You have a 50/50 split of upvotes and downvotes, so you’re hovering around 0 give or take.
Personally and if I understand you correctly, I pretty much share your view.
If someone looks/acts like a specific gender based on cultural norms and personal experience, I’ll default to calling the person that gender. It’s just a simpler and easier form of communication, and takes just a moment to correct if the opposite is desired.
They/them is technically usable but really clumsy sounding in English because that changes the entire sentence structure to plural even when you are speaking about a singular. Which is a personal pet peeve.
It feels more natural to default to a neutral “he” and change to feminine “she” if corrected than it does to default to a plural “they”. Heck I’ve seen someone default to a neutral “she” and it still sounds more natural than a plural as a neutral. Just a personal issue with the English language there.
And on the side of people who are trans… I have seen sentiment that the whole asking pronouns things makes some people feel very uncomfortable. It’s a constant reminder of being born into the wrong body, and makes it feel like all the effort to pass and be their true selves is meaningless.
I think I’d rather offend a couple trenders that don’t understand language use than remind someone whose mental health is at stake about that and invalidate their efforts to pass with something so unnecessarily superficial.
You have a 50/50 split of upvotes and downvotes, so you’re hovering around 0 give or take.
Personally and if I understand you correctly, I pretty much share your view.
If someone looks/acts like a specific gender based on cultural norms and personal experience, I’ll default to calling the person that gender. It’s just a simpler and easier form of communication, and takes just a moment to correct if the opposite is desired.
They/them is technically usable but really clumsy sounding in English because that changes the entire sentence structure to plural even when you are speaking about a singular. Which is a personal pet peeve.
It feels more natural to default to a neutral “he” and change to feminine “she” if corrected than it does to default to a plural “they”. Heck I’ve seen someone default to a neutral “she” and it still sounds more natural than a plural as a neutral. Just a personal issue with the English language there.
And on the side of people who are trans… I have seen sentiment that the whole asking pronouns things makes some people feel very uncomfortable. It’s a constant reminder of being born into the wrong body, and makes it feel like all the effort to pass and be their true selves is meaningless.
I think I’d rather offend a couple trenders that don’t understand language use than remind someone whose mental health is at stake about that and invalidate their efforts to pass with something so unnecessarily superficial.