takes great liberty - this is too great a digression to hold relevance. Then we start asking questions like "can the interplay between a subject's mind and the external environment with which it interacts be considered learning?" and then "if so, does the environment teach or does the subject teach itself?" if so "when teaching is an activity, how can something non-conscious and nebulous like one's external environment be said to teach?" and "is it not circular that a subject can teach itself? Does this not suggest the subject possesses some prior knowledge that would, if possessed, render the process of teaching itself unnecessary?" among other questions like "can there be a society of one?" and "is there such a thing as an individual mind?" at which point we have very much ventured outside the scope of linguistics and I need to stop rambling.
Eh, not really. On the right it's mostly just a complete disregard for people's actual lives. We know that inclusion plays a huge part in reducing things like suicide in trans and other gender non-conforming people. By taking the aggressive "anti-pronoun" space, you just lose any sort of soundness in your argument because the entire foundation is that you do not care if people are excluded from society or even take their own lives. There's just no discourse at all about correct usage, inclusion or how to integrate new language because the right just doesn't care. On the left it's pretty much just disagreements on how to approach inclusion. Some people take rather aggressive "people who push back will see no sympathy" approaches and some others that take a far more passive approach exactly like in the video. Taking an aggressive approach to inclusion I think is perfectly sound stance to take, especially when the alternative is social isolation or even violence towards those who are different. The argument is just on whether that's an effective approach to changing minds. It often isn't, but there are definitely people out there who are complete lost causes, in which case an aggressive "time to troll them with pronouns" approach is pretty much the best you can do. My uncle, for example, still refuses to refer to my cousin (bearded trans man who's jacked as hell and looks nothing like a woman) as a man using he/him pronouns no matter how much people have corrected him (and no matter how absolutely insane he looks referring to him that way) simply because they're trans. It's been something like 7 years now. That person deserves none of my attention and I take pride in pissing him off.
Conservatism is inherently prescriptive. Linguistic arguments will not phase them, because they believe how THEY think the language SHOULD work is how it works. They are inherently anti-change, and language changes all the time.
Thank you for laying this out so clearly! As a nonbinary person who loves language (I have a BA in English) and also doesn't get offended super easily, I've had this conversation a ton (not as clear-cut as you put it, but I did my best). It can get exhausting. I always try my best to respect people where they're at, and not 'force' anyone to expose themselves or accept anything if they're not ready. I'm always happy to have a conversation and educate when possible, and even though sometimes it can be exhausting, I've had a lot of really great conversations with people and gained a lot of differing perspectives. Language can be super confusing so it's great to find someone like you to try and bridge the gaps that have been created in recent years and share real information.
THANK YOU!!! Finally, someone explains it in a non-partisan way and more of a “people just don’t know what they’re talking about” way. Also, thank you, I learned a lot more today. 🙏🏻
Dear me! Thank you for this marvellous video! I'm a German native speaker, my second language was Italian, English in my "happy language" and Franconian is my dialect. For the last five years I have tried to add a serious amount Swedish to the hodgepodge of European "bits and pieces". Languages are fascinating and I am jealous of your knowledge and understanding.... With this video you have made my day. ❤
My favourite noun gender system comes from the Indigenous Australian language Yanyuwa, which has male (human), female (human), masculine, feminine, foods, trees and tree parts, abstract, body parts, and like 8 different noun classes for referring to people and family members. There's a different Australian language that has a noun class for dangerous things. Oh, and I also like the way Navajo has a hierarchy of nouns based on animacy, and that is reflected in the word order and postpositions used.
@@colleenprinssen according to Wikipedia there are 16 noun classes and when you say a noun you have to preface it with it's class. If English were like this with the preface ta for food nouns we would have Tabread and tachicken and Heoldman and sheoldwoman. They also have separate dialects depending on whether you are male or female and a specific form of speech used when talking to a relative who's father (if the relative is male) or mother (if the relative is female) has died. It fits the conversation despite not being about pronouns because it is a good example how languages can be constructed in vastly different ways and still function.
for the reasons you listed very neatly, i strongly believe there would be some merit in renaming grammatical gender to something like "classes" or indeed even "genres". as you said, it's NOT the same as social gender, and we can all see how much confusion this misleading homonym can cause.
Kiswahili presents precisely like this, each with its own patterns for pluralization and declension and conjugation Some examples: the m/wa class mostly for animate objects mtu -person watu-people. Mtu anaenda - a person goes Wati wanaenda- people go. Other classes include ki/vi kiti-chair viti-chairs; ch/by choo-toilet vyoo-toilets. All very systematic (with very few exceptions), highly phonetic, easy to learn yet rich, extensible and entirely free of unneeded masculine/feminine dichotomies.
It’s not that difficult though. Isn’t this stuff that you learn very early on in primary school? It’s weird that gendered words are such a struggle for so many people.
It is an unsatisfying answer because it has a veneer of meaning but is actually built on something entirely arbitrary, and because we try to find patterns and meanings in things we are subconsciously determined to find out why. Saying "the word Stuhl is in the der class" makes it easier to accept and move on. I guess for languages with no articles we'd refer to class A words, which would reintroduce the issue if this language happened to have cocaine in class B.
I am amazed by the amount of highly intelligent statements made by this person. I was looking for some usual hatred, but fortunatelly found some more polished diamond than I have seen for the most of my night yt search period, thanks for marking some important issues and thanks for such a fresh and considering point of view
I lived for 14 years in Turkey, where the language has no gendered pronouns or grammatical gender at all. You can have a long conversation with someone without giving any clue about the gender of the person your discussing, and it won't count contrived at all. You can make a person's gender clear if you want or need to, but the language doesn't force your hand. Coming back to the US was kind of like walking into a minefield...
This sort of stuff was extremely confusing to me when I first learned about it as a Turkish person
@@k.umquat8604 I'm sure! Heck, Turkish people have trouble remembering "he" and "she" at first. :-)
@@sazji As I used to in primary school
@@k.umquat8604 Sadece ilkokulda olduysa tebrik ediyorum. :-)
@@sazji İngilizcem 5.-6. sınıflarda çok gelişti. Ondan beri böyle hataları neredeyse hiç yapmıyorum.
Most people I know who use gender neutral pronouns actually don’t share them a lot far as I know. They by large just state it in their social media bio and if the person in Dunkin Donuts or some old professor misgendered them they just won’t say anything. I imagine because it would be exhausting in everyday life and run the risk of encountering some mean people. And I’m in college art school (it won’t get any woker than that).
It's also dangerous to push back. You don't know which people are safe and which are violent bigots.
Oh hey, that’s me. Yeah, I don’t share unless there’s already a channel set up for me to do that (socmed bios, etc) OR I’m 110% sure it’ll go over well. Most situations… don’t fall into that.
same, in the art industry. I have a bunch of friends who are gender neutral. But almost all of their friends don't use their preferred pronoun of they/them. She/her just comes naturally, our brains are wired to categorize people as men and women, and I don't think you can just socially engineer society to change that aspect.
It would also be exhausting for the "old professor" or the clerk at Dunkin Donuts... the professor has hundreds of different students each term, it's hard enough to remember all of their names and faces... meanwhile the clerk deals with thousands of people a week, in order to not offend them, they would need to start every interaction with "hello, welcome to ... my I have your pronouns and order please?"
If you are buying something from Dunkin Donuts a pronoun is irrelevant anyway because you don't use someone's pronoun in direct conversation with them.
My step dad has asked me before if Spanish speakers think of objects as inherently masculine and feminine, and I've used a few different examples to explain it. My favorite is that "a beard" is feminine and "a dress" is masculine. A really good example that shows it's a purely grammatical category and has nothing to do with the objects themselves is that the same object might be feminine if you call it "a chair" but masculine if you call it "a seat." It's about the words, not the things themselves.
people studying the Sapir Whorf theory concluded that if the 'gender' of an object influences the way French/German speakers think of them it does so very minimally.
Yea but it's clear that they're masculine or feminine because people and animals actually ARE male or female. When you assign male or female gender to inanimate objects, it's arbitrary and stupid, but when assigning them to members of a sexually reproducing dimorphic species, through pronouns, it is a direct reference to their biological sex. Gendered pronouns don't refer to identities and never did, they refer to sex.
So I guess if you're a biological male your pronouns would be "he", and if you're a biological female your pronouns would be "she" regardless of how stereotypically feminine or masculine you seem to be ?
My favorite is coño 😌
@@prenomnom364sí
This whole issue reminds me of a friend from high school who made it her personal mission to break people from using, "you know," as filler in conversation. When someone dropped a meaningless "you know" she would interrupt the flow to say, "No, I don't know." After about a week no one would talk to her.
Haha I remember in high school I tried to get people to stop saying "like" and I didn't have enough self awareness to realize I was being insufferable and they were just using a different verbal tick than me.
They sound interesting.
How do we break people from saying "What I'm saying is" during TV interviews?
my boss says "you know what I mean?" incessantly as a filler when she's explaining/describing something
Why we used the word woman, man, boy, girl? To give information about the sex of a personn + the maturity stage. Thoose words were linked to clear objective descriptions, criteras, ideas. Now we have a full mess cult where not even the "gender experts" are able to tell what links the people with each others within the group woman, demi boy, non binary and all the made up gender labels anymore. What information does it give you about the personn? Well, none. So the point? Its all feeling but you cant despcribe the feeling, nor give the criteras, its an empty concept. Its not about the "body" nor the "biology" yet the reassignment surgery are linked to man as male body and woman as female body. Words are used to communicate, to show ideas, concepts, to represent soemthing, that their fucking point. When you have an individual "name" its in order to other to be able to call you, to identify you, and talk about you, the idea is "this individual I must be able to refer in order to talk about/to him specifically", it has a PURPOSE. Wtf are the purpose of the "so important I call it hate speach when not respected" pronoun and gender words as gender cultist define them? What clear information, you can represent in your head, what does it tell about the individual?
And now people compare it with "gender" of objects to justify it, while the use and the concepts arent the same at all because we never linked it to sex as its not LIVING things, but to other ideas like feminine if the word is about the matter and masculine if its the profession and other logics. But for human it was meaningfull and used to represent a concrete, visible reallity. It's such a crazy world where you have to be super carefull with labels which means nothing at all and an "identity" of 0 characteristics. Btw I'm a horse because I feel like a horse and feeling like a horse is feeling like a horse, and I'm christian while not believing in bible nor jesus while praising severals gods because I feel like christian and that what make me christian because its my self identity and I choose which word fit the best in my head to describe it under the label I feel the best with. Fuck the logic, fuck the purpose of thoose words, and the world have to bend.
I would have supported you in this mission. @@bennyrodgers5702
Calvin and Hobbes definition of pronoun: A noun that has lost its amateur status
Classic.
I miss them so much! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
hahahahahahahahahaha
But although an English pun in a silly cartoon, I think you'll find in reality Calvin and Hobbes both understood Latin so knew what the 'pro' prefix meant, as they grew up in Europe a few hundred years ago with Latin as the common intellectual language, not English. It's funny how stupid people like funny things that make them seem even more stupid when they parrot them!
@@PrivateSi
It's funny how stupid people write long winded, rambling comments that make no sense and think they sound smart.
"what are your pronouns?"
"Use whatever you think will confuse the person you're talking to the least. The less time you spend discussing my pronouns, the more time you can spend calling me fat."
I wasn't expecting that ending
"Use whatever you think will confuse the person you're talking to the most"
one step forward, two steps back.
"His Majesty" and "Your Majesty" .. LOL
😂
13:55 I'm so glad someone else is saying this.
I started a new job before I was out, and during orientation, everyone went around introducing themselves with pronouns (all of which were obvious from their appearance). When it was my turn, I was the only person not to include pronouns... because at that point, it would've meant either misgendering myself, or outing myself to a bunch of strangers before I'd even told my family. Some of them probably thought I was taking a stand against inclusivity, even though there's a good chance I was the only member there of the group they thought they were including!
Good to know
I like to call this “aggressive inclusivity.” It is well-intentioned but ultimately dumb as hell in the way it’s carried out
Aggressive inclusivity (I like that) is almost worse than non inclusive imho (I’m a trans woman) and I still don’t know how to feel about it. Just because someone proclaims their pronouns on introduction, if there is a genuine group of NB individuals with neopronouns, I’m sorry I can’t remember them as I am bad with names no less more things to remember on top of that, not for a lack if trying. When its a room of straight cis people it starts to wear on my resolve. GNC people share and I am for it. If you’re gender conforming I just wonder why….
That's just so ironic. Thank you for sharing that.
this exact same thing happened to me. Every time I brought it up pre (and sometimes post!) transition I'd pretty much get yelled at for not understanding the plight of trans people (or later once I was out, for not understanding nonbinary people)...very frustrating! Normalizing people presenting their pronouns is one thing, demanding answers is quite another!
Man, I absolutely love your channel. As a language teacher I have always said “words matter” and that’s because they are the tools we use to build a world of meaning and understanding between us. At the foundation of our interactions has to be respect (a desire to uphold the dignity of yourself and the other person). Too often our conversations around this topic and honestly so many others are competitive not constructive. Thanks for educating us not just on how language works but giving us a world class lesson in respect. That’s how communication happens!
Why we used the word woman, man, boy, girl? To give information about the sex of a personn + the maturity stage. Thoose words were linked to clear objective descriptions, criteras, ideas. Now we have a full mess cult where not even the "gender experts" are able to tell what links the people with each others within the group woman, demi boy, non binary and all the made up gender labels anymore. What information does it give you about the personn? Well, none. So the point? Its all feeling but you cant despcribe the feeling, nor give the criteras, its an empty concept. Its not about the "body" nor the "biology" yet the reassignment surgery are linked to man as male body and woman as female body. Words are used to communicate, to show ideas, concepts, to represent soemthing, that their fucking point. When you have an individual "name" its in order to other to be able to call you, to identify you, and talk about you, the idea is "this individual I must be able to refer in order to talk about/to him specifically", it has a PURPOSE. Wtf are the purpose of the "so important I call it hate speach when not respected" pronoun and gender words as gender cultist define them? What clear information, you can represent in your head, what does it tell about the individual?
And now people compare it with "gender" of objects to justify it, while the use and the concepts arent the same at all because we never linked it to sex as its not LIVING things, but to other ideas like feminine if the word is about the matter and masculine if its the profession and other logics. But for human it was meaningfull and used to represent a concrete, visible reallity. It's such a crazy world where you have to be super carefull with labels which means nothing at all and an "identity" of 0 characteristics. Btw I'm a horse because I feel like a horse and feeling like a horse is feeling like a horse, and I'm christian while not believing in bible nor jesus while praising severals gods because I feel like christian and that what make me christian because its my self identity and I choose which word fit the best in my head to describe it under the label I feel the best with. Fuck the logic, fuck the purpose of thoose words, and the world have to bend.
