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On September 09 2026 06:37 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think that's nonsense. I have conversed with a lot of people (including very 'woke' people working at the English linguistics department in the university in trondheim) whose reaction to learning that 'they/them' was supposed to be used as a pronoun to refer to individuals was bafflement. I don't mind doing it because I'm not the president of languages and I'll go with whatever society goes with because like, that's how languages work, but it still fundamentally doesn't make sense to me.
Singular they/them to describe a person of an unknown or irrelevant gender is older than modern English, it fell out of use because style manuals in the 18th century discouraged it but it can be found in the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer and Jane Austen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
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Norway28915 Posts
On September 09 2026 07:00 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 06:37 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think that's nonsense. I have conversed with a lot of people (including very 'woke' people working at the English linguistics department in the university in trondheim) whose reaction to learning that 'they/them' was supposed to be used as a pronoun to refer to individuals was bafflement. I don't mind doing it because I'm not the president of languages and I'll go with whatever society goes with because like, that's how languages work, but it still fundamentally doesn't make sense to me.
But when I talk about not wanting society to be genderless because this to me is a change that is more trouble than its worth - languages is actually part of it, and this might be hard to understand because your native tongue is English, which isn't a gendered language. Norwegian however, has gendered nouns. While - to be fair - these are subject to change both based on dialect and sociolect (more radical left people have tended to use 'a' ending, indicating female gender of the noun, while more conservative people have tended to use more 'en' ending, indicating male gender of the noun), I think insisting that car should now, in Norwegian, be considered 'it' rather than he or she (this is one of the words where you're allowed to choose) is more trouble than its worth. This also applies to spanish, arabic, french, german - and many other languages. I mean - changing languages to make them more inclusive, like my aforementioned example of saying firefighter instead of fireman - totally, it makes sense, but a lot of it just isn't discriminatory, it just is.
Like, just because people disagree with you or your solutions doesn't mean they are hostile. Here's my logical chain: I accept that there are places in the world where we do not know gender, but assume gender. Right here is a noteworthy place, you can 'safely assume' the people you are interacting with are male. I accept that this behaviour unnecessarily alienates non-males. I accept that myself pushing towards using gender-neutral pronouns (Specifically they/them) when I don't know someone's gender is a small action I can take to counteract the above point. I accept that if I'm willing to use they/them as someone's pronouns before I know better, I should be able to use they/them if requested. I'm curious where we diverge. All of the above fundamentally makes sense, where does it not fundamentally make sense to you?
I'm guessing around part 2. I think if I am in a place where you can safely assume that you are interacting with a male, then using 'he' is entirely reasonable until you are informed otherwise. I entirely agree with using the requested pronouns, but I see no convincing reason why I would refer to a new, unfamiliar poster as 'they' or 'them' if the poster hasn't made any effort to indicate their (this one was ok) preferred pronouns. This would be confusing to me, because I would assume someone was talking about more than one person. Honestly, if I were to enter some internet community where 97% of the users identified as men, I'd honestly feel a bit weird being characterized as 'they' - not that it would bother me - but I'd be like, 'huh'. As for GH, GH to my knowledge for the first decade+ of his stay at this website identified as a black man. The genderqueer/fluid element is relatively new. I think it's entirely expectable and understandable that people aren't cued in - and that mistakes will be made.
Like, I get - and agree - that the majority has a responsibilitey to learn about how minorities feel about different issues and to take some steps to at least not alienate them. But I also think that if you are a small minority whose minority status is not immediately visible to other people, people not treating you as part of that minority before they know you are part of that minority, isn't really a problem. If I see a person wearing sunglasses I'm still going to operate under the assumption that this person has functional eyesight - whereas if there's a white cane present, I won't. If I communicate visually with the blind sunglasses person and I go like yo can you respond after he doesn't, I'll feel silly after being informed of his or her visual impairment, but I'd feel it was unreasonable to be described as hostile.
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Norway28915 Posts
On September 09 2026 07:03 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 06:37 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think that's nonsense. I have conversed with a lot of people (including very 'woke' people working at the English linguistics department in the university in trondheim) whose reaction to learning that 'they/them' was supposed to be used as a pronoun to refer to individuals was bafflement. I don't mind doing it because I'm not the president of languages and I'll go with whatever society goes with because like, that's how languages work, but it still fundamentally doesn't make sense to me. Singular they/them to describe a person of an unknown or irrelevant gender is older than modern English, it fell out of use because style manuals in the 18th century discouraged it but it can be found in the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer and Jane Austen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
Yes, which doesn't mean it comes naturally to people who speak modern English.
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I'm a little surprised people working at an English linguistics department would be baffled by it.
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Norway28915 Posts
That is fair- but they're still predominantly native scandinavians.
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On September 09 2026 06:40 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 05:19 Artesimo wrote:On September 09 2026 05:11 dyhb wrote:On September 09 2026 04:22 Artesimo wrote:On September 09 2026 03:42 dyhb wrote:
You're skipping past the most important part. Is the person saying, "A man is an adult human male" committing an error by making it a simple substitution? I presume you disagree with the statement, since some people use man and woman to express a nuanced gender identity partially or entirely divorced from biological sex. But you haven't told me if you disagree and why.
