Gendering in forum
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@Steffie Oh, don't get me started on Lionel, Rusty, Taylor, Dakota, Bobby, Bertie, Blake, Andy, Sawyer, Elliot, Emerson...
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@JohnConnorBear Just so it'll make sense to you why there'll be no further replies to you by me after this, i've just added you to my blocked user list. Tragically henceforth i'll no longer be enlightened by your wisdom.
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Just to add my thoughts (I don’t know how much of my opinion is based in these words) —
Although I can’t find the particular post right now, I’m sure I made the mistake once. You better not know how much I was (and still am, though it’s getting less as time goes) ashamed. But I think it helped me, I pay more attention to genders since then (and now I have the dragon image associated with ”she”, not “he”). I must say, it helps me a lot that most female forum members indicate their gender (mostly in their profile picture) while male often just ignore this.
Now of my language background: I (really really) hate that Czech makes more difference in genders. But as English uses they (I still don’t understand its grammar in this use case, that’s why I often choose not to use it) if the speaker is not sure, Czech uses he (and it’s correct, I can’t do anything with that) though it is common to make the text unreadable and add female suffixes after “/” or inside “()”.
And now of the reaction: I know this is not exactly the same (ignorance vs. confusion), but sometimes (not often) it happens that someone thinks I’m a girl (because of my long hair) — I usually just laugh slightly and make things clear (and this is the ideal reaction IMO; though it’s not easy and it supports further spreading of the issue).
I’ll have to think of this a little, it’s morning for me and I did’t yet have much time to think what to put in this post. Please don’t get angry with me and be patient, I’ll try to look at it from other angles and I’ll share results if I get anywhere.
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@potmeklecbohdan I can see "they" being difficult to learn for a non native speaker. "(s)he" uses singular grammar referring to one person.
But "they", even if applied in a gender neutral sense to one person, behaves as if it was concerning multiple people.
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@LonM Using plural pronouns for singular nouns truly breaks all the rules of grammar i was taught in primary school 500 years ago. However over the past two decades as the shackles of patriarchy began to loosen, many women, & many in the gender-diverse community, became happy & willing to defy traditional grammar norms in preference to perpetuating traditional [offensive] gendered linguistic norms. Lesser of two evils...
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@Steffie definitely. I've made a conscious effort to use they as much as possible.
Recently I had someone call me out on this talking about how he was only 1 person, and I shouldn't be saying they. This was in response to a piece of technical writing, so I guess the "official" guidelines people use are still a bit dated.
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@LonM said in Gendering in forum:
someone call me out on this talking about how he was only 1 person
To which it might have been amusing [well, to idiots like me, anyway] if you'd responded
Are you really sure?
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@JohnConnorBear said in Gendering in forum:
In other conditions, you would be busy working in a factory to bring food on the table, or you will be on your hands and knees in a field to pick up potatoes for few dimes. There are hospitals filled with dying people. There are wars everywhere.
Ergo, the problem at hand is unimportant?
Have a look at the fallacy of relative privation, something you are very guilty of employing here. If the article isn't to your liking, have a look at this:Created by SMBC
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@Ayespy Honestly, I may misunderstand your post.
Otherwise, your post has nothing to do with mine. «One assumes at one's peril», that's exactly what you did. I'm saying it again, it may be a misunderstanding, but I really feel you didn't read my post.
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By the name there can certainly be doubts, in Germany and in Spain, sometimes a man has a feminine middle name, like the famous author Rainer Maria Rilke and in Spain Jose Mari is quite frequent.
In Spain some Germans also find curious the name of one of the princes, Frolain -
@JohnConnorBear Just a data point from my own perspective: I grew up learning french. Even before I became aware of gender politics, I hated the fact that french had gendered nouns, purely because it made speaking the language so awkward.
No-one made me feel "ashamed" of my culture, I was just annoyed by it all by myself. Perhaps discussion of gender politics brings these thoughts into light, but I don't think anyone is forced into feeling that way.