Among the many examples of not having a grasp of this topic, my favourite is "I don't use pronouns."
lol
The "I" just chilling: "Ummm... Did you assume my grammatical role? 🙄"
The funny thing is, the reason why people say this is because the word “pronoun” isn’t well understood by the general public, they’ve forgotten what it means because why would they need it. So when woke activists insist on using peoples pronouns, it’s always 3rd person pronouns they mention (for obvious reasons). So people with no linguistics education link 3P pronouns with just “pronouns”
John 18:6: "Am"
Past the grammatical irony level, I love that because there are plenty of agender and other non-binary people who literally don't use third-person pronouns, so I will perform malicious compliance with transphobes who say that, congratulate them on speaking up about their pronoun non-usage, welcome them to the community, and affirm that I will only refer to them individually by their names and not he, she, or any other singular pronoun.
In Thai, the FIRST-person pronouns are the gendered ones and not usually third-person. Which makes more sense in a way: puts it on me, not others, to express my identity. On the other hand in practice I felt strange calling myself "pom" (masculine) but there is no neuter option except in close company (essentially a "royal we"). In music and poetry the feminine first-person is common regardless of the singer/speaker. But I LOVED that third-person was neuter: everyone is kao. Ter is an option to distinguish females. Ter is also "you" in romantic context. It's weird and neat that a girl can say "we love her" to her boyfriend and he can say it back.
I definitely am a fan of respecting the listener first, so first- and second-person are key, and even the global "We", perhaps my truest identity and value, grows out of that.
Interesting
This is very enlightening. Thank you for sharing.
beautiful! when i heard the point he made about “when we tell people our pronouns we’re telling them how they should talk about us to other people” i was curious if any language genders first or second-person pronouns differently. that’s awesome!!!
this was something i at first found confusing when i visited Thailand, but now it makes a lot of sense to me
fellow countryman here, I use ผม (pom, "I (masculine)") only when I'm talking to those who are my elders. With my friends I use เรา (rao, "I / we") and with my sister I use เค้า (khao), which is the same word as, or a corruption of เขา, the gender neutral third-person pronoun. The great thing about Thai is that oftentimes we can bypass using ผม (pom) because the social relation between two persons takes precedence above everything else; talking to someone whose relationship to you is that he or she is a junior, you and your younger interlocutor simply refer to yourself and you as พี่ (phi, "term of address for someone older; senior") and you and the younger person self to them and themselves as น้อง (nong, "term of address for someone younger; junior"). When I talk to the lady selling food at the food market, she refers to me as หนู (nu, "term of address which someone who is old enough to be your aunt uses for you") and I refer to her as ป้า (pa, literal means "aunt").
"I failed a student for saying there are only two genders."
"What are you, a woke fanatic?"
"No, a German teacher."
alas, there's virtually no difference between English and German with regards to number. it's just that objects are gendered entirely arbitrarily; but that's about it.
@@To.Ma.To_78 In German there are 3 grammatical genders.
:)
@@PyroMancer2k lol
@@Merrsharr I think that's about what I said-did I? (German is my first language; so, it's not exactly made up theories outta boredom.)
As a male teacher I have been accidentally called Miss, Mrs, Mum, Auntie, and "Mi... uhhh... sir". I usually ignore it all, i know they are trying to communicate respect, and the respect is what matters, not the pronoun. if I were to correct them, then i would be communicating my authority over them, which is not necessary when they are trying to respect me already, and especially not necessary when they are trying to seek help.
And that is what language is about, communication. When you use pronouns, what are you truly trying to communicate?
🤗
Why we used the word woman, man, boy, girl? To give information about the sex of a personn + the maturity stage. Thoose words were linked to clear objective descriptions, criteras, ideas. Now we have a full mess cult where not even the "gender experts" are able to tell what links the people with each others within the group woman, demi boy, non binary and all the made up gender labels anymore. What information does it give you about the personn? Well, none. So the point? Its all feeling but you cant despcribe the feeling, nor give the criteras, its an empty concept. Its not about the "body" nor the "biology" yet the reassignment surgery are linked to man as male body and woman as female body. Words are used to communicate, to show ideas, concepts, to represent soemthing, that their fucking point. When you have an individual "name" its in order to other to be able to call you, to identify you, and talk about you, the idea is "this individual I must be able to refer in order to talk about/to him specifically", it has a PURPOSE. Wtf are the purpose of the "so important I call it hate speach when not respected" pronoun and gender words as gender cultist define them? What clear information, you can represent in your head, what does it tell about the individual?
And now people compare it with "gender" of objects to justify it, while the use and the concepts arent the same at all because we never linked it to sex as its not LIVING things, but to other ideas like feminine if the word is about the matter and masculine if its the profession and other logics. But for human it was meaningfull and used to represent a concrete, visible reallity. It's such a crazy world where you have to be super carefull with labels which means nothing at all and an "identity" of 0 characteristics. Btw I'm a horse because I feel like a horse and feeling like a horse is feeling like a horse, and I'm christian while not believing in bible nor jesus while praising severals gods because I feel like christian and that what make me christian because its my self identity and I choose which word fit the best in my head to describe it under the label I feel the best with. Fuck the logic, fuck the purpose of thoose words, and the world have to bend.
I love that..good intentions should be honored
Happy to report that in spoken Filipino/Tagalog, the "ma'am-sir" phenomenon has achieved the necessary popularity.
So you observe a student making a mistake and you don't correct it. You aren't doing your job.
As a fellow Sociolinguist and someone who has deep relationships with folks from across a very broad socio-political spectrum, I think this video is absolutely fantastic! Thoughtful, insightful, and respectful. Definitely subscribing and look forward to more of your content!
You clearly are not in touch with the whole political spectrum. You haven't even reached the centre, much less the Right wing. But keep pretending like you know what you're talking about.
I figured out I was trans because my sociology teacher taught me the definition of gender identity XD
Why we used the word woman, man, boy, girl? To give information about the sex of a personn + the maturity stage. Thoose words were linked to clear objective descriptions, criteras, ideas. Now we have a full mess cult where not even the "gender experts" are able to tell what links the people with each others within the group woman, demi boy, non binary and all the made up gender labels anymore. What information does it give you about the personn? Well, none. So the point? Its all feeling but you cant despcribe the feeling, nor give the criteras, its an empty concept. Its not about the "body" nor the "biology" yet the reassignment surgery are linked to man as male body and woman as female body. Words are used to communicate, to show ideas, concepts, to represent soemthing, that their fucking point. When you have an individual "name" its in order to other to be able to call you, to identify you, and talk about you, the idea is "this individual I must be able to refer in order to talk about/to him specifically", it has a PURPOSE. Wtf are the purpose of the "so important I call it hate speach when not respected" pronoun and gender words as gender cultist define them? What clear information, you can represent in your head, what does it tell about the individual?
And now people compare it with "gender" of objects to justify it, while the use and the concepts arent the same at all because we never linked it to sex as its not LIVING things, but to other ideas like feminine if the word is about the matter and masculine if its the profession and other logics. But for human it was meaningfull and used to represent a concrete, visible reallity. It's such a crazy world where you have to be super carefull with labels which means nothing at all and an "identity" of 0 characteristics. Btw I'm a horse because I feel like a horse and feeling like a horse is feeling like a horse, and I'm christian while not believing in bible nor jesus while praising severals gods because I feel like christian and that what make me christian because its my self identity and I choose which word fit the best in my head to describe it under the label I feel the best with. Fuck the logic, fuck the purpose of thoose words, and the world have to bend.
In terms of grammatical gender in other languages, I love how "girl is neuter" is always the example for how German is illogical - it's actually one of the very few examples that follow a clear rule: the German word Mädchen is a diminutive of basically the same word as English "maid" for a young woman (so a very very young woman) and diminutives are always neuter in German. My favourite example of gender nonsense in German is actually cutlery - knife is neuter, spoon is male and fork is female :-)
The rule there isn't really what people think. German has genders and most of the time the gender comes from the ending. So, you get the rule that pretty much anything ending in -chein is neuter regardless of what the original word was. Similarly, the feminine word Frau becomes neuter when you attach -lein to the end, so Fräulein is neuter.
Without a general rule like that, the language would be an absolute nightmare to speak or write without a computer as you'd have to memorize all the genders of the words rather than just a substantial minority of them.
Also, I think it's unfortunate that the term gender was chosen to represent these changes as in very few, if any, languages is there a 1 to 1 match between gender of the word and gender of the object to which it refers.
People who use German to make a point about (third person) personal pronouns don't actually understand German.
@Eichhörnchen Wibbleflup If only Germans wouldn't re-interpret so much nonsense from the US... "das Gendern" with "*innen" is a bastardisation of language if I've ever seen one.
@Eichhörnchen Wibbleflup what if xe/xers tomorrow decide that all their words describing them should be neutral and end in "-ax"... das Täterax hat xer ermordet.
How many inclusionary fantasies does one need to indulge before enough is enough b s.
@Eichhörnchen Wibbleflup slippery slope fallacy is about an alleged chain reaction. My argument wasn't a chain, it was simply that the same logic could apply to different scenarios. The underlying question is simple: Where are the limits of language inclusivity? It's not a slippery slope to shine light on a lack of clarity when it comes to the rules we apply. Not every event must have already occurred for us to account for it, otherwise any form of risk management would inherently be a slippery slope fallacy (which it isn't).
But even if it were the case that an event must first occur before we consider its implications, then hereby I identify as a xe/xer and demand this language change in the name of inclusivity (I'm The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster of gender).
I'm kinda disappointed that this video didn't introduce any new ideas to me. I know that me and those around me can't account for everyone, but as part of the 'woke left,' most people I'm friends with understand almost everything you've said in this video.
Most of the woke left don't understand that another person using the pronouns you choose is a choice on their part, and not a right on yours. They also don't understand the point he made about not trying to force other people to categories themselves. "What are you pronouns?" Has become a question that people expect you to answer even if you don't want to. They also need to learn how to not go into attack-mode if someone makes a mistake and to not be so narcissistic in believing that they should have more of another persons mental energy than usual.
As a transwoman, this is the best video I've seen on the subject. Too many armchair youtubers weigh in on pronouns, so it's refreshing to see a linguist tackle a linguistic issue.
As a detransitioned still nonbinary linguist who wishes English would remove masc/fem and add inclusive/exclusive, same.
If you reply to this, tagging me especially, knowingly disagreeing, without asking me questions about what I mean; I look down at you and feel not like an asshole for it. Use your brain, library, elders, and internet more.
Same! I though this was really interesting and made some good points. The only point I took issue with was when stating that he wouldn’t be offended if someone used she when referring to him. Let’s be real, MOST men, maybe not all, would quite unsterstandably take that as a dig against their masculinity and react negatively.
@@AmberPremo you might be right. I will say that at least in my personal circle of people, including me, my cis dude friends don't really have a pronoun preference either.
hey fellow transfem Emily lol
@@AmberPremo don't forget, he was talking about the situation when others are talking about you and you're usually not there at all.
This is so interesting AND helpful! I've been learning Korean for a while, in part, through Zoom. When I go to class, I always try my best to assimilate as much as possible to the culture in my mannerisms, behavior, etc. because that informs the language. That said I do still always have my name and pronouns in my title because it's polite to do so here in America. One day, it was just me in class, and afterward my teacher asked me if I had time for a question. She asked why everyone has "she/her" etc. on Zooms and at conferences. Even though I'm comfortable with pronouns and discussion of them is very normal for the sub-cultures I exist in, and even though I was explaining in English, I was suddenly struggling to explain it to my Korean teacher and couldn't understand why. This video made me realize it must have been because I was having to explain this very Western & English individualist concept to someone from a community centered culture who speaks a language without gendered pronouns. The cultural component is definitely something we don't think about but it makes it all so much more interesting!!
In international situations the pronouns can help, because sometimes finding out the gender of a foreign person from the name is impossible. I agree with this, but as a speaker of a language without gendered pronouns, I do see the anglocentric pronoun discussion as a bit annoying.
@@bayrum9803 its not that serious calm down
@@bayrum9803 social marxist?
@@bayrum9803 can i have a source?
@@bayrum9803 ok
So I'm Vietnamese American, and I'm so happy to have come across a video that so well articulates my experience and struggle with the whole debate around gender. I too am on the side of compassion and empathy (especially given that so many of my friends are trans or nonbinary), but I also have friends and family who really struggle with alternate pronouns. In my experience, Vietnamese culture is very collectivistic, while I think American culture tends more individualistic, which is something I've explained to friends before when talking about my upbringing, but I never thought about how that carries over into linguistics and pronouns specifically. Vietnamese pronouns, like in many other Asian cultures, specify the speaker's relationship to the subject, so it gets a bit more complicated than just he/she/they... Anyhow, this has got me thinking hahaha
How are "so many" of your friends trans or nonbinary, is it because you work at a trans club or something, or is this an example of the alleged social contagion some people are talking about? Also assuming that many of these people are not going to have heterosexual marriages, is the US going to face a population crunch soon?
@@rexsceleratorum1632 I just happen to run in a lot of very queer spaces hahaha. Online spaces especially (at least the ones I'm active in) tend to have a lot of folks who identify as lgbtq+. My area of study isn't population statistics or anthropology, so I'm not entirely confident on speculating on the USA's population growth, but I do believe it's slowing down, at least compared to the last century or so. I wouldn't ascribe that to the normalization of lgbtq+ necessarily though, but to a whole list of things.
@rexsceleratorum1632 since the mid-late 20th century the population grew bombastically, plus there is still a small amount of lgbt people in the real world.
Population crunches can happen by very specific chains of biological or biologically-involved disasters (droughts, floods, famine, etc.)
@@ktiger32698k Ah. Online "friends".
"a bit more complicated"
A BIT MORE ?! Are you kidding ? It's hell... :)
Printer is male in German (drucker), but female in French (imprimante). Sometime I worry they might make baby printers together and put Xerox out of business.
😂
Xerox won the battle to not have photocopying referred to as Xeroxing. Naturally, today saying you Xeroxed something would probably confuse most people. One would probably say that the item was “Canoned.”
@@RDFozz I still say it all the time! Occasionally, I have had to explain it to young folk. To me, saying I want to "copy" something, could mean I intend to whip out a pencil or pen and _copy_ the relevant info, so I say "I want to _xerox_ it" to ensure I am being clear that I need to bring it to a copy machine and will make an identical copy of it.