Not at all actually. This started with On September 08 2026 20:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
One could simply say that a man is an "adult human male", but then "male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. We could say that a man / someone who is male usually-but-not-always has XY chromosomes, usually-but-not-always has testes, usually-but-not-always produces sperm, usually-but-not-always can grow facial hair, and usually-but-not-always has a ton of other features. Which was followed up by you with On September 09 2026 01:16 dyhb wrote:
You don't think the controversy is saying that a man is an adult human male? I didn't know what male had all the baggage that man did. If you wanted to question if substituting man with "adult human male", you could have done so, but you didn't. Instead you straight jumped to "how is male controversial" in response to DarkPlasmaBall clearly laying out a logical construct where you either substitute the terms or one becomes a subset of the other and thus inherits all the complexity and controversy as I described in my response. You either failed to understand that, or asked the wrong question. Personally I don't really care of its definition past "sex and gender are 2 different things" and "what does the person I am talking to understand/mean when they hear/say the word". Having dabbled in some linguistics, and coming from a languages where its linguistics is descriptive rather than proscriptive, I am more open to contextual use of it and changing of it. As long as the intend is not stupid gatekeeping don't care how one uses the term. There is non stupid gate keeping, which I am also fine with. Overall I think I am fine with the definition DarkPlasmaBall laid out as long as we are talking about "man/male" being understood in the context of sex and not gender. My dream would be to live in a world where all we need is the "usually-but-not-always" definition by DarkPlasmaBall because we have completely done away with gender roles and thus its merely a question of sex where it matters, but we will never get there. So a more wishy washy definition with lots of "usually-but-not-always" is ok too. "male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. I am actually putting the question back to DPB and asking him why he doesn't challenge the substitution in the first place. That sounds like the appropriate thing to question. Once you go from the nuances of man/woman to the less-nuanced male/female, you lose the class of people that are biologically male, but have the gender identity of woman and might have taken hormones or undergone surgery to make their gender expression closer. Is it really true to say that chromosomal anomalies or sexual development conditions are equal ambiguities to that plus gender incongruence and genderfluid identities? I think that's core to the debate, and includes linguistics but isn't confined to linguistics. You can do that, but that doesn't change the fact that you couldn't follow this very basic logic which was my point. And ofc I can't speak for DarkPlasmaBall, but when you accept the premise that defining man is complicated, and have no issue accepting that male is therefore complicated as well, then there is nothing to challenge there. Or he was just making an example for why man is so complicated to define, and how blanket terms that we might jump to are not suffice, which is how I read his post. It helps to try to follow what the other person is saying and attempt to understand them instead of looking for gotchas whenever you aren't partaking disingenuously. Either you wanna discuss, so you want to understand the other persons point of view and should act accordingly, or you want to debate, so you want to be correct and therefore have to use the correct logic. Logically, if man is not a subset of male, then one's complications cannot be said to deductively apply to another. If men are adult human males, then maybe that definition excludes the majority of complications within a population, and the remaining cannot be said to be complicated. I don't understand if DPB understands either the subset issue or exclusionary issue. The definition is meant to exclude.
No, you cant put your lack of understanding on what has been said on DarkPlasmaBall like that. He clearly set up the premise of male being proposed as an explanation for what a man is, and why it would not work as that would conclude that male is complicated as well. You accepted said premise when instead of challenging this you expressed not to understand the conclusion. And in general, when you use B as an explanation for what A is, it would be common sense to assume that B encompasses all of A. Otherwise you would say B is A but without... And if common sense fails, the phrasing DarkPlasmaBall used makes this also obvious imo. So now your choices are a logical error on your part, lack of common sense, lack of reading comprehension, being disingenuous and deliberately going for the outrage angle, or a combination of all of these options.
You can't do much here with logic or your understanding of set theory as long as you accept to play in DarkPlasmaBalls wheelhouse. It is on you to understand the implications of what he has said, and then challenge the basis of what he said. Instead, you challenged only the implication of "what if B has all the properties of A", without refuting that "all of A is wholly contained in B". You are only now somewhat challenging the right thing, which is good, though unfortunately you are still doing so in an attempt to frame DarkPlasmaBall having made the mistake rather than you. My reading of what has been said would imply that male is a much broader category than "man", so once again your attempt at finding a flaw doesn't work as long as you do not challenge that. I think the overall premise DarkPlasmaBalls has constructed is quite sound and consistent logically speaking, and also fairly straightforward and simple, so your attempts at finding an error in his internal logic like you are doing here are probably futile. All you can say is that you obviously disagree and why, and use that to challenge his basis.
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On September 09 2026 07:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:
That is fair- but they're still predominantly native scandinavians.
You don't think they were being sinister do you?
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Norway28915 Posts
Not sure I'm missing a left handed joke or not but no.
