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.
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.
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.
Yeah I'd be quite uncomfortable with calling anyone "it". I'll gladly use they/them, I'd be down to learn some neopronouns, but calling someone "it" is something I'd rather avoid. Even if someone likes "it" pronouns, I'd still feel incredibly weird doing so in public. Calling people an "it" is often done here to mock androgynous people. It feels dehumanizing. If I were to do so in public, it would mean they people around me (who don't know the other person's preference) would probably assume I'm doing so to mock them.
On the other hand, when I was learning English this was the weirdest thing to me. What do you mean you have a gender neutral pronoun and it's not acceptable to use it to refer to someone we don't know the gender of?
"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.
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.
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.
There's a pair of asterisk symbols around the word "removed" in the address, and Lemmy or the readers are automatically italicizing what's between them and then dropping the symbols, which breaks the link.
Using "%2A" gets around that. There might be other ways too.
Russian could have been such a woke language if Russia wasn't such a right-wing shithole. It's kind of elegant how you gender verbs when talking about yourself, because your conversation partner can just pick up on it and gender you accordingly.
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
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.
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.
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.
Non-native English speaker here. I was appalled to learn that English conjugated for animacy, and could swear "it" was the gender-neutral pronoun because that's what was used in Pokemon for example. I'm also not a fan of toggling conjugations mid-sentence, so I prefer to construct sentences with the plural "they", the expression "that person", or even the singular "one(self)", whenever I can
Which is why I was appalled to learn it late in life that "it" was reserved exclusively to non-humans, for some reason that didn't exist in my native Spanish. The rest of my explanation would be better written on a longer blog-post of mine.
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.
102 Comments
LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 69 pts · 265d
I could be an it. A good little toy.
Honse@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 78 pts · 265d
Average blahaj user
LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 27 pts · 265d
:3
30p87@feddit.org · 12 pts · 265d
"A toy? A Lego set??", she asked excitedly, and wagged her tail.
OpenStars@piefed.social · 7 pts · 265d
Squirrelanna@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 264d
Based
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de · 55 pts · 265d
This is why everything is a little shit to me. I'm just getting all of them in one combined s/h/it word.
fartographer@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 265d
You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?
Haaveilija@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 265d
I would guess that yes, that's (h) it
AtariDump@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 264d
..…….No.
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 264d
Gotta reuse fiber to hit the daily recommended.
lbfgs@programming.dev · 38 pts · 265d
Turkish has no gender specific pronouns so this is every Turkish speaker I guess
yermaw@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 265d
Not even for people? I dont know why that sounds so strange but it does.
lbfgs@programming.dev · 16 pts · 265d
There is only one third person singular pronoun ("O") used for people (regardless of gender) and objects alike.
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 265d
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.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 264d
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."
guy@piefed.social · 8 pts · 265d
Neither does finnish
Tonava@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 264d
Taleya@aussie.zone · 28 pts · 265d
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.
Deme@sopuli.xyz · 25 pts · 265d
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.
Haaveilija@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 265d
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.
lepinkainen@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 265d
“Hän” feels like thee thou in English to me, way too old timey and formal.
It (se) is neutral and relaxed
stray@pawb.social · 5 pts · 265d
"Thou" is actually the informal alternative to "you". It came to be seen as insulting and its usage was dropped.
Deme@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 265d
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.
Tonava@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 264d
Pelicanen@sopuli.xyz · 7 pts · 265d
I think it has a lot to do with how it conjugates, "sen" and "sillä" is quicker than "hänen" and "hänellä".
Taleya@aussie.zone · 5 pts · 264d
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.
JesusChristLover420@lemmy.sdf.org · -5 pts · 264d
Tell your friend a follower of Christ who speaks native English says "it" is valid.
GraniteM@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 265d
bystander@lemmy.ca · 19 pts · 265d
In Chinese, verbally the world for he, she, and it are all the same pronunciation. It is only differentiated in writing.
stray@pawb.social · 9 pts · 264d
The written form was neutral until Western influence inspired the creation of a female version, replacing the first radical "person" with "woman".
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 264d
I think some Chinese forums use "TA" (as in the 2 English letters) to be gender neutral
Rubanski@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 264d
Don't forget the word 祂 for divine beings as the 4th
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 264d
Going to randomly call people 祂 to fuck with them.
jali67@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 264d
Ta?
toeblast96@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 264d
kersploosh@sh.itjust.works · 14 pts · 265d
"It puts the lotion on it's skin..."
glorkon@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 265d
*its
Voixe2@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 264d
Tits*
Nima@leminal.space · 14 pts · 265d
I never get mad at "it" because it gives me flashbacks to Shale from Dragon Age Origins and I absolutely love her. she's amazing.
Jumi@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 264d
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.
gerryflap@feddit.nl · 7 pts · 264d
Yeah I'd be quite uncomfortable with calling anyone "it". I'll gladly use they/them, I'd be down to learn some neopronouns, but calling someone "it" is something I'd rather avoid. Even if someone likes "it" pronouns, I'd still feel incredibly weird doing so in public. Calling people an "it" is often done here to mock androgynous people. It feels dehumanizing. If I were to do so in public, it would mean they people around me (who don't know the other person's preference) would probably assume I'm doing so to mock them.
AlolanYoda@mander.xyz · 2 pts · 264d
On the other hand, when I was learning English this was the weirdest thing to me. What do you mean you have a gender neutral pronoun and it's not acceptable to use it to refer to someone we don't know the gender of?