Why we used the word woman, man, boy, girl? To give information about the sex of a personn + the maturity stage. Thoose words were linked to clear objective descriptions, criteras, ideas. Now we have a full mess cult where not even the "gender experts" are able to tell what links the people with each others within the group woman, demi boy, non binary and all the made up gender labels anymore. What information does it give you about the personn? Well, none. So the point? Its all feeling but you cant despcribe the feeling, nor give the criteras, its an empty concept. Its not about the "body" nor the "biology" yet the reassignment surgery are linked to man as male body and woman as female body. Words are used to communicate, to show ideas, concepts, to represent soemthing, that their fucking point. When you have an individual "name" its in order to other to be able to call you, to identify you, and talk about you, the idea is "this individual I must be able to refer in order to talk about/to him specifically", it has a PURPOSE. Wtf are the purpose of the "so important I call it hate speach when not respected" pronoun and gender words as gender cultist define them? What clear information, you can represent in your head, what does it tell about the individual?
And now people compare it with "gender" of objects to justify it, while the use and the concepts arent the same at all because we never linked it to sex as its not LIVING things, but to other ideas like feminine if the word is about the matter and masculine if its the profession and other logics. But for human it was meaningfull and used to represent a concrete, visible reallity. It's such a crazy world where you have to be super carefull with labels which means nothing at all and an "identity" of 0 characteristics. Btw I'm a horse because I feel like a horse and feeling like a horse is feeling like a horse, and I'm christian while not believing in bible nor jesus while praising severals gods because I feel like christian and that what make me christian because its my self identity and I choose which word fit the best in my head to describe it under the label I feel the best with. Fuck the logic, fuck the purpose of thoose words, and the world have to bend.
imprimante sounds like German Eindrückung, which would be feminine gender, but that's simply because the morphological part -ung is grammatically inherently feminine gender. And as we see -er in Drucker here as an object obviously doesn't mean that it's inherently biologically masculine, neither does Drucker as a person. For example the word Person in German is feminine gender, but nobody would say, only women are meant.
For me, the first step is assuming everyone is trying their best and mistakes are expected.
lol, that is a false assumption!
I know what you're saying though. If someone seems to be trying then give them the benefit of the doubt. But a significant portion of this world has made it very clear that they will not respect anyone different.
Better than assuming everyone's malicious i suppose.
I don't have to try, I'll just describe you as I see you.
@@EamonWillit's not an assumption set in stone, it's until you get to know the person better. It's simply presumption of innocence.
If someone shows malice, obviously you stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Presumption of innocence is the basic requirement for a civil society. When we let presumption of guilt run things you get chaos.
This is so true, even in broader aspects of life, not just pronouns.
I got so accustomed to using gender neutral pronouns when I was younger because I didn’t want my brother to make fun when I was talking with girls. It just comes naturally now.
And he didn't make fun of you for always using gender neutral pronouns?
@@seanbirch oddly, no. This was back in middle school so I’m sure it just didn’t click for him.
@@seanbirchthe idea that gender neutral pronouns are bad or weird is really really new. Using gender neutral pronouns has only become something people make fun of because gender issues became political issues. I don't think there was a single person who would argue with the use of singular they in english prior to the year 2000
@@thedudeamongmengs2051 Actually, people have been arguing about it almost as long as it's been a thing, which is 700-odd years... *facepalm*
I used to use gender neutral pronouns as a kid when I didn’t know the gender of the person I was talking about it
It's technically not a gendered word but I always find the term "Drama Queen" interesting because it can be used to refer to men and women.
It started out in the gay community to refer to a particular type of "queen." :-)
Eeh, it can be seen as emasculating to use it against a male
@@awesomedezYes, it's still a gender-loaded term.
@@sazji Which is why, usually, when referring to boys, we'll usually say "Drama King" instead. Which pretty much means, you're a guy, so "King", but you're acting like a drama queen regardless.
@@powerofk Never heard that!
Teacher: Hey you back there, name two pronouns!
Student: Who? Me?
Teacher: Well done.
Thank you. For being brave and making this, but mostly for giving a well-educated and thought-out explanation of a difficult issue. This is the kind of discourse that makes us all better.
The internet is a perilous place to offer a thoughtful and nuanced analysis of hot button issues. This was really well done masha’Allah, particularly the balance between the linguistic and the social components. Thanks for all you put into this one. Subbed. 🎉
This is the first video I’ve ever heard recognize that FORCED pronoun sharing might force someone to out themselves. NO LGBTQ person I know has ever mentioned that to me like it’s actually a real issue. Thank you so much!
It definitely feels like a catch-22.
I'll say this as a trans person: I never force anyone to share pronouns. I will not ask unless it's obvious to me that they want me to ask,. and instead I will rely on others to share or correct if I assume the pronouns wrong. If someone is trans and comes out as trans to me, I will ask them which pronouns they would prefer I use, but that`;s the only time.
I do this because I was forced to do exactly that situation at one point by someone who was attempting to be inclusive, and I did *not* like it. So for me, the most important thing is to let others provide to me how they would prefer I refer to them, assuming I didn't figure it out right away.
Contrapoints did and she got canceled for it
I have come across a few LGBTQ persons sharing their discomfort with forced pronouns for this reason, but it's certainly not something very many people are saying.
@@mairoberts1247Came here to say this.
Ah, at last. A real advantage of speaking Finnish!! 🇫🇮
In case anyone isn't aware - Finnish has just one pronoun which doesn't differentiate between masculine or feminine - 'hän' (she/he) or colloquially 'se' (which actually originally meant 'it' but is used in conversation for he and she too). I believe it's a similar situation in Hungarian and Turkish.
Or Turkish I guess
I knew a Finnish girl in college. She was hot.
Mandarin having 3 different characters for He他 She她 It它, but pronouncing them exactly the same - tā. lol
@@barrysteven5964 ő in Hungarian.
So much love for the lines about Star Trek and the illustrations as you said them!
I've gotta say that was really good. I'm a trans guy and there's actually another component the inclusive crowd gets really wrong with the whole "always use a person's correct pronouns all the time no matter what" rule and its safety. Every trans person decides who they tell, when, and how what their preferred forms of address are in a unique manner. The driving force of the differences is personal safety and mental/emotional safety. By insisting everyone always use the "correct" pronouns it robs us of the ability to navigate the process with the delicacy required.
yeah - a friend and former colleague is nonbinary but couldn't come out at work because their team would've harassed them for it and the corporate HR was useless. A diktat came down that pronouns could be added to email bios and it was optional, which was good - I added mine but my friend didn't have to lie or invite that harassment. (we're both working in better places now)
Thank you for that insight! Just because a friend identifies to me one way, I should know how they want to be identified in other settings outside of our relationship.
I would think that this would be quite obvious. Someone at my job kept coming over to my desk and ended up befriending me well it turns out the person is gay and was afraid in the workplace for anyone to know but trusted me. At that point I had already figured it out but totally understood the person's reluctance to reveal that. Besides that the person uses the pronoun that's traditionally assigned to that person sex but that's not the point it's the other person's prerogative to out themselves in certain situations, places, persons. And that is why I do not worry about pronouns if I misgender you, correct me, but do so politely. And I will be happy to come play. So far pronouns have not presented any problems in my life 🤷🏽♀️
Working in pharmacy over forty years, it was not difficult to understand the trans world concept. We dispense the medicines for those changes. The entire process from beginning to new beginnings are highly personal, sensitive, and involves being very vulnerable. It is delicate and many people do not understand. So when my university was asking students pronoun preferences to me this was a privacy violations, all out in the open. It was a mess. Everybody is not included unless they are. This was suppose to be assisting the community rather, it kind of exposed them. I felt some kind of way about it but could not articulate mainly from my perspective to confidentiality.
no one thinks “always use the correct pronoun even if it’s unsafe and puts the person i. danger. stop making up problems
I feel like I knew all (or at least most) of these points and agree with them, but I've never been able to collate and express them so accurately and succinctly. Kudos for handling such a hot button topic so professionally and respectfully!
We, as a society, need more discussion like this. It’s refreshing to see someone handle a socially divisive topic with such wit, compassion, sincerity, and consideration to practicality.
Thou art a pro at them nouns, yo.
I once tried to convince everyone around me of the superiority of the base 8 number system and why it would be better to use it than base 10. In order to practice what I preach, I started numbering all my lab work in base 8. But after a few weeks I couldn’t remember which samples were labeled in base 10, and which were based on 8, and so it fouled everything up. I feel that trying to get other people to use pronouns that are different from what they’re used to, is an equally productive exercise.
Have you heard Tom Lehrer's "New Math"?
One thing I’ve thought about with pronouns that you skimmed right next to with new pronouns is that, if everyone has their own, then it would simply be easier to solely refer to people with their name. If you’re telling a story, or example, and there are six people in the story with their own pronouns, the only options would be to give a list of each person’s pronouns mid-story and hope that the listener remembers while risking the chance that they won’t follow the story at all, or just use the people’s names and exclude pronouns.
Yeah, and that just sounds ridiculous. I think that people who insist on having their own pronoun are a bit unreasonable, as that is just saying “you aren’t allowed to use any pronouns for me, and here is a second name you can use instead.” We should just as a society pick a whole set of neopronouns and use them when we need to
@Amarok eh, I can also see the usefulness of having xe/xim or something like it, essentially a genderless third person singular pronoun. The usefulness of differentiating it from they is that there wouldn’t be any confusion about referring to multiple people or just one. Or they could work because we already use it in a similar manner. I have a feeling there will eventually be a standard that naturally arises, and we’ll all just go with that
@Amarok I feel uncomfortable when calling people it it just feels so dehumanizing
Generally I'm using pronouns to refer to a person when they aren't there.
I'll stick with he, her or they. If the person in referencing wants stomething else, or I don't know their preferred pro nouns and they present in a non gendered or opposite gendered way, I'll use they.
To me it's important to also be able to communicate clearly. And sometimes that means using pronouns the person I'm talking to understands, not who the person I'm taking about would prefer and is not present.
My partner's sibling views themselves as non binary. I refer to them as they, and the other ways I've just mentioned. If for some reason they come up in a conversation I will try to stick to this unless it's going to cause confusion.
People who don't know my partner's sibling will often be confused when I say my partner's sibling. And for an inconsequential conversation about a person that isn't there and will never meet the person I'm taking about, I'll just say sister or she.
The conversation doesn't need to be derailed by a person going "huh" or me having to explain they are non binary, what that means and possibly an exchange of opinions on the whole trans thing. Especially if it's just a verbal conversation with a stranger about our familys and having partner's, x number of siblings, etc. Or a person who doesn't agree at all with pronouns and trans issues and has their mind made up and believes their opinion is right.
(I'm just not interested in having a debate with a person who has made up their mind that trans people aren't people or don't exist or are trying to control and censor language. Especially when they are talking about my friends and family who I care about. I'm not going to provoke that reaction. Especially over a general question of "does your parter come from a big family?")
Personally I think if someone is offended by how I use pronouns well that's a them problem to resolve. I'm being polite by using non gendered language where I can and it's appropriate. I use it also to avoid getting the he/she wrong.
To me it is like swearing. Not everyone likes it. If I'm around a person who hates swearing then I won't swear. But when I'm not around them I'll swear as much as it suits me and is appropriate for the context I'm in.
Or like calling a person a name they don't like. If the jerk doesn't like being called a jerk then I'm not going to call them that when they are around. I will say they are a jerk when they aren't present.
(FYI I'm not claiming trans people are jerks. They aren't. PEOPLE can be jerks and and sometimes it is appropriate to communicate this to other people. Gender identity is irrelevant to how big of a jerk a person is).
Yes it is respectful to call people what they want to be called. It's not the only important aspect in communicating. Sometimes clear communication is also important. Context of the situation is important. The audience of the conversation is also important. Or in short, multiple things can be important with different degrees of importance to balance.
To me there is no point in telling a story where you have to hash out a list of who has what specific pronoun at the start of the story, to immediately lose your audience's understanding of what the story is all about. And there is doubly no point if the tangent becomes a trans debate instead of about the story you were trying to communicate.
I used to try to do that, and still mostly do it when speaking out loud, but I got layed into over it being annoying and demeaning.
Bro really tried to convince us “bro” wasn’t a pronoun
Surprised? Bro be speaking that boomer English.
bro as a pronoun is a just a whitewashed version of the n word as a pronoun
@@restfulCube8035 What did bro mean by this?
@@AroluciB bro addressed the n word as a pronoun in his video. bro as a pronoun is a variant of the same feature
Bro was all like "Naaaa" and I was like "Totally!"
I honestly enjoy the japanese ways of pronouns a lot, no one really misgenders you (mostly) cuz they just refer to you by your name or a different type of group which is normally not gender, and you your self can give personality to your first person pronoun.
I wish that was always the case but they do hit you with that -chan -kun. Nothing more painful than being called deadname-chan.
It does help a lot that you can gender your speech a lot more though. The speech of a woman or a man is pretty identical in English, but in Japanese you can often tell the gender of someone just by seeing what they’ve said written down
I’ve always wanted to refer to myself as 俺 (in casual interactions, not at the office), but I would get some wild looks if I did that. The cognitive dissonance would be too much for people. I’ve always found Japanese 1st-person pronouns a little uncomfortable because none of them feel quite right for me. 🤔
Except kare and kanojo are he and she when the person is not present, it's just that defaulting to names doesn't sound as weird as in English
@@ancalyme Most of the times kare and kanojo are not used though. Usually you put the persons name and then drop the topic like instead of saying “Sarah ate an apple. She thought it was good” they would say “Sarah ate an apple. Thought it was good” where is was implied that I am still talking about Sarah. Kanojo especially is avoided because it can also mean girlfriend so it is usually used in that sense. That is why Koyuki said mostly, because while they do have pronouns they don’t use them nearly as often as we do.
@@Sally-zb4rs Oh that's interesting
I appreciate the difficult work of making this. It’s very helpful to hear these well reasoned thoughts. We don’t get that on tv or in politics
I was fully prepared to bristle at the "both sides are wrong, here's how normal people think about it" framing, but I was happily surprised by how broad, well-studied and informative this was. Thanks!
"I was fully prepared..." A succinct example of the problem.
@@crinolynneendymion8755Tbf, the title is very inflammatory. It also uses the right's terms for both sides, rather than using each side's terms for each other, or using each side's terms for themselves.
@@justseffstuff3308 Yeah. For those who don't know, in English-speaking queer online spaces the term "gender critic" is generally understood as a euphemism transphobes use to make themselves look legitimate, and "woke" as a derogatory term for "the people we don't like". So many of us will see this video title and assume it's a video made by a right-wing transphobe apologist trying to pass as a centrist. A more neutral title would just say the left and right without any connotative qualifiers. But I'm willing to bet that as a cis het white man, the maker of this video is simply not at all part of the social circles where these words carry such a connotation. Plus, these words are great for engagement; I clicked the video, didn't I? 😅 So maybe it's fine to keep it like that.
@@justseffstuff3308If the left doesn't refer to the right as "gender critical" what term do they use? (other than fascist)
@@DominoPivotI think you are trying to define a term that you did not coin.
