Re: Being excellent to one another

[Catonano <catonano@gmail.com>]

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2017-03-20 7:36 GMT+01:00 John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au>:

> On Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 07:57:07PM -0700, dian_cecht@zoho.com wrote:
>      On Sun, 19 Mar 2017 17:40:27 -0500
>      Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> 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 ?

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