Jumi@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 264d
I admit I use "they" when they're not around and luckily it rarely happens that I need to use their pronouns when I'm out with them.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 264d
ftfy
Jumi@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 264d
Great job, what would I ever do without you?
Event_Horizon@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 264d
To me "it" dehumanises someone doen to an object.
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 265d
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/
Agent641@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 265d
Holy shit... You can have domains that end in .dog?
pieland@piefed.social · 8 pts · 265d
and .pizza, .gay
there are lots of fun ones
borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 264d
You can have domains that end in even more stuff if you switch to an alternative dns root like https://opennic.org/.
pieland@piefed.social · 3 pts · 264d
this is so interesting. thanks for sharing!
stray@pawb.social · 9 pts · 265d
"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.
Venat0r@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 265d
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...
stray@pawb.social · 8 pts · 265d
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.
Venat0r@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 264d
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.
stray@pawb.social · 6 pts · 264d
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.
Venat0r@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 264d
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".
stray@pawb.social · 4 pts · 264d
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.
Venat0r@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 264d
https://aria.dog/barks/on-being-a-thing/
😅
JesusChristLover420@lemmy.sdf.org · 3 pts · 264d
You should have answered with more empathy for its feelings. Jesus Christ told us to love our neighbours.
JesusChristLover420@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 264d
It's your choice. Do what you want. Damn the haters to sheol.
stray@pawb.social · 4 pts · 264d
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.
JesusChristLover420@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 264d
Based based based based based
...Waow
yogurtwrong@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 264d
What a tasteful website design
CPMSP@midwest.social · 7 pts · 265d
Oh holy fuck I'm rolling!
How have I not seen this image of Radcliffe before? He looks absolutely deranged!
bear@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 265d
The back story is that he was elbowed in the face on the way to the car, and probably had stage makeup on.
https://chatterbusy.removed/2013/07/daniel-radcliffe-appears-exhausted-with.html?m=1
Spectrism@feddit.org · 5 pts · 265d
Fixed link
bear@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 265d
Thanks
stray@pawb.social · 5 pts · 265d
Why did that word get censored?
bear@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 265d
Which word?
stray@pawb.social · 3 pts · 264d
I have to assume it's in an automod filter, but I can't imagine why. Is it a joke like how people say "Fr*nch"?
bear@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 264d
There's a pair of asterisk symbols around the word "removed" in the address, and Lemmy or the readers are automatically italicizing what's between them and then dropping the symbols, which breaks the link.
Using "%2A" gets around that. There might be other ways too.
stray@pawb.social · 3 pts · 264d
No, there are no asterisks in the actual URL.
*removed* appears where a word has been removed.
CPMSP@midwest.social · 2 pts · 264d
Thanks for the context!
ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com · 4 pts · 265d
napkin2020@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 264d
Korean, having to know the person's age, social status, relationship and all just to call someone.
Draegur@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 264d
I use 'it' to describe ME :3
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 264d
I have "it" in my Discord description, along with cpt.
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 264d
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! :-)
thatradomguy@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 264d
Ah yes, Dilbert scrabble scene.
python@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 264d
Russian could have been such a woke language if Russia wasn't such a right-wing shithole. It's kind of elegant how you gender verbs when talking about yourself, because your conversation partner can just pick up on it and gender you accordingly.
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 264d
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
bizzle@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 265d
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.
brown567@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 264d
Can't be dehumanizing if you use it for all humans XD
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 6 pts · 264d
I don't wanna be human, anyway. Dehumanize me. Dogicize me instead.
stray@pawb.social · 3 pts · 264d
*pretends to toss a treat*
adhd_traco@piefed.social · 1 pts · 262d
You adorable cutie little boy you!
Yes, youuuu! Youuuuuuu're adorable! You cutie, you!
Dasus@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 264d
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.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz · 5 pts · 264d
I can understand using more respectful language for pets than people.
Dasus@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 264d
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.)
JesusChristLover420@lemmy.sdf.org · 3 pts · 264d
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.
Lumisal@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 264d
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)
Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 264d
Don't read Lois McMaster Bujolds "Vorkosigan Saga" One of the bio engineered races preferred "it" when being gendered.
pyrflie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 264d
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 264d
I'm all for hating the Giants as a cowboys fan. But I'm curious what role it plays in this meme.
csolisr@hub.azkware.net · 0 pts · 264d
Non-native English speaker here. I was appalled to learn that English conjugated for animacy, and could swear "it" was the gender-neutral pronoun because that's what was used in Pokemon for example. I'm also not a fan of toggling conjugations mid-sentence, so I prefer to construct sentences with the plural "they", the expression "that person", or even the singular "one(self)", whenever I can
beejboytyson@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 264d
It's not. In academic writing the gender neutral is they/them.
csolisr@hub.azkware.net · 1 pts · 264d
Which is why I was appalled to learn it late in life that "it" was reserved exclusively to non-humans, for some reason that didn't exist in my native Spanish. The rest of my explanation would be better written on a longer blog-post of mine.
presoak@lazysoci.al · -7 pts · 264d
A doctor can still use he/she though, right?
stray@pawb.social · 5 pts · 264d
Why?
presoak@lazysoci.al · -1 pts · 264d
Because having words for describing a person's body is useful in the medical profession.
Jason@feddit.uk · 11 pts · 264d
Except he/she aren't words used to describe a person's body, so what is your point?
presoak@lazysoci.al · -11 pts · 264d
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?
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 264d
Yes, you clearly did.
stray@pawb.social · 2 pts · 264d
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.