When the right (as I self-identify) uses the term 'woke' we are usually referring to a person's tendency to enforce compliance on others, rather than to refer to any personal belief the individual may have
I person may be trans, but not be woke (in my terms) is they do not attempt to force others to comply with their beliefs.
In my mind, 'gender critical' does not imply malice where 'transphobic' does. 'woke' may be used with or without implication of malice, but that's just my opinion
This video demonstrates EXACTLY why I re-thought my entire approach to explaining pronouns to people that are reluctant to change.
I worked with a guy, James. He would always roll his eyes at different pronouns and such. I could have gone on a tirade to force him to use pronouns like many are wont to do, but that's not effective at all.
Instead I broke it down like this. "One's pronouns are an extension of their identity, same way their name is. Your name is James, correct? Not J, not John, Jimmy, Jake, etc. Your name is James and you do not like it when people address you something else." He says yes. And from there I explained to him that exact feeling he gets when people don't respect calling him James is the exact way people like me feel when addressed as something else.
And I further stressed that, "hey, you might not understand why people want to go by something else than what you perceive. But you don't have to. All they're asking is that you respect that they don't want to be called _____, in the same way you don't want to be called by a name other than James."
And THAT resonated with him. Now he doesn't scoff or roll his eyes at pronoun usage. He still gets it wrong sometimes, but he makes an effort and is trying to respect others' preferences. And I think that makes all the difference.
Half of the problems we have with each other are illustrated by your story... People trying to be right vs people trying to communicate.
Good work 👍
Nice story, but you forgot the point in the video that points out that for some people it really is hard to process things like: Where is Alice? O there *they are.
It IS not easy to change pronouns. It is like trying to speak a different accent or to force yourself to use youse for plural you. It is even worse if people are constantly correcting you if you misused you for more people, since it should be youse.
Don't forget it is really really nice that people try to learn a new dialect just for one person and that you should be really really gratefull for that. Also, accept the fact that it is very very tiring for people to constantly speak that new dialect.
Problem is the entire world isn't gonna agree on this subject. People pushing back so extremely are as bad as those pushing preferred pronouns as a universal fact, even to those that aren't going to accept it. I do not, and will not use neo-pronouns, I also do not interact with people that identify as non-binary because I refuse to care about keeping on top of remembering to refer to them appropriately all the time, when these people will usually get angry or upset, when in reality they need to accept it is not a common way to refer to a singular person exclusively. I don't hate them, it's just too annoying to change my behaviour for the sake of someone I do not know nor do I interact with enough for it to stick.
That's how I was convinced to use and respect pronouns that didn't match what I saw at first glance. It's a great empathy excercise, I find it helps you see clearly how the other person is feeling and why it's important to them. I would add that, yes, for us it is hard to adapt because we have to think harder when we interact with that particular person, but maybe they get misgendered all day. We don't realize our collective impact on people who get misgendered often. It's definitely worth it making the effort and being a little uncomfortable from time to time, for the sake of other people who perhaps are doing far worse than we know.
I have a cousin who came out as trans to me and my brother, but didn't want the rest of our family to know. So I've been making mental gymnastics to cover him when there's family around and then switch pronouns when we are alone. It's possible to do this but it's really hard to nail it every single time I talk about him or to him. Especially since we talk in spanish and adjectives don't make this any easier
omg thx for being such a great ally!!!
Not a linguist but I think the technical term is "code switching". It can be exhausting. But making the effort is probably appreciated by your cousin.
I feel at home with this comment! I would not intentionally use a pronoun that would hurt who I am talking to, but please if I ever end up doing that, don't jump to the conclusion that I am descriminating you, there are just days where my brain is a representation of a leaky sieve. I too have been exposed to a society that made me associate certain features of a person with a certain gender, and sometimes that understanding is woven into my subconscious. I am trying my best.
It's amazing that you were keeping up with the pronouns situation honestly, I don't know if I would do well with that.
Yeah, I'm in a similar position in a couple of situations, the trans people I know are actually pretty easy-going about pronouns but I'm from a generally pretty traditional Christian community and so if they come up in conversation I'm constantly having to make judgment calls about whether it is safe to use people's preferred pronouns out of respect and support for them, or whether doing so would actually bring more trouble their way than it would be worth.
As a trans guy myself, I’m sure your cousin appreciates you immensely. My mother has to do the same thing with me around certain unaccepting family members and it gets exhausting for everyone. I wish we just lived in a world where trans people could just exist without having to hide their transness, but unfortunately that’s not the world we live in. I’m sure your cousin feels the same, he’s lucky to have such supportive family around him who’s willing to put in the effort to show him he’s respected and loved.
I am a high school teacher in a roman language country. I had a student with a female name and wanted to be refered not only with male pronouns but with male articles. I was so difficult for me because after saying a clearly gendered noun my articles would follow as female. He complained several times because I would slip and use female articles. . . . I avoided refering to him as much as possible. I have no problem with him wanting to be refered as male, but the mental gimnastics to change the articles was exhausting. . . . I refered as "him" all this time with no problem in english.
On the other hand, Another trans student changed his name to a masculine one and I didn't even noticed he was trans at first. I could use all the articles and pronouns correctly without even thinking.
I understand the struggle of the trans people, but it is greatly appreciated when you make it easy to be respectuful to you.
Great video by the way.
It's not respect they are seeking; it is deference.
@@janegardener1662Not always. Sometimes people have a name that’s most commonly used for the other gender. I had a boy in my class in school named Irinel, which is a male name in my region of the country, but a female name in another region of the country. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but there were some professors who kept making the mistake of referring to him as a girl - either by using feminine pronouns or calling “miss Irinel” to the blackboard. Now as a boy, this was annoying to him, although by the end he was already used to it and wasn’t phasing him anymore. But do you think that his annoyance was because he wanted deference, or just because he didn’t like being called a girl when he wasn’t one?
@@El3ctr0Lun4 My given name is also gender neutral. It never bothered me when people misgendered me. I corrected them and we all moved on. They made a simple mistake and I offered a simple correction. No feelings were hurt during this interaction.
@@janegardener1662 Yes, and that's fine. Some people are more emotional than others.
@@El3ctr0Lun4 Yes, and we don't have to spend our lives walking on eggshells because a few people are emotional. Neither "he" nor "she" is a slur.
In Finnish we don't have gendered third person singular pronouns, just one formal (hän) and one informal (se) neutral pronoun for everyone. The informal one translates to "it" so yeah, we go around calling each other "it" and nobody bats an eye.
In Finnish we usually automatically assume that whoever is mentioned first is also being mentioned first in the following sentence. So if I say "Mark didn't like what Pete said, so he hit him" I would automatically assume that Mark is the one doing the hitting. In cases where they are not mentioned in the same order, we would specify it by using the name again in the next sentence, like for example "Pete said something Mark didn't like, so Mark hit him".
As for the "Alice in the mirror" part, we would likely say "Alice saw [one's self] in the mirror and liked [what one saw]".
The fact that romance languages insist on gendering such simple, everyday statements feels so weird from a Finnish viewpoint!
Opinions. Everyone got one
@@smalltalk3284 My comment had 0 opinions, it was all factual statements from a Finnish point of view.
ok@@franciswall
Finnish grammar is a beautiful thing. Most speakers of other European languages (excluding Estonian and Hungarian and presumably the Sapmi languages) see Finnish and only think it looks impossibly difficult. They are wrong. It's music.
from a romance language speaker, i also find it weird that romance languages insist on gendering simple statements
I have no problems remembering someone's gender, but I do sometimes have trouble remembering someone's pronouns. So if the pronouns align with the gender (he/him for male, they/them for non-binary, and she/her for female) then I will automatically choose the right pronouns. If they have chosen different pronouns it gets difficult, especially since almost no one chooses pronouns in all the languages of the world , only in their native language. And since I'm bilingual I've got to translate those pronouns too (which with more obscure pronouns is simply impossible) ;). Also , I'm a bit autistic and was bullied before, so 'doing things wrong in social interactions' freaks me out..
That's mostly because people are inventing new ways of doing it that lack any sort of standards. We've had basically 4 pronouns for the 3rd person in English for quite a while now, we have he, she, it and they. (As in the singular they, not the plural they)
A lot of it looks suspiciously like an attempt at trolling as one would need to be specifically educated in not just what it means, but also how to pronounce them.
@Chris L As an older person, I struggle using 'it' as a pronoun for a person. 'It' is for inanimate objects, or an insult. I don't even use 'it' for animals.
@@reachandler3655 IKR, but if somebody asks, you're kind of stuck as not making a sincere attempt is even less respectful.
@@reachandler3655 For me, using "it" when referring to someone when I was growing up was considered incredibly rude, hurtful, and hateful. "It" meant that the person in question wasn't considered fit enough to even be referred to as human- you were useless and unwanted. I don't personally know anyone who goes by "it", but if I did, I would feel I was being unkind to them.
Edited because that was a syntactical mess. T-T
@@SmallSpoonBrigade But is demanding someone use an insult respectful?
I can definitely relate with point 6. At my old school, there was a girl who asked me my pronouns. Not wanting to out myself as trans and also not wanting this person to only ever use she/her, I said any pronouns are fine really. She proceeded to ask me persistently, as if my answer wasn’t good enough.
I’m at a different school right now, my friends mostly all use he/him for me :)
Doesnt saying any pronouns are good IMMEDIATELY out you as trans?
@@michaelcherokee8906 i mean it probably depends on the listener; the guy in the video literally said he's fine with any pronouns and he isnt trans
I’d say it potentially outs you as either (1) trans, (2) an anti-trans bigot, (3) a cis ally to trans people, or (4) someone who doesn’t really care, because all four of those groups could have reasons for saying any pronouns are fine.
If someone told me that any pronouns are fine, I’d be racking my brain trying to figure out which of those categories they are in.
@@ericherde1no anti-trans bigot would say this.
@@thechumbucket8986 I've heard that exact statement from anti-trans bigots before, with a strong tone in their voices.
Thank you for 1) sharing your expertise 2) being just a kind human & 3) giving something to ponder on.
I’m with you, I try to be respectful. Most people are kind and gracious and give grace whenever they see one trying. Be kind.
Really cool content. I learned a lot and didn’t understand even more 😂
I've always found the notion of "preferred" pronouns, or presently the term "my" pronouns a little bizarre at best. After all, _I_ don't have pronouns, languages have pronouns and they're basically designed to be grammatical tools, as you clearly explained here, they are used to replace nouns in sentences.
Also, the term "preferred" implies that someone's identity is just a preference and not something that is intrinsic to them as a person. Which is likely why the term "preferred" is no longer used when referring to pronoun usage.
That's because it's a massive imposition for a tiny group of people who individually may or may not even care. Asking somebody for their pronouns is rude and really needs to stop. It's very much the same basic idea as asking if somebody is gay or lesbian. It's not something that we would generally do except in some pretty specific circumstances and doing so forces people to make an up or down vote as to whether they're out or not.
By all means, if somebody gives you a preferred pronoun or a different name from what you were expecting do your best to respect their request, but people shouldn't be rooting around in case there is some other preference. When people say that you shouldn't assume somebody's gender, that's not really what they mean, what they mean is that you should ask if it's not clear, not that you need to personally ask absolutely everybody, including those that are very clearly one gender or another or if it's not even relevant to what's going on.
Yeah, that knife cuts both ways depending on the group/ context you're dealing with. Personally, i tend to default towards preferred because A) I'm an old fuck and it was the first one I learned; B) When describing someone's pronouns to others it feels much more respectful to the one being described to say "They *_prefer_* you say X" than "They *_are_* a X". Keeps the focus on the fact that they're a person capable of making decisions as opposed to an object for everyone else to describe either correctly or incorrectly (I know we do that all the time with cis-folk, race, nationality, etc, but it seems to me like a subject where respect is easier to forget for some folks and I'd rather err on the side of giving them an extra couple straws to grasp at); And C) I have no actual power to force a third-party speaker to do anything. If the discussed person's preference isn't enough to make the third party care, then that third party was never gonna care anyway...
@DBSTKjS I didn't say anything about names. Names are not pronouns, which shouldn't even need to be stated, but here I am. Names are not grammatical tools like pronouns are.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade I think as younger folks are moving away from gender norms, it's completely impossible to know for sure. I know a few people for whom I would have defaulted to he or she quite without hesitation by visual reading if not for them indicating a 'they/them' preference. Now I am in a position (theater/stage management) where we do paperwork that includes names and identifiers (like contact sheets) where we do ask to get ahead of an in person meetup and to properly write about the performers and designers with preferred pronouns on anything written where pronouns might be used. I have noticed a tiny bit of 'whatever's respectful' as well, indicating a complete detachment from a preference.
I refer to everyone as guy or girl non withstanding of their actual gender nor does it matter at all
Worst of all a woman can use he pronouns and still be a woman but I would be confused because the pronoun she chose doesn’t describe her actual gender
I’ve never seen a guy get angry being called a she nor does it matter, especially since they’re 99% of the time not there to hear it
It’s like what
was unsure how this video would go due to the loaded subject matter, but i'd say you did a great job! keep up the good work :)
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! I try (and maybe don't always succeed) to model having these discussions in ways that are a little more calm, while taking people's concerns seriously
@@languagejones the T has got to go LGB without the T now as a real gay man my goal is to get rid of trans activists and help Detrans voices grow.
Similar to the N word, "bro" is increasingly being used as a second or third person pronoun in informal contexts.
As long as you don't say "bra".
"I had my boys from both coasts at the party but bro got all up in bra's face and it was on!"
It's "bruh"
Can you give an example that isn't just using it as a noun?
@@chrism93lol when it's used as an adjective.
Awesome explanation! As a retired linguistic anthropologist I go crazy sometimes with people’s confusion. And love your sense of humor. I hope you’re going viral! 🎉
Great video. I've felt like the whole conversation wasn't really a conversation... but I couldn't put my finger on why. You've totally nailed it here. Thanks!
I get asked why I have my pronouns on my work email. The reasons are my name is gender neutral and I work with mostly women. I didn't mind the occasional "good morning ladies" at meetings, but since I work at home mostly people were referring to me as a woman and would tell the clients I'm a woman. When, I would call the clients some thought I was a scammer, because my voice is the opposite of what a woman would sound like. The he/him pronouns helped.
That’s what Mr. is for; mister obviated the need for expressing “he/him” on written or spoken exchanges.
@@3dorderifyyea
@@3dorderify Except that it's rather strange to include an honorific such as Mr./Mrs./Ms. in one's email signature.
That's very thoughtful of you. I had quite a bit of trouble figuring out whether to use Mr or Ms when referring to someone I've never seen in person... now I'm also wondering how to refer to someone who's pronouns are they/them🤔 are they Mr, Ms or some new variant, I saw Mx once, but since English is my second language I'm not sure
@@stacykrasnikova7744Mx is a gender neutral equivalent of Mr or Ms that some non-binary people use. It's usually pronounced like the word "mix" or "mucks". It's a relatively new thing but it's becoming more common.