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On September 09 2026 07:00 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 06:37 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think that's nonsense. I have conversed with a lot of people (including very 'woke' people working at the English linguistics department in the university in trondheim) whose reaction to learning that 'they/them' was supposed to be used as a pronoun to refer to individuals was bafflement. I don't mind doing it because I'm not the president of languages and I'll go with whatever society goes with because like, that's how languages work, but it still fundamentally doesn't make sense to me.
But when I talk about not wanting society to be genderless because this to me is a change that is more trouble than its worth - languages is actually part of it, and this might be hard to understand because your native tongue is English, which isn't a gendered language. Norwegian however, has gendered nouns. While - to be fair - these are subject to change both based on dialect and sociolect (more radical left people have tended to use 'a' ending, indicating female gender of the noun, while more conservative people have tended to use more 'en' ending, indicating male gender of the noun), I think insisting that car should now, in Norwegian, be considered 'it' rather than he or she (this is one of the words where you're allowed to choose) is more trouble than its worth. This also applies to spanish, arabic, french, german - and many other languages. I mean - changing languages to make them more inclusive, like my aforementioned example of saying firefighter instead of fireman - totally, it makes sense, but a lot of it just isn't discriminatory, it just is.
Like, just because people disagree with you or your solutions doesn't mean they are hostile. Here's my logical chain: I accept that there are places in the world where we do not know gender, but assume gender. Right here is a noteworthy place, you can 'safely assume' the people you are interacting with are male.
I accept that this behaviour unnecessarily alienates non-males. I accept that myself pushing towards using gender-neutral pronouns (Specifically they/them) when I don't know someone's gender is a small action I can take to counteract the above point. I accept that if I'm willing to use they/them as someone's pronouns before I know better, I should be able to use they/them if requested. I'm curious where we diverge. All of the above fundamentally makes sense, where does it not fundamentally make sense to you?
Are you sure on the bolded? Or have any research to back it up? My understanding is that there are a bunch of non-males that like the “ genderless” of certain places, like TL, of the internet. Many even do things like choose male avatars or male sounding names to gender swap because they prefer the experience.
Now, lots of the reasons why they prefer it are problematic, but some of it is just enjoying the lack of tension that can exist between genders (not all that tension is bad, but it can be nice to step away). Sometimes it can be simple curiosity.
I get that your intentions are to be as accepting as possible. I’m just not sure that presumption on this point is accurate.
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On September 09 2026 07:49 Artesimo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 06:40 dyhb wrote:On September 09 2026 05:19 Artesimo wrote:On September 09 2026 05:11 dyhb wrote:On September 09 2026 04:22 Artesimo wrote:On September 09 2026 03:42 dyhb wrote:
You're skipping past the most important part. Is the person saying, "A man is an adult human male" committing an error by making it a simple substitution? I presume you disagree with the statement, since some people use man and woman to express a nuanced gender identity partially or entirely divorced from biological sex. But you haven't told me if you disagree and why.
Not at all actually. This started with On September 08 2026 20:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
One could simply say that a man is an "adult human male", but then "male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. We could say that a man / someone who is male usually-but-not-always has XY chromosomes, usually-but-not-always has testes, usually-but-not-always produces sperm, usually-but-not-always can grow facial hair, and usually-but-not-always has a ton of other features. Which was followed up by you with On September 09 2026 01:16 dyhb wrote:
You don't think the controversy is saying that a man is an adult human male? I didn't know what male had all the baggage that man did. If you wanted to question if substituting man with "adult human male", you could have done so, but you didn't. Instead you straight jumped to "how is male controversial" in response to DarkPlasmaBall clearly laying out a logical construct where you either substitute the terms or one becomes a subset of the other and thus inherits all the complexity and controversy as I described in my response. You either failed to understand that, or asked the wrong question. Personally I don't really care of its definition past "sex and gender are 2 different things" and "what does the person I am talking to understand/mean when they hear/say the word". Having dabbled in some linguistics, and coming from a languages where its linguistics is descriptive rather than proscriptive, I am more open to contextual use of it and changing of it. As long as the intend is not stupid gatekeeping don't care how one uses the term. There is non stupid gate keeping, which I am also fine with. Overall I think I am fine with the definition DarkPlasmaBall laid out as long as we are talking about "man/male" being understood in the context of sex and not gender. My dream would be to live in a world where all we need is the "usually-but-not-always" definition by DarkPlasmaBall because we have completely done away with gender roles and thus its merely a question of sex where it matters, but we will never get there. So a more wishy washy definition with lots of "usually-but-not-always" is ok too. "male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. I am actually putting the question back to DPB and asking him why he doesn't challenge the substitution in the first place. That sounds like the appropriate thing to question. Once you go from the nuances of man/woman to the less-nuanced male/female, you lose the class of people that are biologically male, but have the gender identity of woman and might have taken hormones or undergone surgery to make their gender expression closer. Is it really true to say that chromosomal anomalies or sexual development conditions are equal ambiguities to that plus gender incongruence and genderfluid identities? I think that's core to the debate, and includes linguistics but isn't confined to linguistics. You can do that, but that doesn't change the fact that you couldn't follow this very basic logic which was my point. And ofc I can't speak for DarkPlasmaBall, but when you accept the premise that defining man is complicated, and have no issue accepting that male is therefore complicated as well, then there is nothing to challenge there. Or he was just making an