I have friends who use it. It feels kind of weird and wrong for me as if I’m objectiving them but if that’s what they want it’s what they get.
To me “it” dehumanises someone doen to an object.
No joke: in my native German dialect, women are grammatically neutral.
My then gf was completely shocked when visiting my birth region for the first time.
It still married me, though! :-)You know what’s weird? I’ve caught myself saying “it” about people a few times passively lately and then correcting myself and wondering where the fuck that came from
I use ‘it’ to describe ME :3
I have “it” in my Discord description, along with cpt.
Ah yes, Dilbert scrabble scene.
In Chinese, verbally the world for he, she, and it are all the same pronunciation. It is only differentiated in writing.
Don’t forget the word 祂 for divine beings as the 4th
Going to randomly call people 祂 to fuck with them.
The written form was neutral until Western influence inspired the creation of a female version, replacing the first radical “person” with “woman”.
I think some Chinese forums use “TA” (as in the 2 English letters) to be gender neutral
Ta?
A doctor can still use he/she though, right?
Why?
Because having words for describing a person’s body is useful in the medical profession.
Except he/she aren’t words used to describe a person’s body, so what is your point?
Sure it is. When referring to a man’s penis you would say “his penis”.
On a related note, can you catch stupid over the Internet?
But if a woman has a penis then it’s her penis. Medically the penis is the important part, so you can still use “they” in a situation where you’d use “his/her”, both to be a smoother sentence and also to be inclusive of non-binary people.
Yes, you clearly did.
Using “it” to refer to human beings feels super disrespectful to me. Dehumanizing much? 1992 called they want their attitudes about trans people back. Obviously if someone told me they prefer “it” pronouns I’d use them but I would feel gross about it.
Edit to add that I have nothing against the Finnish people, and obviously there’s a huge cultural difference between being totally fine and just a part of the language versus the cruel and dehumanizing way that “it” is used in the United States. It’s clearly not the same and to assert otherwise, frankly, feels intellectually dishonest. I didn’t expect to have to make that distinction.
Can’t be dehumanizing if you use it for all humans XD
I don’t wanna be human, anyway. Dehumanize me. Dogicize me instead.
*pretends to toss a treat*
You wouldn’t like how people in Finland speak then 😅
(We have hän for s/he but almost everyone just uses se {it} in spoken language)
Don’t learn Finnish I guess.
No gendered pronouns and we honestly use “it” (se) as a pronoun. No, I would never use it in English unless I meant to purposefully dehumanise someone, but in Finnish it’s just the normal colloquial version of a personal pronoun, whereas “hän” is a 3rd person pronoun that’s more formal, (but also non-gendered) . Pets usually get to be referred to as “hän” with the more formal personal pronoun, weirdly enough.
I can understand using more respectful language for pets than people.
And you’ll probably understand why instinctively I would say cats get that more than dogs.
(And I’m a dog-person much more than a cat-person.)
Why would you feel gross respecting a trans person’s preferred pronouns? If a trans person wants to be thought of as an object, would you genuinely think of it as an object, or would you think of it as a person but still call it by its preferred pronouns? Because the second option would cause cognitive dissonance and might be the reason you’d feel gross.
Don’t read Lois McMaster Bujolds “Vorkosigan Saga” One of the bio engineered races preferred “it” when being gendered.
I have an nb friend who’s Finnish. They prefer “It” as a pronoun. I had to explain that as a white native english speaker, we have shat the bed waaayyy too hard to use that one in our language.
I mean, in casual spoken finnish, “it” dominates. The third person singular for people “hän” is already gender neutral, but I guess we prefer not to make assumptions about anyone’s personhood :D. Or maybe it (se) just rolls off the tongue more conveniently.
Yah, i get why they prefer using it and in Finnish it’s fine. In English it’s…Very much not. It’s a dehumaniser. Was an interesting conversation.