I like this take on pronouns! In german we have it even worse / more complicated, since there is no german translation for they/them. For one friend, we use the pronoun "es", which most closely translates to "it", but they wanted to use a gender neutral pronoun that people are already used to, so "it" was really the only choice available.
In my circles and friend group, we mostly do it exactly as you described in the end. Pronouns are an optional specification for us; Many of us couldn't care less which pronouns are used to refer to us as long as it's understandable and we respect the choice of those to whom it is important.
And when referring to them when speaking to my grandparents for example, I normally use "she" instead, because it's more important to bring the point of my stories accross, than to force my 80 year old grandparents to relearn pronouns for a friend of mine they'll never meet.
All in all great video and a very thoughtful and informed take on this topic. Too many people appear to shut off their brains and start shouting when pronouns are even mentioned. (sorry for possible grammatical errors, it's my second language and quite late ^^)
I'm only halfway through an A1 course, but isn't ihr a translation of "they"?
Er nvm I guess ihr doesn't work at all when I took 5 seconds to think about it lol
@@MrKoalaburger "Sie"/"ihnen" are the third person plural pronouns, so those would be closest translation of "they"/"them". But yes, it doesn't work that well, because the third person feminine pronouns are "sie"/"ihr" (so in the nominative and accusative it would sound like you're referring to a woman/girl) and verbs also have plural inflections, so rather than e.g. "she is tall"/"they are tall" you have "sie _ist_ groß"/"sie _sind_ groß". And "es" is neuter, but it's only really used for inanimate objects, animals and children ("das Kind"/"das Mädchen"), so it's not ideal either...
Hope you're enjoying learning German!
@@MrKoalaburger Yeah, the problem is that our "they" is the exact same word as "she": "sie", which is also the current polite way to adress someone, our formal "you".
"Ihr" was actually used for that purpose until around 1800 or 1900. We also use "ihr" for saying "her", as in "her book/ihr Buch", and it's also the plural form of "you".
So yeah, every immediate alternative is gendered or has unfitting connotations already :/ we kind of just dance around the terms for now. My nonbinary friend knows the struggle better than we do and that we love them the way they are, with or without proper german pronouns. 🥰
Oh and also: good luck, don't give up. We know it's a hard language, respect for learning it!
@@rainghostly yeah... I was thinking ihr as in "plural you" (or they, in a way) would be a workaround, but yeah that's my English brain speaking. Doesn't actually work at all lol.
Appreciate the dog-whistle terms in this video's title that will hopefully prompt people of all sides of the political spectrum to watch it and learn the objective truth about this topic--very well done video!
It actually made me shy away from it for a long time, though I was pleasantly surprised when I finally watched it.
@diribigal same here!
I really like your take on this. I think the "know your audience" thing can go both ways. You don't want to confuse/alienate the person you're speaking to in the moment. But you also don't want to out the person you're talking about if you don't know whether or not your conversation parter is safe. Also, my method of allyship (I'm not trans, but I am queer and use any pronouns) is sharing my pronouns when introducing myself, instead of asking someone what theirs are. That gives the other person the opportunity to decide if they also want to share or not. I'm mostly in the habit now of using neutral they/them for people who haven't told me, even if they appear very masc/femme. Some people, even cis, don't present as the gender they are.
I like this, to share one's pronouns but don't ask. As he said, we don't ask other kinds of personal information, and that's really sensitive and personal to people oftentimes, for a number of reasons, outing oneself or being socially forced to lie being one. I wish the trans community and allies especially (particularly younger ones who sometimes feel almost aggressive) would not ask. I know cis/het people who are fine with other people identifying with whatever (or no) gender they are who HATE being asked their pronouns. I guess if you are a feminine cishet woman being asked makes you wonder-do I look masculine or something? Or a man--can't you tell I'm a guy? I bet that bugs some (cis-het) men even more than women. Why alienate (even subsconsiously) potential allies?
Well I think that using neutral pronouns until a person tells you is stupid! For one, 99.9-something percent of people will line up with the way they look, and for two, asking many of those people what their pronouns are is going to piss them off. I for sure, if you asked me my pronouns, would without a doubt be slightly offended, as the prior commenter got at. Just assume the pronoun unless youre genuinely confused or until someone tells you otherwise, cause we all need to 1) stop being so afraid of offending someone and 2) stop getting offended. If you misgender someone and they freak out, obviously theyre a nutcase that you dont want to associate with anyway.
@@michaelcherokee8906 Clearly you just said that being misgendered would offend you. As I said in my comment, I don't ask people what their pronouns are. I only give mine and if they respond with their own, I use those pronouns when referring to them. If they don't share their pronouns, I usually default to the neutral they/them, because at worst, it may annoy a handful of cis people (who should probably think about why they're so bothered by it). I think that's an acceptable consequence of respecting differences in gender presentation. Finally, I have no idea where you got your 99.9 statistic. Even if that number is correct (it's not), that's still 8,100,000 people. Maybe assumption works for you, but I'm often surrounded by queer and non-conforming people so I find the neutral method works for me.
If a person misgenders you and it matters, you should correct them. I am misgendered on the phone because of the tone of my voice, it's not a big deal.
They/them makes no sense, though. There is no such thing as a plural person.
I've never heard something that made such pure and simple sense as this video. You encapsulate everything I've ever wanted to say about the gender debate but was never able to fully articulate. I especially resonated with "If someone tells me what pronouns they believe they should be addressed as, I'll do it out of politeness, even if I don't fully understand it", and "don't force people to categorise themselves". I also like your idea of prioritising respect for your listener and using pronouns they'll understand rather than intentionally using a pronoun you know won't be understood. That will just cause a breakdown in communication, for what is in my opinion no good reason.
He hardly even said anything really
Same. Personally, I believe there are only two genders that can't be changed but I'm not going out of my way to disrespect others because of my personal beliefs. And no, it does not make one bigoted or hateful simply for having a different *personal* opinion, that is generally only applicable if you hate or are vitriolic to others for some arbitrary reason. I'll try my best to use people's pronouns and however they chose to identify is fine. As long as they are not hurting others, they have the freedom to do so and I feel compelled to give everyone basic respect and dignity.
@@adriant240 Well there's one thing you said that I agree with - I don't personally agree with having lots of new invented pronouns to describe everyone's own interpretation of what gender means, a simple "they" is fine for people who don't feel like they fit the binary. But when you start your comment with "I didn't watch the video but I believe X about it", you don't really give yourself a leg to stand on. Plus insulting people randomly is never gonna make anyone wanna listen to your point. I also automatically put anyone who uses the phrase "woke" in the bin because it's literally only used by bigots to define any aspect of being more accepting to people that they don't personally like. Society has moved on to a point where you're not allowed to say n word or f word or the like, so you just call them "woke" instead because the meaning of that word is ephemeral enough to be publically allowed but everyone still knows you're just using it in place of a slur.
@@Jon0007723 I want to be polite, but we are far past that point. Believe me. Society has gone insane and extremely dumb (people like you) and at this point I'm all out of patience. I apologize but that's just how it is. It just needs to be said, no more sugar coating and being nice.
Why don't you believe there are only 2 genders that cant be changed?@@puerry
First, love the sweater! Second, great video. Thank you for the information and the clear and sensitive way you discussed this subject. Number 6 is an interesting one. As an 'out' member of the lgbtq+ community, coming out becomes a way of life. It seems like a singular event, but in reality, we are always coming out because (in my observation) folks assume a hetero-normative stance in conversations, 'What does your wife do for a living?' It can be challenging. Every time it happens, it feels like a splash of cold water in the face, and every time, I have to make a quick decision on how to answer. What are the odds this person will shoot me if I say 'My husband...' etc. It is a complicated subject, and I really appreciate your willingness to chime in with some good science. :-)
Heh. thy "heteronormative" observation reminds me of a time when I (male) had a male roommate and one day I answered the phone and the caller said, "Hi! Could I speak to Mrs. (Roommate's last name)?" I'm possessed of quite a deep voice (not to mention a twisted sense of humor), so I said, "Speaking." which was greeted with, "Oh.um..wel......um......" (Click....buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz). Makes me laugh to this day.
just stop feeling victimised
Very interesting and well researched. If there was one thing that I disliked, it was the title... It's the most polarising part of the whole video.
It drags attention from both sides, which is necessary to adress the issue in its entirety
As a trans woman, my general rules of thumb have been:
-when referring to a stranger, I generally default to what they seem to present as--whether that's masculine, feminine, or androgynous/non-conforming. If I get acquainted with a non-conforming-seeming person, I like to ask what they want me to call them by because I want them to feel comfortable/safe with me.
-when strangers refer to me, I generally don't correct them. I get misgendered often over the phone, but oftentimes I'm never going to speak to that person again, they don't have any reason to know better or come to know better, so it's not worth the trouble for me. If I get acquainted or expect to become acquainted, I'll inform them of my pronouns. If they don't respect them, I deem them unworthy of my company, but that's been very rare.
Same. I work in a place that I am using the phone a lot. I generally don’t bother trying to fix assumptions of those I’ll not have to see again. It’s my coworkers that refer to me as the wrong gender that frustrates me.
@@trussell5084 what gender are you?
As I said in my main comment, in my main language (Brazilian Portuguese), we have genders for absolutely all nouns. I see this pronoun fight as unnecessary because "a person", in my language for example, is feminine, but it doesn't offend any men because you use a feminine pronoun or noun to describe both a man and a woman.
Pronouns as they are, arose because of the natural development of a language, and there have been efforts to create neutral languages, but they usually fail because the reasons are completely irrational and subjective. This arrived in Brazil and is affecting everyone because mostly emotionally sensitive people think they need to change the grammar of the language to speak to people without offending them.
My tip is, don't be offended by a word if the intention is not to offend you. If the goal is to offend, there is no reason to use cute pronouns in place of insults. This is too much effort for a waste of time.
@@brunnomenxathere are languages that are already, naturally neutral. for example, in my dad's native language, Swahili, there are no gendered pronouns, and most nouns do not imply what a person's gender/sex is. You can have a whole conversation about someone without ever implying what their gender is. There are 9 noun classes, but it works very differently from the 2 grammatical genders in romance languages.
@@andiiiiiiiiiii,
Yes indeed. My point is that non-gender neutral languages don't need to change grammar to satisfy specific people, because the language naturally developed that way.
In my language there are words that change meaning with gender. For example: "a caixa" (fem.) means "the box", but "o caixa" (masc.) means "the cashier". Trying to change this is basically killing a language and building an artificial one for an empty cause.
This was a really interesting linguistic video, thank you!
As an ally I absolutely agree that the asking for people's pronouns can be allyship taken too far -- especially when it becomes a demand. I've heard several trans people make the same argument as you about how it can accidentally out people when we are too aggressive with it. Instead of asking other people's pronouns, I've found it's better to simply share my own (she/her) with no expectation of that in return. It's simply an indicator to the other person of my views and that I'm a safe person to come out to, if they choose to do so.
Another interesting point you made is about how gender is just one part of our identity, and for many people it's not an important part. As a cis woman who looks feminine the only times I've been misgendered are either clearly slips of the tongue or online where someone is making an incorrect assumption. It's honestly funny to me in those situations, it's never going to really bother me. But I can understand that if you are constantly being misgendered, maybe because you are trans, or because you don't look like what people expect a man/woman to look like, or just because other people think it's a funny way to insult you.....that's going to be much more painful. So even though for me personally misgendering isn't a big deal, I don't let that trick me into thinking that everyone else has the same experience.
>stop asking people their pronouns and share your own instead
This right here is what I want. When someone outlines how they wish to be addressed in this manner, it marks them in my mind as a safe person and encourages me to share rather than making me approach the conversation as an interrogation. That might not seem too huge for those who do align with the gender they were assigned, but this is huge for a lady in an unfriendly part of the US.
As a more broad comment, I've never encountered this channel before now, and I clicked on this video while regrettably assuming this bearded man in a plain tshirt was going to disrespect my existence like many other bearded men in plain tshirts on the internet. What I heard instead was Dr. Jones separate the "issue" of gender diversity from the confusion surrounding pronoun usage. Many people in the US fail to do that for themselves, either because mainstream media conflates the two or they're simply unwilling to admit their true biases. That's why I'm glad Dr. Jones made this video, and I'll be sharing it with my parents soon.
@@oinkerbob2 Nobody addresses anybody with third person pronouns.
Third person pronouns are used when the person being referred to isn't there. That's why they're called "third person pronouns".
@@janegardener1662 I: Except all the conversations that involve more than two participants, in which it is completely natural and common to refer to one of the speakers in third-person in their presence
Given all your other comments under this vid, you're just being obtuse on purpose
@@iamnohere Adults don't speak about other adults when they are present, except under certain conditions, like introductions:
"Bill, this is Jane. She is my colleague at work".
Adults do speak for children or incapacitated adults when they are present:
"My son would like the waffles this morning. Could you also bring him an orange juice? Thank you."
"My mother needs to go to the doctor. Can you take her today?"
Otherwise adults let other adults speak for themselves.
We don't talk about other people as if they're not there, because that is rude.
@@janegardener1662 I: I can think of plenty scenarios where speaking about someone is still perfectly natural: "Kay told me all about you; they praised you highly." / "Mary said I could join, so I've accepted her invitation." / et cetera, et cetera.
Also - even if children and incapacitated adults _were_ the only case, would they _not_ still need the pronouns?
In the first 5 minutes, you explained this subject better than a whole class on the subject that lasted a semester. 😓
Appreciate this video. I think you hit the nail on the head: any meaningful interaction regarding anything tangentially related to this topic has to start with kindness.
All discussion about language has to start with the belief that language is about effective communication, not assuaging psychic grief.
I was just thinking about this a couple weeks ago. I'll always respect people's preferred pronouns but if anybody asks me what my pronouns are I'd say I literally do not care as long as you are consistent with it and people know you're referring to me. Because pronouns are a linguistic tool, not my identity, not my name.
By "respecting people's preferred pronouns" what you're actually doing is participating in their sexual fetish. A lesbian told me that.
@@jkscout This is why lesbians are my favorite alphabet people, they pretty consistently have no time for bullshit.
@@ijustdocomments6777 not all lesbians are like that. For instance, my best friend of almost 40 years won't talk to me anymore since I became a left-wing gender critical. Many people don't know this, but even the founder of gay pride following the stonewall riots, Fred Sargeant, is gender critical. He's been banned from twitter and assaulted by trans rights activists on numerous occasions. It's sad what the T is doing to society, with women and LGB people as its primary victims.
