Re: Being excellent to one another

[Catonano]

2017-03-20 7:36 GMT+01:00 John Darrington <address@hidden>:

On Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 07:57:07PM -0700, address@hidden wrote:
     On Sun, 19 Mar 2017 17:40:27 -0500
     Christopher Allan Webber <address@hidden> wrote:
     > The important thing is to not assume someone's preferred pronouns
     > without knowing them.  Singular they isn't your only option; I also
     > happen to like Spivak pronouns:
     >
     >   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun

     The problem here is that I'd be suprised if many people have even heard
     about these. I used to play MUDs quite a bit and have /never/ heard any
     of those. They are certainly not a part of common usage, and I'd say
     should be avoided for something more standard (them et al). It's a nice
     idea, but overall seems like it would cause confusion, and probably
     more than a few "Hey, there is a typo in the manual"-type bugs than
     anything.

     At least, if I picked up a random bit of documentation and saw things
     like "e" used constantly, I'd assume it was a typo and not some archaic
     gender-neutral pronoun.

I tend to agree.  These invented aspects of language are kindof fun for
informal use but out of place in a user manual.    In a manual we should
stick to proper English - put yourself in the position of a person who
is learning English as a second language.  That person has spent months
attending language school and is starting to become confident then picks
up a manual and sees the words "pis" and "per".  It's enough to throw you
off your stride. (I remember something similar happening to me when learning
a foriegn language: I started reading a novel, and there was lots of dialogue
all in regional dialect. I felt like giving up.)

Fortunately in a user manual one very rarely needs a personal *definite* pronoun.
In GNU manuals, the long standing practise is to refer to the person using the
program, as "you".  Occasionally a personal *indefinite* pronoun is called for and
luckily in English we have a perfect gender neutral one, viz: "one".

Some authors religiously avoid the whole issue altogether by writing every
sentence in the passive voice - but that makes the manual extremely hard to
understand even for very patient readers.

Ok, it' s evident that John has his own weaknesses about linguistics.

I feel compelled to write something anyway, so that a publicly available record of this remains.

When writing texts, such as this email, and absolutely  *have* to use a personal
definite pronoun, I default to "she" because whereas vigilantes will pounce upon
you whenever they see "he" (ironically those people are invariably male), I've
never had anyone complain when "she" occurs where the gender of the subject
might well be masculine.

In life, I've had my share of hardship because of assumed social norms related to sexual orientation.

And a scene has been described to you of people breaking in tears and leaving places because of having been misgendered.

So your observation about who raises the issue, associated to the word "vigilantes" means that you are negating my reasons.

You are implicitly claiming that this is not about suffered discrimination, but rather it' s about imposing discrimination, possibly on an idelogical basis, using the issue of sexual orientation/gendering as a tool.

Like when you wrote that being addressed with a pronoun of the wrong number is not that terrible.

You were negating the issue raised by ng0.

You are being gratuitously offensive, aggressing people and you are being dismissive about people weaknesses that are being represented to you repeatedly.

On the ground of formal linguistic correctness, as if it was a matter or death or life.
And it seems that your argument about your native language is not that convincing, anyway.

What does this make of you ?