example for why man is so complicated to define, and how blanket terms that we might jump to are not suffice, which is how I read his post. It helps to try to follow what the other person is saying and attempt to understand them instead of looking for gotchas whenever you aren't partaking disingenuously. Either you wanna discuss, so you want to understand the other persons point of view and should act accordingly, or you want to debate, so you want to be correct and therefore have to use the correct logic. Logically, if man is not a subset of male, then one's complications cannot be said to deductively apply to another. If men are adult human males, then maybe that definition excludes the majority of complications within a population, and the remaining cannot be said to be complicated. I don't understand if DPB understands either the subset issue or exclusionary issue. The definition is meant to exclude. No, you cant put your lack of understanding on what has been said on DarkPlasmaBall like that. He clearly set up the premise of male being proposed as an explanation for what a man is, and why it would not work as that would conclude that male is complicated as well. You accepted said premise when instead of challenging this you expressed not to understand the conclusion. And in general, when you use B as an explanation for what A is, it would be common sense to assume that B encompasses all of A. Otherwise you would say B is A but without... And if common sense fails, the phrasing DarkPlasmaBall used makes this also obvious imo. So now your choices are a logical error on your part, lack of common sense, lack of reading comprehension, being disingenuous and deliberately going for the outrage angle, or a combination of all of these options. Then may I inform you both that the "Woman: Adult Human Female" and "Man: Adult Human Male" is not immediately assumed by the reader to be an explanation as much as it is an exclusionary definition. One that might certainly exclude complications, and you might even say it's designed to eliminate complications (and maybe not all).
DarkPlasmaBall and you have this reframe that is a goofy gotcha. Aren't those dolts asking what is a man just passing on the complications from man to male? The answer should be partly yes and mostly no. The categories are being redefined in such a way as to make that nonsensical.
You can't do much here with logic or your understanding of set theory as long as you accept to play in DarkPlasmaBalls wheelhouse. It is on you to understand the implications of what he has said, and then challenge the basis of what he said. Instead, you challenged only the implication of "what if B has all the properties of A", without refuting that "all of A is wholly contained in B". You are only now somewhat challenging the right thing, which is good, though unfortunately you are still doing so in an attempt to frame DarkPlasmaBall having made the mistake rather than you. I am interrogating the viewpoint until it's resolved or at least elucidated. You are getting a little closer here with the rest, but still missing harmony and consistency with your previous post:
when you accept the premise that defining man is complicated, and have no issue accepting that male is therefore complicated as well you want to understand the other persons point of view and should act accordingly, or you want to debate, so you want to be correct and therefore have to use the correct logic. One of the major milestones of learning within this debate is the proposition of eliminating the A man is whoever says he is a man by excluding certain categories of self-identified men along lines of biology. The exclusion is the point. If you want to say their logic dictates that the complications of man are now inherited by male, you miss the exclusion.
I gather that you and DPB are doing the, "Yes, yes, we know all that, and are having fun with at troll question" but I'm not quite sure until you write that you know precisely. No gotchas or mistakes or anything from me here.
My reading of what has been said would imply that male is a much broader category than "man", so once again your attempt at finding a flaw doesn't work as long as you do not challenge that. I think the overall premise DarkPlasmaBalls has constructed is quite sound and consistent logically speaking, and also fairly straightforward and simple, so your attempts at finding an error in his internal logic like you are doing here are probably futile. All you can say is that you obviously disagree and why, and use that to challenge his basis. You're as clear as mud. If, for sake of argument, man includes some females that identify as men, then man is a broader category with more ambiguity. If man includes gender incongruity, genderfluidity in addition to non-psychological biology like XXY & CAH, then man is the broader category. I don't see the logic or consistency in adding gender identity and gender expression to a categorization and calling that the less broad category.
Since you've brought it up twice now, this is not meant to do some gotcha or gloating mistakes, but to interrogate positions until I know what you actually mean. We might actually agree on every part of this, but it isn't at all clear to me yet.
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At no point was I attempting to make any "goofy gotchas" or "troll questions" o.O
It doesn't seem like we'll be able to figure this out together.
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On September 09 2026 07:21 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 07:00 Fleetfeet wrote:On September 09 2026 06:37 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think that's nonsense. I have conversed with a lot of people (including very 'woke' people working at the English linguistics department in the university in trondheim) whose reaction to learning that 'they/them' was supposed to be used as a pronoun to refer to individuals was bafflement. I don't mind doing it because I'm not the president of languages and I'll go with whatever society goes with because like, that's how languages work, but it still fundamentally doesn't make sense to me.
But when I talk about not wanting society to be genderless because this to me is a change that is more trouble than its worth - languages is actually part of it, and this might be hard to understand because your native tongue is English, which isn't a gendered language. Norwegian however, has gendered nouns. While - to be fair - these are subject to change both based on dialect and sociolect (more radical left people have tended to use 'a' ending, indicating female gender of the noun, while more conservative people have tended to use more 'en' ending, indicating male gender of the noun), I think insisting that car should now, in Norwegian, be considered 'it' rather than he or she (this is one of the words where you're allowed to choose) is more trouble than its worth. This also applies to spanish, arabic, french, german - and many other languages. I mean - changing languages to make them more inclusive, like my aforementioned example of saying firefighter instead of fireman - totally, it makes sense, but a lot of it just isn't discriminatory, it just is.