@@jkscout name checks out
@@dolphinbanana3053 Don't feed it, this one's clearly hungry
Filipino (or Tagalog) and almost all dialect in the Philippines are genderless languages. Pronouns do not have a classified gender. For example, the pronoun "siya" (he/she) or possesive pronoun "sa kanya" (his/hers) can be used to refer to anyone regardless of gender. The word "anak" (child) can also be used to refer to a son or daughter.
Thanks for pointing this out, I had a good friend from the Philippines who I thought was mixing up the English pronouns when he would call his daughter "he". It is amazing the me that when you learn other languages you learn that not every language handles the parts of speech the same way. And how the mistakes we make in languages that are not our native tongue come about.
yup
Great video. I especially appreciate the discussion of the individualist--collectivist spectrum. Of course it's important to respect someone's asserted identity, but it's equally important to recognise that identity is negotiated within a community. Finding a path through this conflicted terrain is not easy, and your discussion provides a really helpful framework for thinking through these questions with compassion and respect
I’m a CIS male married to a CIS female with three children. An adult trans woman, an adult non binary youth, and a CIS male older teen. Pronouns in our life over the last 4-5 years have been quite an adventure. I disclose this only to clarify the points I’m making in this post. Usually, I introduce my family as my wife, daughter, mid-kid, and son.
To learn to refer to our trans daughter as she/her with her new name took quite a bit of time, but I feel that we have done so. I can easily now refer to my daughter and her girlfriend in (insert other city here, trying not to dox ourselves too much). I don’t use the term trans on a regular basis. She’s my daughter.
With my youngest, there isn’t anything to modify. He’s my son.
It was a bit problematic with my non binary second born who prefers the pronouns they/them. With time I learned to use they/them frequently, but often slip and use their dead pronouns.
The other issue was what to use in place of son/daughter. They suggested child, but I felt that child was a bit diminutive. They will always be my baby, but after all they are an adult now. I wanted to respect that.
Being a middle child, married to a middle child, and addressing my middle child, I never miss a chance to bring that fact up. (It’s a middle child thing.) We came up with Mid-kid and love it. Most people understand it as well. It’s interesting that I can now discuss my mid-kid without bringing gender into the conversation at all. For them gender doesn’t matter. For those I talk to, I don’t press the issue of pronouns for them (those I’m talking to). Many that knew them before will continue to use the dead pronouns, others will just pick a pronoun set and go with it. I know that I’m doing well when someone chooses the opposite pronouns. I don’t correct them, I let them run with it.
I loved your discussion in this video; you have great suggestions about how to look at the issue from all angles. There is one great angle that you brought up that I had never actively considered before: the way I use pronouns for someone not present while considering the person to whom I am speaking.
In these situations I have always been concerned about continuing to use the correct pronoun set. Some times it is uncomfortable when I am speaking to someone that knew my kids when they were younger. I still feel compelled to use the correct pronoun set, but now understand that in some instances, I do owe the courtesy to my listeners to at least acknowledge my selection of pronouns. I agree that it is inconsiderate to leave my listener confused. It’s also ineffective communication. Thanks for your explanation.
My sister is a cisgender woman, but I'm calling her "mid-kid" in conversations from now on, lol. That's just a brilliant term.
I love your candor and approach to the issue within your family! It’s refreshing to see people face the pronoun puzzle with such respect and a sprinkling of humor.
We are all learning - some more willingly than others (looking at the folks referenced around 16:10 in). 😊👍🏼
CIS male => what we used to call man, a male human, or as he's teen, a boy.
trans woman => what we used to call a trans boy, a male human who perform and act in society to "look like" a woman (a female human).
non-binary => doesnt give any information about the personn so theres really 0 point to say "non binary". Could be a male or a female. Can appear with social norms of a man or a woman, a total mess worse than the two ideas above.
Why we used the word woman, man, boy, girl? To give information about the sex of a personn + the maturity stage. Thoose words were linked to clear objective descriptions, criteras, ideas. Now we have a full mess cult where not even the "gender experts" are able to tell what links the people with each others within the group woman, demi boy, non binary and all the made up gender labels anymore. What information does it give you about the personn? Well, none. So the point? Its all feeling but you cant despcribe the feeling, nor give the criteras, its an empty concept. Its not about the "body" nor the "biology" yet the reassignment surgery are linked to man as male body and woman as female body.
And now people compare it with "gender" of objects to justify it while the use and the concepts arent the same at all...have fun with your gender fanatics family, where you have to be super carefull with labels which means nothing and an "identity" of 0 characteristics. Btw I'm a horse because I feel like a horse and feeling like a horse is feeling like a horse, and I'm christian while not believing in bible nor jesus while believing theres severals gods because I feel like christian and that what make me christian because its my self identity and I choose which word fit the best in my head to describe it.
I love this comment, and I love your attitude towards the situation.
I’m a trans woman, and something that causes a lot of confusion for new people I meet is when people I have known since before I came out sometimes refer to me as ”he”. In turn, that makes those new people stop and think for a second and then eventually decide to go with he, which perpetuates the cycle. The amount of distress that misgendering causes is not as bad as it used to be, but it’s still harmful as not everyone I meet needs to know I am trans. Some people knowing it can be very dangerous for me. All because someone in my family either doesn’t care enough to use she or someone wants to demonstrate that I am not ”fooling them”. It’s beyond childish to claim that changing what pronouns you use for someone is difficult
(Which certain family members and a lot of grown ups do)
I'm really sorry that you have to deal with those people, they are definitely acting in bad faith. People who act in good faith can still genuinely have a hard time changing what pronouns they use though, because most people have never really needed to actively think about pronouns, they just use them automatically. Switching from passively doing something out of habit to actively doing the opposite of that can genuinely be challenging for a lot of people. It's not a childish claim at all, it's just true.
It's a childish excuse for not making an effort, though. I'm neurodivergent, and I'm of a type who can really struggle with this kind of thing, but I put in a ton of effort to handle that struggle for the sake of my friends who need me to do that. I can't count the amount of times my brain has come to a screeching halt just in time to stop myself from misgendering my trans friend. So it's absolutely true that changing how I use pronouns is difficult for me, but I'd never use that as an excuse to not try.
Please don’t tell people what they find difficult. And do not insult people by referring to them as childish because they are different then you 😊
@@josephquesnel1737If a person is PURPOSELY do it, yes it is childish and transphobic. If it is done by accident it's not. I have trans people in my life and when I accidentally misgender them because my brain fuck up my grammar I immediately correct myself. But it's a completely different situation if a person doesn't make the effort to use the correct ones and then pathetically says "it's too difficult". Like, come on
@@itsapotatofow5621 you sound like someone who is looking to be offended.
@@josephquesnel1737 Assumptions spoken about others are funny. They frequently turn out to be true about the people who say them 🖖🏻🙂
There is an interesting situation here in Norway rn because of the use of "they". The norwegian male pronoun is "han", and the Norwegian female pronoun is "hun", and a few years ago, a third gender neutral pronoun was added: "hen".
However, because of all of the screaming about "they" on the internet. A lot of teens are directly translating the word they and using the norwegian word "de". Which is very confusing because in norwegian "de" is only used singular in second person formal. Otherwise it is plural third person.
Therefore, when people use the word "de" about someone in Norwegian it makes the person sound like they have a personality disorder or something.
Which is very confusing because in norwegian "de" is only used singular in second person formal. Otherwise it is plural third person.
It is the similar in english. Third person plural. Second person they is only used for an unknown subject. It is just as much madness in English.
I'm not a native English speaker, so I don't have English engraved in my brain. So, just like I costantly learn new things about the language and start using them, it could potentially be easier for me to use the singular they to refer to a non-binary person. However that's not the case. This is because I don't have any non-binary person to talk to or about, therefore this special use of the word is so rare that it's impractical. It's like having a very fancy avocado slicer, bought specifically to slice avocado and only avocado. But you don't ever buy avocados, and when you do it occasionally, you forget you had the avocado slicer and use a normal knife instead.
@@thomgizziz "a third gender neutral pronoun was added: "hen"."
I don't use that ridiculous term, and neither should anyone else.
"in norwegian "de" is only used singular in second person formal."
No, Norwegian (capitalised). That would be "De" (capitalised). Though it doesn't affect the pronunciation.
But the objective form is "Dem" (as opposed to "dem" for third person plural). .
Facepalm. Your language has what we wish English had, and the teens still went with third person plural 😮💨🙄
Yup. 😑@@littlestbroccoli
"requiring people to share their pronouns means that you either force people to out themselves or choose to be in the closet"
YES. Honestly I struggle to wrap my head around why so many people think that there is anything remotely appropriate about wanting to "normalize the practice of everyone sharing their pronouns." The youtube search that led me to this video was sparked after I had an uncomfortable experience where I was suddenly asked for my pronouns by a new customer at work. It was literally the first thing they asked me upon our meeting. For context, I'm a cis woman with very short hair and my work clothes are androgynous simply for functional reasons. I'd never been asked that question before in my life. Moreover, I'd also never really thought much about my gender in terms of me being at my job. I stuttered and just told them to use whatever they felt comfortable with and moved onto the actual content of the business interaction, but in my head I was just thinking "why on earth is my gender identity relevant to you in this situation???" As you said, it felt similar to "where are you really from" questions regarding ethnicity and race. Like you, I'm not going to tell a stranger "my pronouns are she/her" because that would be implying that I give a crap whether people view me as a woman in every context, which I don't.
Anyway my point here is this: to add to your point of not forcing people to out/closet themselves, I think another big problem with the normalization of "asking for other people's pronouns" is that it actually undermines the whole goal of gender equality, which is that gender honestly SHOULDN'T be relevant in most contexts. Other than my husband (for hopefully obvious reasons) and maybe some of the people closest to me in my life, I couldn't care less if other people recognize my gender identity, as long as they aren't being mean or judgmental on the grounds of gender. My gender is the most boring and innocuous aspect of my personhood and I'm not going to contribute to this weird assumption that a lot of left-wing echo chamber inhabits have that "being cis means having a deep connection to the gender you were assigned at birth." Sorry, but it's just not true and I'm not going to pretend that my womanhood is deeply important to me in all social/professional contexts if that isn't the case.
Hi, I totally agree with your critique of asking about pronouns, and your statement that your gender as a cis person not being important or relevant in most contexts is highlights something incredibly valuable. I think one aspect that is often overlooked is the level at which personal pronouns and personal gender affects one another. For you, you made it clear that they are innately interlinked, the fact that you identify as a cis woman informs the internal answer to "what are your pronouns?". However, to many people, their gender and their pronouns are not inherently linked, take for example someone that might use they/them but strongly identify as a feminine woman. If they are asked what their pronouns are, it may not activate an internal analysis of their gender, it could be akin to asking what their name is.
I think this plurality of the link between gender and terminology is what makes people react quite differently to a deceptively simple question. To a certain extent, we have all faced prejudice/bias based on perceived gender, and I think that is the cause of why this is a difficult subject. I'm interested in your thoughts on all of this, and whether you believe there is a respectful way to approach pronouns for everyone, trans or otherwise. Would it be enough if someone asked you "if you are comfortable, what are your pronouns?", or would that still feel invasive or unnecessary?
@@KazarooniBallooni thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think it would still be invasive and unnecessary because it still carries an implication of questioning someone's gender without a reasonable intent. I actually think it's potentially more harmful in the context of asking a trans person, because maybe they are putting in a lot of effort to pass and could view the experience of being asked this question as a sign that their efforts to pass are not successful. It's much better to just wait for more context clues or wait until the conversation has reached a casual enough level that it would feel more natural. As far as asking a stranger immediately upon meeting them, I can't see a scenario where it would be appropriate.
And just to reply to something else in your comment, you gave the example of a person who uses they/them pronouns but identifies as a feminine woman. If I'm being frank, an example like this kind of demonstrates why i dont even really agree with the idea that we each even "have" our own third person pronouns in the first place. I don't see myself as "having" pronouns - when i present as I typically do as female, people refer to me as she, and when I'm in my androgenous work clothes, I wouldnt be surprised or offended if some people referred to me as "he" since it can be understandably hard to tell unless we are up close and chatting. In the English language, people generally passively pick which third person pronouns to use in their speech based on how they percieve a given person's gender presentation. By that logic, it fundamentally doesn't make sense for the person in your example to "not use" female pronouns if they are someone who in fact chooses present as what the average person would describe with female pronouns. I think in the example you gave, this person interprets this entire aspect of English grammar in an unconventional way, and it isn't fair to expect the average people they encounter in the world around them to align with that perspective of gender. The fact of the matter is that third person pronouns do not share the same grammatical function as a name or nickname, and if someone sees it that way then they must understand that their views are unconventional and so most people dont link any personal meaning whatsoever to the third person pronouns that pop out of their mouth when they are describing someone. It is totally valid however if this person chooses to primarily spend time with other people who share their interpretations of how third person pronouns function.
@@DSS712yeah most cis people don't think about the third person pronouns because people seldom get them wrong, and when they do, the person doesn't double down and INSIST that you ARE a man. Most cis people will never have that experience, and while it might seem easy to ignore that type of incident, it gets harder to be okay after the thirtieth time it happens? When we say you're cis because you have a deep connection with your assigned gender, it's specifically because that connection runs so deep that you don't HAVE to think about it, it's just how things are.
Yeah, trans women here, and I hate whenever people on social media bully people into putting their pronouns in their bio. Not everyone, even in the queer community is comfortable with that and may themselves be closeted and not ready to say one way or another. It was a stupid trend that was going on and I am glad it has been happening less.
@@ArynWellspring honestly, it's such a cluster truck of nonsense (not pronouns themselves, the whole fight/discourse around them and genders & gender identities in general). It's like DSS said above: if someone is talking to me... why would they even use he/she/they in the first place? I'm pretty sure we only use I and You when we're two people speaking. So... asking for pronouns is like asking "what do I call you when I speak about you (to others)." It also cognates in my mind, like DSS said, with the " where are you from *really?* " type question. But even then, it's kind of a "meh" issue (to me).
But what really grind my gears, so to speak, are two main things: sex erasure, and the neo/xeno-pronouns craze. The whole "gender" and derived terms are kinda simple to grasp (at least I personally think they are) when you read their definitions:
Gender:
"includes social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of femininity, masculinity or other gender identity."
So far, nothing complicated to me, but (and I know I'm the weirdo here and "normal people" don't read it like this, but) when I read "gender" I'm just automatically brought to its etymology in my head; gender is from "genus", meaning "kind, sort (of)."
So "What gender are you?" is basically "What kind/sort (of human) are you?" and the above definition makes it easy to understand it's a sex based (male, female, and nonbinary/neutral) division.
Gender identity:
"the personal sense of your gender which can correlate with your observed sex or can differ from it."