Also funnily enough many people use “hän” when talking about pets and other animals whilst still using “se” when talking about people. “Hän” feels a bit stiff and formal when talking about people.
“Hän” feels like thee thou in English to me, way too old timey and formal.
It (se) is neutral and relaxed
“Thou” is actually the informal alternative to “you”. It came to be seen as insulting and its usage was dropped.
Yeah, I think it’s to make sure that the animal in question is being recognized as an individual, whereas for people that’s taken for granted.
I think it has a lot to do with how it conjugates, “sen” and “sillä” is quicker than “hänen” and “hänellä”.
Tell your friend a follower of Christ who speaks native English says “it” is valid.
Turkish has no gender specific pronouns so this is every Turkish speaker I guess
Not even for people? I dont know why that sounds so strange but it does.
Neither does finnish
There is only one third person singular pronoun (“O”) used for people (regardless of gender) and objects alike.
Huh once again, hungarian is very similar to turkish. We have “ő” for that. No aninimity or gender distinction. Tho we do have this, that and a third one which i guess translates to yonder? But yeah in some constructions you can specify aninimity with them.
Also the word for “they” is “onlar” which is just “o” with the prular suffix “lar” attached, that’s like using “its” to mean “them.”
I could be an it. A good little toy.
Based
Average blahaj user
:3
“A toy? A Lego set??”, she asked excitedly, and wagged her tail.
This is why everything is a little shit to me. I’m just getting all of them in one combined s/h/it word.
You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?
……….No.
Gotta reuse fiber to hit the daily recommended.
I would guess that yes, that’s (h) it
I’ve run into this a while ago but I’m not sure what to make of it. https://aria.dog/barks/on-being-a-thing/
Holy shit… You can have domains that end in .dog?
You can have domains that end in even more stuff if you switch to an alternative dns root like https://opennic.org/.
this is so interesting. thanks for sharing!
and .pizza, .gay
there are lots of fun ones
“It” is personally my favorite neutral pronoun, but it has so much cultural baggage attached to it that it doesn’t feel like a viable option. Why does a squirrel or a ficus or a robot get to be called “it” by default, but not a person? It isn’t fair.
it’s generally used to describe non-sentient things…
Also, using only it gets confusing when trying to determine what “it” refers to in a given sentence…
You should have answered with more empathy for its feelings. Jesus Christ told us to love our neighbours.
What’s not sentient about a squirrel?
Can you give an example of how “it” is confusing? Like “It met its friend for coffee,” sounds fine to me. “It put on a warm jacket since it was cold out,” uses multiple senses of the word, but it still reads fine to me.
“They” is mildly confusing in narratives because it can be hard to distinguish whether one or multiple characters are being described, but it’s not an insurmountable problem.
I think it might be most confusing when someone talks about someone who uses “it/its” pronouns: my initial assumption would be that they’re trying to dehumanise it unless I was already previously aware of it’s pronown preference.
That’s what I mean about the baggage, yeah. You can’t just make something not be a slur anymore. It’s uncomfortable for people trying to be respectful, and it’s easy for bigots to exploit.
that’s a good point, I think it depends on the person, but some people tend to just assume the squirrels gender in most instances rather than saying “it”.
In my experience (and I’m sure this varies by region) it’s about 50/50 whether someone will call most animals or anthropomorphized objects “he” or “it”. (Cats are a big exception in that they’re usually “she” even from people who know it’s a boy cat.) So for me “it” is just the most natural thing, with male-as-default being second and also problematic in its own way. Maybe someday I’ll like a neopronoun.
It’s your choice. Do what you want. Damn the haters to sheol.
The haters are the root of the problem, but it’s not like I’m not using it/its because I’m afraid of being scolded or made fun of. It’s unfortunately tied to dehumanization in the sense that not being human is a bad thing, and that makes it fun for bigots to say and uncomfortable for good people to say. I lament the situation, but I also accept the way it is.
Based based based based based
…Waow
“It puts the lotion on it’s skin…”
*its
Tits*