Like, just because people disagree with you or your solutions doesn't mean they are hostile. Here's my logical chain: I accept that there are places in the world where we do not know gender, but assume gender. Right here is a noteworthy place, you can 'safely assume' the people you are interacting with are male. I accept that this behaviour unnecessarily alienates non-males. I accept that myself pushing towards using gender-neutral pronouns (Specifically they/them) when I don't know someone's gender is a small action I can take to counteract the above point. I accept that if I'm willing to use they/them as someone's pronouns before I know better, I should be able to use they/them if requested. I'm curious where we diverge. All of the above fundamentally makes sense, where does it not fundamentally make sense to you? I'm guessing around part 2. I think if I am in a place where you can safely assume that you are interacting with a male, then using 'he' is entirely reasonable until you are informed otherwise. I entirely agree with using the requested pronouns, but I see no convincing reason why I would refer to a new, unfamiliar poster as 'they' or 'them' if the poster hasn't made any effort to indicate their (this one was ok) preferred pronouns. This would be confusing to me, because I would assume someone was talking about more than one person. Honestly, if I were to enter some internet community where 97% of the users identified as men, I'd honestly feel a bit weird being characterized as 'they' - not that it would bother me - but I'd be like, 'huh'. As for GH, GH to my knowledge for the first decade+ of his stay at this website identified as a black man. The genderqueer/fluid element is relatively new. I think it's entirely expectable and understandable that people aren't cued in - and that mistakes will be made. Like, I get - and agree - that the majority has a responsibilitey to learn about how minorities feel about different issues and to take some steps to at least not alienate them. But I also think that if you are a small minority whose minority status is not immediately visible to other people, people not treating you as part of that minority before they know you are part of that minority, isn't really a problem. If I see a person wearing sunglasses I'm still going to operate under the assumption that this person has functional eyesight - whereas if there's a white cane present, I won't. If I communicate visually with the blind sunglasses person and I go like yo can you respond after he doesn't, I'll feel silly after being informed of his or her visual impairment, but I'd feel it was unreasonable to be described as hostile.
Fair enough, and I suppose it's a difference of non-males in my circles for the last 20 years having voiced that concern here and there, which is a message you (I suppose) haven't heard as often. Small things like "Bro you fucked up my lane" or "This dude is a sick supp player" in a game of dota are examples of things I'm talking about. Fine if you're a dudebro, but a reminder that you are 'other' otherwise.
And I haven't personally experienced that 'othering' either. In that way it's also something I 'don't understand', I've just come to trust those that relay the experience.
Re - hostility - I'm on the outside with you on this one, so I can't say it is / isn't hostile because I'm not among the potential sufferers.
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On September 09 2026 08:53 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
At no point was I attempting to make any "goofy gotchas" or "troll questions" o.O
It doesn't seem like we'll be able to figure this out together.
I think Artesimo did a great job explaining where I'm coming from. I'm just saying that it's a common trope for certain people (some of whom are transphobes, some of whom are not) to say "I can define a Man and you can't; I define a Man to be an Adult Human Male", and when asked how they define "Male", they either can't define it (meaning they haven't actually defined Man to begin with and are just moving the goalposts) or they give a definition for Male that has so many counterexamples that it ends up being meaningless or they accidentally include other groups they had been trying to exclude (perhaps trans men). Gotcha or reverse-gotcha as the case may be.
Yes, I know its foolish to interrogate concerns that are basically limited to a reverse-gotcha on the "What is a man" gotcha. I aknowlege it openly to you and Artesino.
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On September 09 2026 08:10 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 07:00 Fleetfeet wrote:On September 09 2026 06:37 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think that's nonsense. I have conversed with a lot of people (including very 'woke' people working at the English linguistics department in the university in trondheim) whose reaction to learning that 'they/them' was supposed to be used as a pronoun to refer to individuals was bafflement. I don't mind doing it because I'm not the president of languages and I'll go with whatever society goes with because like, that's how languages work, but it still fundamentally doesn't make sense to me.
But when I talk about not wanting society to be genderless because this to me is a change that is more trouble than its worth - languages is actually part of it, and this might be hard to understand because your native tongue is English, which isn't a gendered language. Norwegian however, has gendered nouns. While - to be fair - these are subject to change both based on dialect and sociolect (more radical left people have tended to use 'a' ending, indicating female gender of the noun, while more conservative people have tended to use more 'en' ending, indicating male gender of the noun), I think insisting that car should now, in Norwegian, be considered 'it' rather than he or she (this is one of the words where you're allowed to choose) is more trouble than its worth. This also applies to spanish, arabic, french, german - and many other languages. I mean - changing languages to make them more inclusive, like my aforementioned example of saying firefighter instead of fireman - totally, it makes sense, but a lot of it just isn't discriminatory, it just is.