Just that bit does not *not* make sense either... it's simple. It's basically "the personal sense of your social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of femininity, masculinity or other gender identity which can correlate with your observed sex or can differ from it."
It is what I understand. And again, the definition reinforces that genders and gender identities are sex based divisions.
Gender expression:
"the external manifestation of your gender identity through behavior, mannerisms, and appearance that are socially associated with femininity, masculinity or other gender identity."
So I understand this as "the external manifestation of your personal sense of your social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of femininity, masculinity or other gender identity which can correlate with your observed sex or can differ from it through behavior, mannerisms, and appearance that are socially associated with femininity, masculinity or other gender identity."
It still makes sense (to me), even though replacing "gender" and "gender identity" with their own definitions inside the definition of "gender expression" makes it very clunky to read as is, and somewhat repetitive. But it's still comprehensible (to me), but it again reinforces genders, identities, and expressions as sex based divisions.
And here comes my first problem in this whole discourse... sex erasure.
I've read, listened to, and watched a lot of the same people who've relentlessly hammered in that "sex and gender are different" things now conflating the two terms, and often having gender just replace entirely sex in discussions and definitions. And that's the whole issue I got: how can sex and gender be two different concepts but be interchangeable? And if you try to erase/replace the concept of "sex" with "gender," what does gender mean? "Sex" is part of gender's definition itself. But if the gender (kind/sort) of Humans is not a sex based division, then it needs another term of reference, or else gender loses all meaning.
Like... I don't remember which nation/people, but there's a people whose genders are "Life" based. So "humans, leaves on a tree, feathers, an animal, etc." are not "masculine/feminine" but "alive," and "rocks, trees, house, etc." are "non-alive" or something like that.
If we don't want "genders" to be sex based divisions, well, we need to find another concept to base the division... or else "gender" just means nothing! If we want it sex based, life/non-life based, age based, etc. let's go for it! But it still needs a common concept, denominator for the definitions to make sense.
Let's take age for example. If genders were age based divisions, then the definition for gender expression would become something like: "the external manifestation of your personal sense of your social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of *youngness, adulthood, seniority or other gender identity* which can correlate with your observed *age* or can differ from it through behavior, mannerisms, and appearance that are socially associated with youngness, adulthood, seniority or other gender identity."
See what I mean?
And this brings in my second problem with the discourse... the goddamn neo/xenogenders/pronouns.
Xir/xer? Fae/faer? Cat/catself? Tree/treeself? God/godself? What the fuuuuuuuuu--
It's completely chaotic! There's no logic, no sense! How can someone's gender/pronoun be "cat" or "fairy" or "god" ??? What's their common denominator? Where is the division? What's the linking coincept between those nonsensical "pronouns?" A defined and shared theme must be the base of gender divisions: for male/female/enby, it's sex; for youngness/adulthood/seniority, it's age/time; and for alive/non-alive, it's life. What is the shared concept linking cat, fairy, xir, and god!?
How can your Human gender (kind/sort) be "cat" ? A Human man? Makes sense. A Human senior? Makes sense. A Human alive? Still makes sense! A Human cat? WTF!? Cats are animals... Humans are animals! How can one's gender (kind/sort) be another animal when we are already an animal? It's just wild and nonsensical!
Honestly, those "neo/xenogenders/pronouns" really sound like attention-seeking tools, or rather... attempts at some sort of hyper individualization & dehumanization. Forget having to identify as male, female or intersex or nonbinary, it's... it's almost like they just don't want to identify as humans at all! I mean... what the hell are the "social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of a fae? Or a cat? Or a plant? Or god?"
That's where I am completely flabbergasted and cannot wrap my mind around the heck those "neo/xenogenders/pronouns" are supposed to convey. Some folks conflate sexes and genders by accident because the definitions are linked by one's birth sex, and it's understandable... but some really, really want and dream of abolishing the concept of "sex" altogether and replace it with gender, but they don't replace "sex" in the definition of gender for another thematic concept; they don't attempt to give a coherent definition at times.
And I can't shake off the feeling it's all because the majority of people have drastically bad literary and reading comprehensions. I have the impression lots of people into "xenogenders" are trying to convey... personality traits? Characteristics? Like... if someone says their gender is "cat/catself," it feels like they try to convey "I am feline" and not literally (at least I hope not literally) "I am a cat." I fail to see how any of these can even make sense as "genders," and it really, really gives out vibes of trying to be "personality/character traits" if my vision/explication of it makes sense.
I'd very much like your impressions on the topic if you have any, and if you feel like sharing :P Sorry for the novel, but it's just impossible to talk about this stuff in just 4000 characters lol I've echoed a lot of my best friend's fiancée (transwoman too) here, and she's even more critical of everything around transgenderism, pronouns, genders, etc. than any of our group friend. Thanks for taking your time to read/listen
🙇♂
I confess that ever since it became an issue about 10 years ago now... My answer to the pronoun question and its variants has always been, "I don't care... you choose."
Edit Paused at 12:45... It felt good to hear someone else say this.
I just yesterday participated in RUclips comments discussion about pronouns (I was bored and sometimes it’s fun). I was so excited while watching this video because the points are spot on. I especially liked how you pointed out how difficult it is to basically remap the referential point of some pronouns. That not something that people often consciously do in their native language, and it’s kinda hard.
And now couple of side-comment non sequiturs:
Your friend with the “N--a” pronoun is seriously GOD-TEIR. I wish I were at that conference to hear the discussions that came out of that.👏
That “zaddy” came out of nowhere and cracked me up! 😂
So happy to hear someone say (kind of) the same thing I like to say: "I don't care how you talk about me, as long as you do it behind my back."
i don’t like that two faced shit. if someone’s going to disrespect me, i’d rather they not be a coward about it
@@aaaaaaaa9189 Again, though, as Doctor Jones says, you cater what you say to your audience (within reason). If 'Xe' is not going to land and people won't understand what you're talking about, you can either preface it with a little explanation, if you have an opportunity, or you go with a more straightforward substitution like 'they'.
Not saying people who deliberately deadname or misgender you behind your back, specifically because you're not there, are in the right.
Excellent video! The current debate on preferred pronouns and possessive adjectives (his/her/their) is something which seems to be more linguistically relevant in the Anglosphere than in other languages. In Italian, personal pronouns are not the main indicators of gender. The pronoun is often omitted when it is in the nominative case and it is clear from context who we are talking about. E.g.: "Alex ha 28 anni. Insegna francese" (Alex is 28. [He/she] teaches French. It is not specified whether Alex is a man or a woman). The possessive adjective takes the grammatical gender of the object, NOT of the person who owns it. So, "la sua valigia" means "his/her suitcase"; "sua" is feminine because valigia is fem. "Il suo ombrello" means his/her umbrella, "suo" is masculine. On the other hand, all Italian nouns and adjectives have masculine and feminine desinences, so it would be impossible to talk at length about a person without disclosing his/her/their gender.
In Czech, possessive pronouns are on a "gender matrix": You need to pick the right combination of the gender of the object and the gender of the owner. It is a challenge even for the native speakers. (Plus, there are 4 grammatical genders in Czech.)
@@adam_sporka same in German. If applied correctly, you will know both the gender of the possessor, as well as of the object in question, from the possessive pronouns/article. I like it, it seems more precise to me. Since most people use the pronoun you d expect for themselves, anyway, it works very well, overall. It's sth i don't love about Italian / Spanish, this increased ambiguity from the skipped pronouns. It sometimes seems a bit sloppy to me. Woke texts with an overabundance of singular use they/them just end up being confusing and way less precise, usually, where relatively often i lose track of who is being referred to, completely needlessly.
As a Spanish native speaker the problem comes with the gender suffixes, girls a, boys o, non-binary e, x or even @ used in adjectives. Possessives we have su, we don't care for the gender of object or subject. Pronouns are usually dropped anyway.
@@Wandering.Homebody I am learning German as a Spanish speaker and I can see what you mean we support ourselves on the verb for a lot of things, German is more precise in a lot of things by the use of other parts of the sentence.
@@patax144 the verbs aren't gendered in Spanish in any way though?
My hobby of learning six languages has left me feeling out of place and even lonely in our native monolingual USA. So glad to have found your program on RUclips. I am not completely alone any more! Thanks 👍👍
The United States and Canada are (or were) home ot more than 300 different indigenous languages!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas#/media/File:Langs_N.Amer.svg
Omg yes, people really do oversell how “easy” learning to use gender pronouns naturally can be. Like I don’t want to call you something that makes you uncomfortable either but it took me years to not use he and she interchangeably even tho I was fluent in every other dimension of English because my mother tongue is Cantonese and we don’t have gendered pronouns period. We use the same word 佢 for everything, be you a man or a woman or a table. A lot of my friends and family till this day haven’t gotten the he and she thing down either. The insistence that pronouns can be learnt easily just seems incredibly English-centric.
I'm so glad you addressed this! I mostly try to avoid the issue and I opt for "kind", too, when the situation arises. Such times.
Nuance, Intention, Consent, and Empathy are how I try to approach everything. And yes I made it a cute little acronym for y'all. If a word interferes with a person's life and they express that to me, it's out of my lexicon for that person. The learning curve is a worthy sacrifice for me! _There's a period of grace for well-intentioned people during adjustment periods._ If my friend Katherine wants to be called Katie now, it will take a minute, but I'll do my dangedest to learn.
This is how I try to do it. I'm honestly shocked and pleasantly surprised that someone mentioned intention at all. It seems like lately people are more interested in arguing than considering the possibility that someone who disagrees with you simply sees things differently from you and doesn't mean any harm. You just keep being you.
What if someone asks you to refrain from using “cis?” Luckily, the prefix can be easily removed without altering the meaning of the word, at least in regard to cismen or ciswomen, (which has now been expanded to cismale & cisfemale). However, when it comes to respect, feelings, or empathy, it’s usually one-sided. Those who demand respect very rarely extends it to others.
@@name02 A lot of trans people would rather not be called "trans" but we still do it anyway. I don't see how it's one-sided. Maybe this is a big city/blue state issue I'll never be able to wrap my head around??
@@name02 If someone asked me in good faith not to describe them that way, I would absolutely abide! However, most people don't request that because 1) like you mentioned, "cis" is the implied default and is usually only used when specifying that someone is NOT cis; 2) "cis" and "trans" are considered neutral descriptors, like tall, short, fat, thin, blonde, bald, human, or two-legged.
Maybe you don't like being called fat, so you might use other terms like chunky/obese/marshmallow bouncy house. We work around the words out of respect to individuals (in the event they even need describing). But none of these adjectives are inherently negative beyond what stigma is around at the time. It's not like calling someone spiteful or violent or even loyal or saintly. Just neutral adjectivity.
So, even if you're hairless and don't want to be described as bald, I'll respect that, even though I probably wasn't focused on your hair count in the first place. 💇♀💇♂💇👱♂
Also, I'm sorry you've encountered so many people to whom you've shown respect but didn't feel it back. That's absolutely irritating! My hope for you is that when you encounter this, you continue to be the bigger (read: marshmallow bouncy house) person and keep being respectful anyway. I truly respect your respect thus far and appreciate you reading my blahblahs.🤎
How is cis disrespectful?
I'm agender (it/its), and I couldn't agree more! Great video!
I feel like this is one of those issues where the problem is exacerbated by media (both social and traditional) amplifying extreme opinions. In reality I've never met anyone who got angry if someone used the wrong pronouns for them, provided they weren't doing it deliberately to cause hurt or make a point. (This isn't to say it didn't upset them to be misgendered, but they didn't take this out on the other person if it was perceived to be an honest mistake.) Similarly, I haven't actually met anyone who would deliberately use the wrong pronouns for someone when they'd been made aware of the correct ones, even if they actually didn't "believe" in trans or gender non conforming people. I'm not saying these two people don't exist, but reading the arguments put forward in mainstream media could lead you to believe that everyone on the planet could be categorised either as a respectful human being who always does their best to get everyone's pronouns right or one of these two types of people I've never met.
Indeed. There are definitely exaggerations all around.
Exactly!! I have people misgendering me, even calling me a woman outright, not just "she" but only one single person does it to make a point. Everyone else simply isn't capable of understanding the subject (I'm autistic myself so I'm constantly around people with differently functioning brains) I let them. In fact, I'm the one who told them it's okay. I did ask that they refrain from using any gendered terms other than pronouns, like "woman" since those aren't needed while not using gendered pronouns in German is linguistic heII (it feels too awkward and I respect that, and I can't afford to 'fix' my body so it's difficult to remember I prefer "he") but I get that they just can't remember and I tell the people that do use the correct terms that I greatly appreciate them, but also that there's no need to correct anyone because I know they don't have bad intentions. Even the one who does it to make a point ( and also might be waiting for me to negatively react) is autistic. I know the reason he's so rightist and so severely against trans people is because he whole heartedly believes that biology is all there is and humans aren't anything more than our outer shells
@@rigure I wonder if you can find a way to prompt "the one who does it to make a point" to go on an "autistic special interest" dive into the intricacies of biological sex (the myriad forms of intersexuality in humans, sex in other species, etc.). Might change the outlook, indirectly??? :)
@@DavidLindes Hehe I guess I could try to get him interested ^-^ I do think his aversion to a lot of humans is quite deeply rooted, so I'm not sure he won't just fight any interest he might get, but it may be worth a shot!
Definitely. Offline, politeness tends to win. I don't 'believe' in gender identity or trans and still happily use people's preferred pronouns, because why wouldn't I? They're just trying to live their best life and be comfortable, only an asshole would deliberately undermine that.
The comment around the 10:20 minute mark that “you might deeply offend your listener” is obviously not the case except for the most inane of tumblr/twitter trolls. Most trans people are not going to be offended by accidental misgendering. It is only a deliberate disregard for someone’s desired gender identity that is truly offensive. A simple example is if you were a cis guy and someone kept calling you by she/her deliberately because they saw you cry. They are imposing their sense of masculine standards on you and intentionally stating that they do not consider you a part of the gender you identify as.
"offend" is probably the wrong word, but you could easily make someone feel deeply uncomfortable. For instance by accidentally pointing out that they don't present as the gender they want to as well as they think they do.
@ellies_music It's not just about presenting, though. I know very few people who are trying to pass as cisgender. If it's a stranger, the most it could tell me about my presentation is how much I look transgender.
It's more about the other person's conceptions; when someone misgenders you, it tells you about them, their current handle on internalizing pronouns, how they see you, and/or whether they're affirming of your identity.
@@gwensmosh5532 yeah, I broadly agree, it's multifaceted and I was just giving an example
@@gwensmosh5532 I would feel uncomfortable but if you transition anywhere near the public eye you get used to it pretty quickly.
I certainly wouldn't be offended unless it was done with malice.
And I guess we hang out in pretty different circles because most trans people I know do want to "pass". I sure do and I'm pretty happy that's tge default for me now.
