and that an engineer that has so little empathy as to not understand why the use of gendered pronouns is a concern almost certainly makes poor technical decisions as well.
Uuuuh, yeah, except for the little bit about the English language having notoriously poor support for gender neutral pronouns in the first place. TBH, blindly substituting "them" and "they" everywhere will result in sentences that are incorrect. It doesn't take a huge lack of empathy to suggest that it's better to write in a way that's grammatically correct while asking people to accept either:
a. the generic use of "he" OR "she" as a universal singular pronon
or
b. randomly switching between the two throughout the document as way of indicating inclusiveness.
Gender is the grammar layer above sex. Sex informs gender. Gender is not a purely social construct out of nowhere. In English, there is the ternary, but it is defined as without the male/female. People generally don't like being called it though. Even if they have a special snowflake prounoun such as xer which they prefer the rest of the world can't know this and so it is fair and reasonable to call them what they look like they most identify out of the binary. Or we can just stop using pronouns altogether, even in industries largely of men, because we wouldn't want to make it seem like women can't take part in them (even when there is nothing stopping them). I'd be fine with that. Men don't exist anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAuqkqxk9A
>It is also informed by sex, but that is only one influence.
Right, so it's not fair to say that gender != sex when gender is the grammatical expression of a sex within an environment's constraints.
>You are confusing grammatical gender with gender identity.
The grammar is the expression of masculine and feminine, which vary based on constraints, but still stick to the sexual binary. Going beyond that is special snowflake territory where people invent their own thing to be unique while expecting to be taken seriously. Complaining that people don't use your preferred pronoun is a perfect case for first world problems.
My original comment you replied to "There are human genders other than male and female? Scientific or imaginary?"
All else other than male (primary masculine) and female (primary feminine) are imaginary, and not based on biological reality. Those things do not merit being taken seriously no more than any religion or superstition. Male and female based sexes will always be re-expressed in very similar ways, as they have all over the world in varying civilizations, while others will never be the same. I'ts the same as religions or ideologies. It is complete fabrication of the mind. If people want to invent new identities fine, but white washing away him and her so that all of the other newly minted pronouns don't feel left out is ridiculous.
>Hi, I'm Caramelkh. I'm demisexual, polyromantic, fat positive genderqueer (neutrois, femme presenting), sexual assault survivor (7 times), native American, Muslim neuroatypical with OCD, cotard delusion, trimethylaminuria, social phobias, depression, post traumatic stress, anxiety issues and I can't walk very far. On my blog I will NOT tolerate any form of oppressive bullshit language and I will not hesitate to call you out on it. My preferred pronouns are ze/zy/zo/zum. After reading my about me section above, you still know nothing about me other than that the long list of labels means I get to have experienced nearly every type of kyriarchy oppression and so I can call people out on anything and say it triggers and offends me. If people get bored, I invent new oppressions. I'm triggered by the color teal.
Or better yet the new thing of people insisting to be called only by the pronoun brony.
Gender identity is not at all the “grammatical expression of a sex within an environment’s constraints”. It is ‘a person's sense of self as a member of a particular gender.‘ — http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gender_identity
> All else other than male (primary masculine) and female (primary feminine) are imaginary, and not based on biological reality. Those things do not merit being taken seriously no more than any religion or superstition.
Complete and utter bullshit, evidenced by how the ideas of “masculine” and “feminine” vary between and even within societies. These ideas are hardly the same “all over the world in varying civilizations”. Please, please read the Wikipedia article on Gender Identity, especially the section on non-western gender identities. It is such a different concept than classifying nouns.
Even grammatical gender is hardly consistent or strict with its being informed by sex. In Spanish, a man’s shirt would still be “la camisa”, a feminine noun. A female cheetah would still be called “el guepardo”. This insistence on adhering to biological sex — which itself isn’t even always binary — as a strict basis for gender makes no sense.
Grammar is how an idea is communicated. If a person has an identity they want to share then the pronouns they use communicate their identity, but if they use an uncommonly used pronoun then their identity is not understood, not communicated, and if gender neutral pronouns are used then no identity is communicated, or it's just completely confusing as is the case with using xer. I'm fine with people inventing identities outside of the binary, I'm fine with cultures having outliers to the natural occurring roles the constraints of reality offer, because all cultures and languages developed in different environments with different forces pushing and pulling. What bothers me is the white washing of the binary male/female him/her in an attempt to represent everyone when people invent their own identities which did not occur naturally as a consequence of environment. If a culture has some instances where definite articles are sometimes out of what is naturally expected from the basic grammar then that's cool, but it's still not the norm. You mention because they are exceptions not because they are everywhere.
>, evidenced by how the ideas of “masculine” and “feminine” vary between and even within societies
I did say that they did vary in an earlier comment, but they still follow the biological binary. They are a product of biology. I'm talking from experience of being around different cultures and I have never been in one where men are not generally male and women are not generally female. The same gender roles also still exist, because the dimorphic nature of humans make different behaviors more advantageous for each sex to do.
I'm aware of things like XYY syndrome, but expression wise they are still male.
>third gender
Transpeople exist, yeah! Like in an earlier comment I also said that there is a third option in English the it, but transpeople don't like that word as far as I know because it has a history of being derogatory as is illustrated in the wikipedia page as people being seen as without gender. They are people with gender dysphoria, because they generally would have rather been born the other gender. For whatever reason, as they developed their hormones were not at the male/female ideals and so they expressed in different ways outside of the male/female ideal ranges, and their behavior expressed in ways not common within their natural sex, so they become outcasts being not really attractive or useful to either natural sex in traditional societies. I empathize with their suffering, but I still see it for what it is. There is no plethora of varying genders divorced from sex. There is a lot of made up stuff though with no basis in science. "Social science" isn't.
In English we do have a grammar with gender, and I know that there are generally assumptions about gender/sex which people want to change, and many I do not agree with. How far away is that from real human suffering? How serious should we really take a person who looks like a male within our culture and is offended with a person calls this person a him?
>It is such a different concept than classifying nouns.
Why reply at all to my original post then when the person I was replying to was talking about pronouns, and I was clearly using the word gender defined as an attribute of sex.
If you can make the world a better place with less human suffering then good luck. I see it all as being biologically informed and so useless to even bother with. This dialog is useless too. You've not given me any new information and I already have reflected on it all and I see it as another way. It's not worth either of our time to continue, so, good day to you, xer.
Uuuuh, yeah, except for the little bit about the English language having notoriously poor support for gender neutral pronouns in the first place. TBH, blindly substituting "them" and "they" everywhere will result in sentences that are incorrect. It doesn't take a huge lack of empathy to suggest that it's better to write in a way that's grammatically correct while asking people to accept either:
a. the generic use of "he" OR "she" as a universal singular pronon
or
b. randomly switching between the two throughout the document as way of indicating inclusiveness.