Like, just because people disagree with you or your solutions doesn't mean they are hostile. Here's my logical chain: I accept that there are places in the world where we do not know gender, but assume gender. Right here is a noteworthy place, you can 'safely assume' the people you are interacting with are male.
I accept that this behaviour unnecessarily alienates non-males. I accept that myself pushing towards using gender-neutral pronouns (Specifically they/them) when I don't know someone's gender is a small action I can take to counteract the above point. I accept that if I'm willing to use they/them as someone's pronouns before I know better, I should be able to use they/them if requested. I'm curious where we diverge. All of the above fundamentally makes sense, where does it not fundamentally make sense to you? Are you sure on the bolded? Or have any research to back it up? My understanding is that there are a bunch of non-males that like the “ genderless” of certain places, like TL, of the internet. Many even do things like choose male avatars or male sounding names to gender swap because they prefer the experience. Now, lots of the reasons why they prefer it are problematic, but some of it is just enjoying the lack of tension that can exist between genders (not all that tension is bad, but it can be nice to step away). Sometimes it can be simple curiosity. I get that your intentions are to be as accepting as possible. I’m just not sure that presumption on this point is accurate.
Yes.
If you're assuming I decided this all on my own because vibes, you've missed the mark. I am sure of this point explicitly because many different non-males over more than a dozen years have independently expressed that being misgendered and/or assumed to be male unnecessarily alienates them, and you and I can both agree that we should believe and listen to women.
My reply to Drone also touches on this a little.
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On September 09 2026 10:28 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 08:10 Billyboy wrote:On September 09 2026 07:00 Fleetfeet wrote:On September 09 2026 06:37 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think that's nonsense. I have conversed with a lot of people (including very 'woke' people working at the English linguistics department in the university in trondheim) whose reaction to learning that 'they/them' was supposed to be used as a pronoun to refer to individuals was bafflement. I don't mind doing it because I'm not the president of languages and I'll go with whatever society goes with because like, that's how languages work, but it still fundamentally doesn't make sense to me.
But when I talk about not wanting society to be genderless because this to me is a change that is more trouble than its worth - languages is actually part of it, and this might be hard to understand because your native tongue is English, which isn't a gendered language. Norwegian however, has gendered nouns. While - to be fair - these are subject to change both based on dialect and sociolect (more radical left people have tended to use 'a' ending, indicating female gender of the noun, while more conservative people have tended to use more 'en' ending, indicating male gender of the noun), I think insisting that car should now, in Norwegian, be considered 'it' rather than he or she (this is one of the words where you're allowed to choose) is more trouble than its worth. This also applies to spanish, arabic, french, german - and many other languages. I mean - changing languages to make them more inclusive, like my aforementioned example of saying firefighter instead of fireman - totally, it makes sense, but a lot of it just isn't discriminatory, it just is.
Like, just because people disagree with you or your solutions doesn't mean they are hostile. Here's my logical chain: I accept that there are places in the world where we do not know gender, but assume gender. Right here is a noteworthy place, you can 'safely assume' the people you are interacting with are male.
I accept that this behaviour unnecessarily alienates non-males. I accept that myself pushing towards using gender-neutral pronouns (Specifically they/them) when I don't know someone's gender is a small action I can take to counteract the above point. I accept that if I'm willing to use they/them as someone's pronouns before I know better, I should be able to use they/them if requested. I'm curious where we diverge. All of the above fundamentally makes sense, where does it not fundamentally make sense to you? Are you sure on the bolded? Or have any research to back it up? My understanding is that there are a bunch of non-males that like the “ genderless” of certain places, like TL, of the internet. Many even do things like choose male avatars or male sounding names to gender swap because they prefer the experience. Now, lots of the reasons why they prefer it are problematic, but some of it is just enjoying the lack of tension that can exist between genders (not all that tension is bad, but it can be nice to step away). Sometimes it can be simple curiosity. I get that your intentions are to be as accepting as possible. I’m just not sure that presumption on this point is accurate. Yes. If you're assuming I decided this all on my own because vibes, you've missed the mark. I am sure of this point explicitly because many different non-males over more than a dozen years have independently expressed that being misgendered and/or assumed to be male unnecessarily alienates them, and you and I can both agree that we should believe and listen to women. My reply to Drone also touches on this a little.
My anecdotal information is different from yours. That’s why I asked about sources. I can find a fair bit of studies on people gender swapping online in games and enjoying not using (again not for all “great” reasons. I can find nothing on people hating it.
My general understanding of the frustration behind misgendering. Which has also been shared with me in my few interactions. Is intent is what matters. If someone is calling someone in a dress sir over and over or whatever compared to people saying bro online.
Im simply not sure that your efforts make anything better.
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On September 09 2026 10:51 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 10:28 Fleetfeet wrote:On September 09 2026 08:10 Billyboy wrote:On September 09 2026 07:00 Fleetfeet wrote:On September 09 2026 06:37 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think that's nonsense. I have conversed with a lot of people (including very 'woke' people working at the English linguistics department in the university in trondheim) whose reaction to learning that 'they/them' was supposed to be used as a pronoun to refer to individuals was bafflement. I don't mind doing it because I'm not the president of languages and I'll go with whatever society goes with because like, that's how languages work, but it still fundamentally doesn't make sense to me.
