I’ve knowingly met three, I think, but never received a pronoun request. Of course, it’s highly unlikely for me to use a third person pronoun when talking to someone.
I actually have a harder time with non trans people sometimes on telling if the person is a man or women tbh.
1 Like
Yeah, I know. You have a few drinks…
Thank you. I was confused by picking up words like coal miner, astronaut, gay, etc.
nonbinary genders are more difficult concept than trans gender for me.
Regarding a gender-specific pronoun as an error in reference to a gender-specific job is logical, for example if you meet a male nurse, ask ___ how much ___ earns. The only plausible pronouns are him and he (unless you have an elaborate scenario that takes time to explain), so her and she can be regarded as errors.
Now try this: if you meet a nurse, ask ___ how much ___ earns. If you reach for the female pronouns, that’s understandable, because of statistics. If you reach for the male pronouns because we were just talking about male nurses, that’s also understandable. If you have no specific context, using the male pronouns is not incorrect, because nurses can be male. There’s no need to get upset about it.
If you meet a coal miner, ask her how much she earns may sound unusual, but there’s nothing elaborate that needs to be explained (except to time travelers or Rip Van Winkle types) for it to be grammatically correct and also understood.
The fact that some people get upset about using one pronoun or the other in a generic context is one reason why the phrase he or she exists.
The principle at work here is exactly the same as the one in
- oh but your name sounds Irish, so you can’t be black, or
- oh but your name sounds German, so you can’t be Asian, or
- oh but your passport is from country X, and according to our MOFA that means your native language is Xese, so you’re qualified to teach Xese and not qualified to teach Yese, or even
- oh but you’re Asian, so even though you have a US passport we still can’t hire you as a native English teacher.
Statistically speaking there is a rationale for each of these, but the more you think about them, the less rational they turn out to be, in these crazy modern times. 
So, how many women in any given profession would need to break through the glass ceiling before you would stop regarding them as mistakes?
Are “generic” female pronouns for the job of generic prime minister still unacceptable? 
What about the job of British Prime Minister? Or do we need to wait for a third, fourth, or twentieth one?
(Whether anyone “should” or “wants to” be mining coal, floating in space, or trying to run a dreary little kingdom off the coast of Europe has nothing to do with it.)
I took that to mean any of the three, not just all three together.
Etymologically you have a point: to err is to wander, to stray, to deviate. The problem is that it’s strongly negative in modern usage, so you’re looking at a biological fact, then imposing a value judgement, and then saying that judgement is also a biological fact. There’s a question of objectivity.
The vlogger who started this whole discussion said in one of the videos that 君 is married but not planning to have children at this time because 君 and 君’s husband can’t afford to do so. That sounds like any normal young committed couple from a western country these days, or even from various non-western countries.
You asked for one advantage of having an unconventional gender identity. Um hello? Here in the Andy Warhol future, anything that can attract attention passes for an economic asset (whether one actually wants to exploit it or not).
You also noted that humans like not having too many choices. This is logical. If you have infinite choices, how are you supposed to spend infinite time considering them?
Okay. Now have you noticed the dating pool is larger than it’s ever been in all of history? (I mean for humans who don’t cross the species line. Sorry @rocket.)
People apply filters. This is also logical: if I’m not choosy, I’ll probably end up with someone who’s a bad match. Some people have very strict filters resulting in shockingly small (for 2017) pools. Yet did humans not live in shockingly small (for 2017) communities for most of their existence? Did they not generally manage to reproduce anyway?
Way back when, suppose having a specific mutation made you undesirable except to others with the same mutation. That sounds like an evolutionary disadvantage. But if the percentage with that mutation stays the same, while the dating pool becomes billions of people larger, suddenly it’s not the disadvantage it used to be, and it may even reach the point where it makes the mate selection process easier for the people with the mutation, if they don’t pay much attention to (i.e. don’t waste much time on) people without the mutation.
Also, the fact that some people find a particular mutation undesirable does not mean all people do. For example it seems that 君’s husband is what we might call a non-mutant for the purpose of this discussion, and though we can’t be sure, it stands to reason that said husband doesn’t see 君’s identity as a negative, or else they wouldn’t be married and talking about whether or not they can afford to have kids.
(Note: I’m speaking hypothetically about mutations, in response to your supposition that @Erospooky is genetically disadvantaged. I don’t actually have a position on whether or not, or to what extent, unconventional gender identity is biological.)
Tl/dr: I generally believe in live and let live but happen to like picking apart Comrade Finsky’s arguments. 
The phrase has certain uses (see below) but it’s mostly a waste of ink.
I know I often violate it, but a basic principle of good writing is to never use two words when one will do.
It’s a matter of style, not grammar. The aim is to not make the reader stop and ponder (Chinese writers would argue with that, of course).
It doesn’t matter if female coal miners exist; any reader, male or female, will have an image of a coal miner in his or her head, viz., a large male with a flat cap. Writing ‘she’ scribbles all over that image with a black marker and makes the reader construct a new one.