@@gwensmosh5532 Everybody knows what sex you are. People start learning to tell the sexes apart when they are babies. That's why even the slowest language learner picks up all the correct pronouns by age the age of four or five.
15:11 I've met several people who prefer to be referred to as "it". Meanwhile, a lot of transphobes refer to trans people as "it" in order to dehumanize them. This understandably has caused tension.
I very much appreciate your balanced look at the issue. As I’ve been exploring what it means to have an identity, I’ve been really struggling to understand pronouns as a function within myself and those around me (neopronouns being the hardest to understand), and I really like the approach of “show love and respect regardless of whether it’s your pronouns or someone else’s”.
I was born male and present very masculine, so people who see me IRL almost universally call me by masculine pronouns, but since my customer service voice was feminine, working at a call center made people call me all sorts of pronouns. It never made me upset (although I thought to myself then that it probably should have), but you making the argument that pronouns function as a way to relate to someone else makes it fine if someone misgenders me without it being an inclusivity issue.
Not really sure where my journey of self discovery will take me but it feels like I’m never gonna be upset by someone using pronouns I don’t identify with, and I really appreciate your care and concern in dealing with a really divisive topic!
This is by far the most nuanced take on pronouns I've seen yet. And you're absolutely right that it's not really about pronouns, it's about acceptance.
I also adore the little detail at 20:48! Even with all the talk over choosing how you're referred to, being respectful is still just, nice, isn't it?
that's the issue. You don't have a right to force people to go along with what YOU believe. It has nothing to do with respect any more than a religious person forcing someone to pray does.
@@alexthompson8977 nobody is forcing you to get their pronouns right tho? You have free will and freedom of speech, you don’t have to say someone’s preferred pronouns. But there will still be consequences for doing that.
@@ChespinCraft " But there will still be consequences for doing that." There being "consequences" for not conforming to your personal belief is the root of the issue. It literally is against free speech to ruin someone's life over not wanting to go along with a specific political ideology(and yes it is political).
Choosing how you're referred to shows you have on respect for others. We choose, you are not even in the room.
@@ChespinCraft they do force us. Parents in Canada can go to jail for not using the pronouns a teacher gave to their child, for example. Ideologues want to bring the same law to the UK. You guys claim it is about respect and inclusion but you are the most hateful, intolerant people on the planet.
Do you think we can't see what you're doing when the OP says "choosing how you're referred to" and you pretend they are just "someone’s preferred pronouns"? It's called the "motte and bailey" technique - they are being authoritarian in the bailey but you withdraw to the motte when challenged and claim the goal is merely to be kind.
I have never seen a RUclips title use the phrase "woke left" and not be incorrect about everything. Excellent video
I was so worried lol
TRUTH!
And he's even using the term apolitically! (as apposed to as slang/derogatory/meaningless usage)
@wolfblaide Progressive left would be more accurate, my guess is that it was to draw attention tbf. Far right people are more likely to click and listen if they think it's criticizing "woke people". Lol
@@Kjalarrr Well yes, but I don't think "progressive" captures the full intent for the video. "Woke" seems to be better, as it come across initially as wrong or potentially offensive, then you realise it isn't. That fits very well with the video.
This is super helpful, and like anything helpful, is balanced and nuanced and very educational. I'm a therapist who nowadays has been helping a lot of transgender/non-binary teens. While I advocate for them, support them and respect their pronouns...I also remind them that they are asking their family members to make a lot of linguistic shifts and changes, and that the struggle is not the same as rejection. I appreciate that you acknowledge that the tension is normal and necessary, and "dignity" and "respect" is key to bridging the gaps.
I think you made many good points about a very divisive topic. I think this is the best video or discussion I've seen on this topic.
As a linguist myself, I love how you explained everything. I just love how people forget that other languages and cultures exist.
No, some fanatics do know, but they find their culture is the most important one. I have been having such conversations and it was quite annoying. I speak English, Dutch, Chinese and they are all quite different and it is fun to have different views and cultures, but the fanatics just don't care, their view is the only correct one.
I do say FANATICS, so they are the minority for now.
THANK you for making the distinction between linguistic genders and social science genders and tackling/explaining this from a linguistic perspective. Fantastic video!
As someone who wants to pursue a career studying the English language, this was super informative and fun. Thank you.
Fascinating and insightful. Love that you (3rd p. he/him) always present with a a wry sense of humor as well. Me: (gay male, he/him) PH. D. in Slavic Langs & Lits--Russ/Pol, but also studied German, French, Latin, Italian, Mandarin...
Good video. I get aggravated with a call-in show I watch on occasion where the hosts ask each caller their pronouns. If a caller refuses to provide them, the hosts start grilling them over why they refused it instead of just focusing on the question the caller wants to ask which has nothing to do with pronouns, gender, etc.
Why would it be so hard for the caller to say? I agree it would be annoying for the host to keep going on about it though.
@@bayrum9803 exactly its all about control. Accept my ultra progressive view point or you are a heathen. Functioning like a religious purity test.
@@bayrum9803 I'm curious as to what parts of gender radicalism you regard as toxic. I'm... not super well versed, this isn't meant to be provocative or anything. I just wanna learn some more perspectives where I can
@@firenzeval As a trans person who hasn't transitioned yet, it's as he says. When pronouns are a required part of the introduction, I'm either forced to out myself, which isn't something I want to do casually, or I have to tell people to use the wrong pronouns. I assume they'll use the wrong pronouns regardless, but I hate to be the one requesting them. It's like punching myself in the gut. I've managed to almost completely avoid misgendering myself for most of my life, but the required pronouns in introductions make it impossible. It's not the end of the world, just unpleasant.
@@bayrum9803 That's a long winded way of saying you're a transphobe
I realize this is irrelevant to the important issues being discussed here, but I've become hyper aware of avoiding ambiguous pronouns while speaking, and have gotten more comfortable repeating proper nouns in sentences. Since I've been doing that, I've gotten a lot of compliments about how clearly I communicate from people who don't even catch what I'm doing. Even if it wouldn't be totally ambiguous when written down, people often lose track of syntax while listening. Fewer pronouns makes for better communication. It also helps to get into the habit of sharing information specific to individuals first. 'Frank hit Steve after they argued.' instead of 'Frank and Steve argued and he hit him.'
Thanks for a great video!
This is interesting. One workaround for subject verb agreement error elimination is to revise the sentence structure for improved reference. I hadn't thought about it as a way of clarifying pronoun / gender reference.
If I'm writing or talking for a long time I'll just repeat proper nouns so I don't make a mistake. It also makes the re-read easier if I choose to do so. It's a very convenient "waste" of 2-3 seconds lol.
As someone who is trying to overcome the very bad habit of over-using pronouns (i.e., start of conversation me: "so he said..." everyone: "who???"), this is good advice.
I never thought about that, but that makes perfect sense. It also cuts down massively on word usage, which keeps someone's attention better. It also brings the important part up first, which is that Frank hit Steve and then explains why the occurrence took place.
Basically with the Alice example, you'd just rephrase it to fit as one condensed person "Upon seeing the reflection, Alice is/was please with what is see/what was/is there" That one is harder when talking about singular specificity to a person. I spent a few minutes trying to retool his example and that's about the most satisfying one I constructed. It was very hard to not right "what they/he/she saw."
I've started just slurring something like "-aey" "-ee" or "-em" in place of any pronouns
like the demoman tf2
are you Australian?
yeah, I do that sometimes when i'm not sure. I also do the exact same thing with articles when I speak German (which I can only speak a bit of), so I wind up saying like "də" instead of der, die, das
Ey,em,eir are gender neutral neo-pronouns,
So technically Ur not misgendering
yes I generally slur pronouns as well have for many years, it helps me not have to think about it as much, even before considering gender issues
Love your work, and this video brings a lot of great ideas, knowledge, and context.
One small critique, identifying gender and genre only and overlooking the social literature missed the boat. That might be true for some languages that have neutered OR too many genres to count on one hand. However, there’s a wealth of sociology research linking languages with genders that refer to sex and gendered nouns creating more gender bias in the culture. I wish this point had been made.
I also wish the video acknowledged the prejudice that exists toward females in studies where online communications are identical, but the gender of the speaker is switched.
I will be discussing that in a follow up video. I've definitely got enough material for an entire second video.
@ enough for another video, an entire college course, or even a major! Can’t wait!
As someone at least way more interested in linguistics than social subjects, this makes so much sense why our arguments go right past each other as wrong & irrelevant.
I should caution that it is very rare to see people on the right arguing in good faith. Linguistics is inherently a social subject, or at the very least a science whose fabric is composed of human communication and interaction. I would argue that every science and philosophy is, in some regard, social. Even something so remote as, say, chemistry. It is rendered thus by the role of pedagogy in sharing information, in which every teacher must first be taught. Whether or not you can follow this causal chain back to our first analogous, conscious ancestor - wherein said being is an isolated occurrence, which is an assumption that takes great liberty - this is too great a digression to hold relevance. Then we start asking questions like "can the interplay between a subject's mind and the external environment with which it interacts be considered learning?" and then "if so, does the environment teach or does the subject teach itself?" if so "when teaching is an activity, how can something non-conscious and nebulous like one's external environment be said to teach?" and "is it not circular that a subject can teach itself? Does this not suggest the subject possesses some prior knowledge that would, if possessed, render the process of teaching itself unnecessary?" among other questions like "can there be a society of one?" and "is there such a thing as an individual mind?" at which point we have very much ventured outside the scope of linguistics and I need to stop rambling.
Eh, not really.
On the right it's mostly just a complete disregard for people's actual lives. We know that inclusion plays a huge part in reducing things like suicide in trans and other gender non-conforming people. By taking the aggressive "anti-pronoun" space, you just lose any sort of soundness in your argument because the entire foundation is that you do not care if people are excluded from society or even take their own lives. There's just no discourse at all about correct usage, inclusion or how to integrate new language because the right just doesn't care.
On the left it's pretty much just disagreements on how to approach inclusion. Some people take rather aggressive "people who push back will see no sympathy" approaches and some others that take a far more passive approach exactly like in the video. Taking an aggressive approach to inclusion I think is perfectly sound stance to take, especially when the alternative is social isolation or even violence towards those who are different. The argument is just on whether that's an effective approach to changing minds. It often isn't, but there are definitely people out there who are complete lost causes, in which case an aggressive "time to troll them with pronouns" approach is pretty much the best you can do. My uncle, for example, still refuses to refer to my cousin (bearded trans man who's jacked as hell and looks nothing like a woman) as a man using he/him pronouns no matter how much people have corrected him (and no matter how absolutely insane he looks referring to him that way) simply because they're trans. It's been something like 7 years now. That person deserves none of my attention and I take pride in pissing him off.
@@betterbelle29 I totally agree! 💜
@@sinenomine2681I agree with your first sentence. The rest is um heavy philosophical debates.
Conservatism is inherently prescriptive. Linguistic arguments will not phase them, because they believe how THEY think the language SHOULD work is how it works. They are inherently anti-change, and language changes all the time.
Thank you for laying this out so clearly! As a nonbinary person who loves language (I have a BA in English) and also doesn't get offended super easily, I've had this conversation a ton (not as clear-cut as you put it, but I did my best). It can get exhausting. I always try my best to respect people where they're at, and not 'force' anyone to expose themselves or accept anything if they're not ready. I'm always happy to have a conversation and educate when possible, and even though sometimes it can be exhausting, I've had a lot of really great conversations with people and gained a lot of differing perspectives. Language can be super confusing so it's great to find someone like you to try and bridge the gaps that have been created in recent years and share real information.
Crazy how you have a degree in English but still call yourself non binary
@@jacobbaker5442 crazy you think that's a good burn.
@@galaxylynn4434 crazy you think that was an attempt at a burn
@@jacobbaker5442 crazy you think that's a sane take
@@spacegrass6632 crazy how you think that's a sane take
THANK YOU!!! Finally, someone explains it in a non-partisan way and more of a “people just don’t know what they’re talking about” way. Also, thank you, I learned a lot more today. 🙏🏻
Dear me! Thank you for this marvellous video!
I'm a German native speaker, my second language was Italian, English in my "happy language" and Franconian is my dialect. For the last five years I have tried to add a serious amount Swedish to the hodgepodge of European "bits and pieces". Languages are fascinating and I am jealous of your knowledge and understanding....
With this video you have made my day. ❤
My favourite noun gender system comes from the Indigenous Australian language Yanyuwa, which has male (human), female (human), masculine, feminine, foods, trees and tree parts, abstract, body parts, and like 8 different noun classes for referring to people and family members. There's a different Australian language that has a noun class for dangerous things.
Oh, and I also like the way Navajo has a hierarchy of nouns based on animacy, and that is reflected in the word order and postpositions used.
oh so there is a culture that will use "bird" as a pronoun when pertaining to people?
@@colleenprinssen according to Wikipedia there are 16 noun classes and when you say a noun you have to preface it with it's class. If English were like this with the preface ta for food nouns we would have Tabread and tachicken and Heoldman and sheoldwoman.
They also have separate dialects depending on whether you are male or female and a specific form of speech used when talking to a relative who's father (if the relative is male) or mother (if the relative is female) has died.
It fits the conversation despite not being about pronouns because it is a good example how languages can be constructed in vastly different ways and still function.
for the reasons you listed very neatly, i strongly believe there would be some merit in renaming grammatical gender to something like "classes" or indeed even "genres". as you said, it's NOT the same as social gender, and we can all see how much confusion this misleading homonym can cause.
In french, "gender" and "genre" are homonyms too, so I'm biased toward "classes".
Kiswahili presents precisely like this, each with its own patterns for pluralization and declension and conjugation Some examples: the m/wa class mostly for animate objects mtu -person watu-people. Mtu anaenda - a person goes Wati wanaenda- people go. Other classes include ki/vi kiti-chair viti-chairs; ch/by choo-toilet vyoo-toilets. All very systematic (with very few exceptions), highly phonetic, easy to learn yet rich, extensible and entirely free of unneeded masculine/feminine dichotomies.
It’s not that difficult though. Isn’t this stuff that you learn very early on in primary school? It’s weird that gendered words are such a struggle for so many people.
It is an unsatisfying answer because it has a veneer of meaning but is actually built on something entirely arbitrary, and because we try to find patterns and meanings in things we are subconsciously determined to find out why. Saying "the word Stuhl is in the der class" makes it easier to accept and move on. I guess for languages with no articles we'd refer to class A words, which would reintroduce the issue if this language happened to have cocaine in class B.
This is soooooo respectful and levelheaded. Thank you so much!
I am amazed by the amount of highly intelligent statements made by this person. I was looking for some usual hatred, but fortunatelly found some more polished diamond than I have seen for the most of my night yt search period, thanks for marking some important issues and thanks for such a fresh and considering point of view