But when I talk about not wanting society to be genderless because this to me is a change that is more trouble than its worth - languages is actually part of it, and this might be hard to understand because your native tongue is English, which isn't a gendered language. Norwegian however, has gendered nouns. While - to be fair - these are subject to change both based on dialect and sociolect (more radical left people have tended to use 'a' ending, indicating female gender of the noun, while more conservative people have tended to use more 'en' ending, indicating male gender of the noun), I think insisting that car should now, in Norwegian, be considered 'it' rather than he or she (this is one of the words where you're allowed to choose) is more trouble than its worth. This also applies to spanish, arabic, french, german - and many other languages. I mean - changing languages to make them more inclusive, like my aforementioned example of saying firefighter instead of fireman - totally, it makes sense, but a lot of it just isn't discriminatory, it just is.
Like, just because people disagree with you or your solutions doesn't mean they are hostile. Here's my logical chain: I accept that there are places in the world where we do not know gender, but assume gender. Right here is a noteworthy place, you can 'safely assume' the people you are interacting with are male.
I accept that this behaviour unnecessarily alienates non-males. I accept that myself pushing towards using gender-neutral pronouns (Specifically they/them) when I don't know someone's gender is a small action I can take to counteract the above point. I accept that if I'm willing to use they/them as someone's pronouns before I know better, I should be able to use they/them if requested. I'm curious where we diverge. All of the above fundamentally makes sense, where does it not fundamentally make sense to you? Are you sure on the bolded? Or have any research to back it up? My understanding is that there are a bunch of non-males that like the “ genderless” of certain places, like TL, of the internet. Many even do things like choose male avatars or male sounding names to gender swap because they prefer the experience. Now, lots of the reasons why they prefer it are problematic, but some of it is just enjoying the lack of tension that can exist between genders (not all that tension is bad, but it can be nice to step away). Sometimes it can be simple curiosity. I get that your intentions are to be as accepting as possible. I’m just not sure that presumption on this point is accurate. Yes. If you're assuming I decided this all on my own because vibes, you've missed the mark. I am sure of this point explicitly because many different non-males over more than a dozen years have independently expressed that being misgendered and/or assumed to be male unnecessarily alienates them, and you and I can both agree that we should believe and listen to women. My reply to Drone also touches on this a little. My anecdotal information is different from yours. That’s why I asked about sources. I can find a fair bit of studies on people gender swapping online in games and enjoying not using (again not for all “great” reasons. I can find nothing on people hating it. My general understanding of the frustration behind misgendering. Which has also been shared with me in my few interactions. Is intent is what matters. If someone is calling someone in a dress sir over and over or whatever compared to people saying bro online. Im simply not sure that your efforts make anything better.
I'm going to take a deep breath and give you a chance.
Have you googled "Are gaming spaces hostile for women?" ?
You identify as an ally. I presume you understand, generally, that gaming spaces are an example of a space where women are not as readily welcomed as men. That shouldn't be news to you. If you haven't heard it from women in your life who play games and are less comfortable playing them online / are reluctant to correct people regarding gender in gaming spaces, then I hope you would have at least seen and recognized it in your own experiences while gaming.
You're correct that intent matters, though I'd contest that it's ALL that matters. If we, for example, went to a restaurant where the default was for all the staff and servers to refer to everyone as "girl", I assume we both would be mildly uncomfortable with that. Nothing crazy, just think it's kinda strange. They don't intend to misgender us because they're malicious - it's just what they do there. You could also argue that we opt in to it, because we could just choose to not go there.
...But what if they made the best goddamn pancakes in the world, and if we wanted to go there for those pancakes, we had to just accept the discomfort of being misgendered?
And maybe it's not uncomfortable for you. Maybe they also have a valid reason for calling everyone "girl". That's all fine - what I'm trying to illustrate is that for non-males in gaming spaces it's like us in that restaurant... except instead of just the staff, it's -everyone- who calls each other girl, because girl is the default. And if it's uncomfortable for you and you say "Actually I'm a boy", there's a very good chance you just get called 'cock' or 'dickhead' instead of girl now.
As a participant in that, why the fuck WOULDN'T you gravitate towards calling people "them" or "*character they're playing*" or "person" until you know their actual gender/pronouns, to avoid making people uncomfortable for no reason?
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On September 09 2026 10:20 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 08:53 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
At no point was I attempting to make any "goofy gotchas" or "troll questions" o.O
It doesn't seem like we'll be able to figure this out together. Show nested quote +I think Artesimo did a great job explaining where I'm coming from. I'm just saying that it's a common trope for certain people (some of whom are transphobes, some of whom are not) to say "I can define a Man and you can't; I define a Man to be an Adult Human Male", and when asked how they define "Male", they either can't define it (meaning they haven't actually defined Man to begin with and are just moving the goalposts) or they give a definition for Male that has so many counterexamples that it ends up being meaningless or they accidentally include other groups they had been trying to exclude (perhaps trans men). Gotcha or reverse-gotcha as the case may be. Yes, I know its foolish to interrogate concerns that are basically limited to a reverse-gotcha on the "What is a man" gotcha. I aknowlege it openly to you and Artesinmo.