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Innumerable posts here have justly illustrated the unreliability of attempting to discern a stranger's gender-identity from their name. Ergo ... let's stop trying, & instead adopt a benign policy of making no assumptions. Instead, simply let the data determine the facts. If the data is never forthcoming, simply contiue with assumption-free respectful neutrality. Everyone remains friends, nobody is harmed.
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It certainly is no reason for offense in a virtual community to get confused about gender (at least not outside of Tinder).
A nick says even less about the genre (Catweazle?), A friend in Germany is called Stephan and his friends and family call him Steffie. Everything is very relative and deep down irrelevant, lack of respect is something else. -
@Catweazle said in Gendering in forum:
A nick says even less about the genre (Catweazle?),
As i joked with you years ago, i continue to believe that you are from the Middle Ages but became magically transported into the future [originally the 20th Century], & that you live in a disused railway steam-locomotive water tank. Electrickery!
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@JohnConnorBear , I am German and I live in Spain and I care little in what language I communicate. English is used here, which is logical in an international forum, as English is the most widely used language, at least in the technical field. Although in reality the most spoken are Chinese and then Spanish, but they are less apt in technology matters.
It is not that people hate their language, I don't think so, but in a more globalized world the need for communication prevails and at this point minority languages have no place. -
@JohnConnorBear said in Gendering in forum:
Dear human being, unless "human" is discriminating among species, yes, sorry, dear being, it seems you don't realize somebody made you be ashamed of your own culture.
That is great, indeed. I know it is not Vivaldi, it is the constant pressure and brainwashing from the so called "mainstream culture" but I find a bit annoying that you feel compelled to tell us how very very ashamed you are of being what you are. I feel sorry for you, being so unlucky to be born czech. Guess what, if we work all together we can erase all those countries, languages, culture from the planet. Lets go.
What do you want me to say? That I pity you and potmeklecbohdan because you both have been brainwashed in hating what you are, your ancestors, your culture? Ok, I pity you both.
(wrapped in another quote block to save space)
Who said I’m ashamed for being a Czech? I like it, I only said the language is sometimes difficult to use when I don’t know who I’m talking/writing to.
The mainstream in Europe is just erasing european cultures.
Whaat? The cultures just change, like they always did.
Like you see here, I am writing in another language not because I want to but because I am forced to,
You aren’t. You could just ignore this discussion. But it makes you more free to know more languages—you can speak with many people you wouldn’t know they exist.
like the french and the czech "beings" above, who both are conditioned in hating their mother languages.
As I said.
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@JohnConnorBear said in Gendering in forum:
suddenly you realized you hate "genders", all by yourself, because the language was "awkward".
That is not at all what I said. Please don't take thing I said out of context. I'll try and clarify what I meant, if I was confusing.
The french language is awkward and I hate the use of certain grammar in it. I hate having to remember if a word should be preceded by "le" or "la". If I should stress the ending when it has an "e" or if it's an exception.
We say that certain nouns in french are "gendered", but this is a misnomer. How can a word like "arbre" (tree) be masculine or feminine? It can't. We just say those words have a "gender" because that's easier to explain.
When I say I hate genders, I mean I hate the grammar. I never said I hate genders.
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@Gwen-Dragon @Steffie As someone said in another thread, this one has become «ouroborosific».
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@potmeklecbohdan , especially in the computer world, as in this forum, currently there is no problem to communicate with people from any country, there are excellent translation tools that allow people to understand and respond in any language, which I also often do, finding posts mine in Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish and also Czech
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@potmeklecbohdan said in Gendering in forum:
I’ll have to think of this a little, it’s morning for me and I did’t yet have much time to think what to put in this post. Please don’t get angry with me and be patient, I’ll try to look at it from other angles and I’ll share results if I get anywhere.
It seems I won’t get to it because of that human who has completely different opinion (and calls a pen a being).
It’s not the first time I miss the downvote button here on the forum…