Pick up any corporate shareholder’s report and you’ll find it’s grammatically correct (and probably politically correct). It’ll also be unreadable.
No. Just because the writer has written ‘he’, he is not making a political statement. He’s just trying to get the job done. Authors are pretty much 50-50 male and female, but I seriously can’t be bothered to hit six keys instead of two.
It doesn’t have anything to do with pronouns, but it has a lot to do with whether women really are “liberated” or not. Women have access to a whole load of shit jobs that used to be the preserve of men; so now we have a lot of women wasting time on things that, originally, only men were wasting time on. Some people think that’s a wonderful thing. I think it’s a criminal waste of life-hours.
Of course all of them - and as I clarified later, the nature of the underlying mechanism. Simply being statistically unusual doesn’t make something a mistake.
Nope, you’re imposing the judgement. If my boss said to me “you screwed this up”, the fact of the matter might be objectively true and beyond dispute. How we each react to that mistake determines whether the mistake can be salvaged, learned from, smoothed over, or turned to advantage.
Returning to the no-arms-and-legs example, I hope you’ll accept that that is unequivocally a genetic mistake. Anyone born with this condition has a big problem. I don’t think many people would be unkind enough to suggest they should be quietly put down for the good of the species; they often turn out to be very inspirational people. OTOH one would not be very inspirational if one spent the rest of one’s life whining and moaning, even though you’d have massive justification for doing so. Sometimes life sucks, and it sucks for some people more than others.
OK, I’ll buy that, although you would need to be Andy Warhol talented to exploit it. If you were an ordinary nobody, you’d just be a bit weird.
For the ordinary straight man or woman, yes. I was speaking specifically of people with unusual gender conformations. A very small number times a big number is generally still a small number.
I’d also debate whether this is true. Although some people are prepared to cross continents to find a life partner, most are not: the modern dating pool is still pretty much a 50-mile radius, if that. IIRC there is some research on the matter, but I can’t be bothered to google it right now.
As per my post above, lesbians appear to have a very small dating pool available because of the nature of their filters. And lesbians are not particularly unusual. The dating pool for someone of indeterminate gender and indeterminate sexuality must be approaching zero even if their filters are switched off.
Your argument might be valid in some circumstances, but I was speaking specifically of a sub-1% population whose mutation (or whatever you want to call it) absolutely would be undesirable to the majority, and possibly even to people with the same mutation. Assuming the individual is fertile, reproduction becomes so difficult that it might not be worth bothering with.
So do most people. The eternal (and fundamentally insoluble) problem of life is: how and where does your right to exist trespass upon my right to exist? Different people draw the lines in different places, and that’s what keeps politicians in employment instead of on the streets begging $5 for a chai latte.
I noticed.
Perhaps they have no choice in the matter because most governments only accepts binary gender, so they are forced into one at birth. Kind of like mot Taiwanese Aboriginals using Chinese names as their official names.
why? this logic I cannot understand.
someone of indeterminate gender and indeterminate sexuality does not necessarily need to date with another someone of indeterminate gender and indeterminate sexuality.
1 Like
Obviously. But have a think about who would be interested in dating them.
If you’re a straight man locked inside a club frequented by 99% gay women, how big is your immediate, um, dating pool? From your point of view, it’s a lot. From theirs, zero.
You’re mis-equating gender self-identity (the issue under discussion) with gender sexual preference, which is another issue entirely.
The OP’s nonbinary status refers to their (see how easy that was??) zone of self-identification. There’s nothing in that that defines who (or what) they prefer as a romantic partner.
I don’t think 99% of strait or gay/lesbian people filter out someone nonbinary gender. I guess much more than 1% of people would be ok with the nonbinary gender. Just my guess with no basis, though.
I’d totally go out with a nonbinary chick if she had a smokin’ hot bod. Is that sexist?
1 Like
Yup
1 Like
If she , they?, is interested in you.
1 Like
Hey, I’m just trying to be inclusive. Everybody has to do their part, you know?
1 Like
Yeah, that would be the tricky part
Hopefully they could forgive me for the sin of being a heterosexual cis-gender male. See, I’m even calling her “they.”
That would probably be the least of their concerns
I thought the correct way would be:
If you meet a nurse. Ask them how much they earn.
If you meet a pilot. Ask them if they drank before the flight.
If you meet a teacher. Ask them how they keep their sanity.
I am beginning to understand why non-binary would request they / them based on all this discussion. I appreciate the honest conversation and lack of judgement. I may not agree with changing language, but I have no problems with what anyone wants to be.
I have met a few MTF transgender in my life, as friends. They were always very clearly presenting as female, so out of respect, I used the female pronouns. No harm done.
I have never met a non-binary person in person that I know of.
2 Likes
OK, I’ll switch from meat to soy too (temporarily), and pretend I voted for Hillary.