I don't really understand how you can even attempt to reframe someone going "hey if you want to argue this, this is how you have to do it. If you do what you are doing right now you cannot succeed" as me trying to "gotcha" you, while also somewhat following my advice throughout while trying to sell it off as your idea right from the start. I was basically advising you on technicality, not content, so I don't think I could have created a gotcha there the way you accuse me of. I did let you knowingly walk into a trap yes, but that trap was me telling you what I believe the right way to discuss it would be, fully expecting you not to be able to own up your initial mistake, be it of understanding or conveying your argument, and thus incapable of utilising said advice.
Like I said, those who want to wield these arguments in a fashion of cold logic seem usually the least equipped to do so  .They are rarely done in good faith because the people trying to wield them don't really want to talk to the person, but at them, and don't care about understanding the other side, they just want to beat them into submission with no regard for their view and arguments.
I appreciate you trying to step up your articulation though, it read rather nicely and reminded me of some really old math papers or logic books. Next time just go "my bad, I misunderstood / misspoke, here is what I mean" instead of pretending you clearly were going for a socratic method (and still kinda failing at that...) all along.
If I hand you a gun, instruct you how to use it, and you decide to shoot yourself with it, the only person who gotcha'ed you is you.
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On September 09 2026 15:51 Artesimo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 10:20 dyhb wrote:On September 09 2026 08:53 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
At no point was I attempting to make any "goofy gotchas" or "troll questions" o.O
It doesn't seem like we'll be able to figure this out together. I think Artesimo did a great job explaining where I'm coming from. I'm just saying that it's a common trope for certain people (some of whom are transphobes, some of whom are not) to say "I can define a Man and you can't; I define a Man to be an Adult Human Male", and when asked how they define "Male", they either can't define it (meaning they haven't actually defined Man to begin with and are just moving the goalposts) or they give a definition for Male that has so many counterexamples that it ends up being meaningless or they accidentally include other groups they had been trying to exclude (perhaps trans men). Gotcha or reverse-gotcha as the case may be. Yes, I know its foolish to interrogate concerns that are basically limited to a reverse-gotcha on the "What is a man" gotcha. I aknowlege it openly to you and Artesinmo. I don't really understand how you can even attempt to reframe someone going "hey if you want to argue this, this is how you have to do it. If you do what you are doing right now you cannot succeed" as me trying to "gotcha" you, while also somewhat following my advice throughout while trying to sell it off as your idea right from the start. I was basically advising you on technicality, not content, so I don't think I could have created a gotcha there the way you accuse me of. I did let you knowingly walk into a trap yes, but that trap was me telling you what I believe the right way to discuss it would be, fully expecting you not to be able to own up your initial mistake, be it of understanding or conveying your argument, and thus incapable of utilising said advice. Really? Maybe you misunderstand me. The "What is a man/woman" question is a kind of gotcha that I don't think the reverse gotcha of DPB actually works+ Show Spoiler +It's more experiential, in that he notices that people have trouble precisely defining male
Like I said, those who want to wield these arguments in a fashion of cold logic seem usually the least equipped to do so .They are rarely done in good faith because the people trying to wield them don't really want to talk to the person, but at them, and don't care about understanding the other side, they just want to beat them into submission with no regard for their view and arguments.
I appreciate you trying to step up your articulation though, it read rather nicely and reminded me of some really old math papers or logic books. Next time just go "my bad, I misunderstood / misspoke, here is what I mean" instead of pretending you clearly were going for a socratic method (and still kinda failing at that...) all along.
If I hand you a gun, instruct you how to use it, and you decide to shoot yourself with it, the only person who gotcha'ed you is you. I appreciate your light-hearted banter and sarcasm, and hope you'll continue to hone your craft. I am interrogating what is meant by male being equally complicated/ambiguous as man, and I'm less sure now than when I started that you or DPB have a settled view. Certainly some of it is linguistic (man as shorthand for biological sex is a linguistic phenomenon), but certainly it's more complicated in all the various comprehensions of that term that are invoked by defining man/woman so simply. Well, at least I think it's more complicated, but you're always welcome to argue me out of it.
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On September 09 2026 07:30 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm a little surprised people working at an English linguistics department would be baffled by it.
It is baffling, it's not purely singular. I'm sure you can agree "They likes to present themselves" sounds completely wrong, you have to drop the s and use like as if the "they" were plural even though it's not.
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I feel like native english or other non-gendered language speakers have a hard time understanding just how bad "they/them" feels to people coming from gendered languages.
My mind jumps to two things when I hear "they/them", one is utterly dehumanising on the level of calling groups of people animal names, actually even worse. The other is the "royal" we, which also feels horribly wrong for the opposite reason.
I don't claim either of these is "correct", it's just how it feels to me and I would guess many others with similar language background.
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EPT
