First, this is coming from a place of irritation with ambiguity, not from being supportive of neopronouns. Not that I’m opposed to neopronouns, per se, but my motivation in defending something like xi/xer is more banal: I hate how ambiguous English can be about some things, and in particular, pronouns.
I am not from the South, but I adopted y’all as soon as I learned about it merely because “you” being both singular and plural drives me nuts. “Y’all” is clearly plural “you,” and if everyone used “y’all” then we could normalize “you” to always being singular.
Same with “they,” only there isn’t a common convenient dialect fix for the plural/singular issue. I happily embrace “xi/xer/xem” and whatever else necessary to provide a distinction between singular and plural. For me, the gender aspect is entirely secondary, but I’m happy to adapt to whatever.
I do object to open ended shit like “people should be allowed to define how they’re referred to.” OP’s joke would be funny except that Latin had distinct rules - people weren’t just making up whatever shit and flexing by socially pressuring others around them to conform to their own invented pidgin vocabulary.
Let’s define a set of pronouns that covers the LGBTQ+ set; we’ll end up with, what, 8 or 10 pronoun groups. I don’t think that’s the most absurd thing. You want absurd, look through a telephone registry in Paris, and see names like Jean-Franc Christophe-Luarde de Luc. That’s clearly naming gone off the rails. If someone wants to make up their own fantasy pronouns, fine, but I will not feel ashamed for not using “dragonfucker” as a pronoun for that one dipshit.
Yes, but…
First, this is coming from a place of irritation with ambiguity, not from being supportive of neopronouns. Not that I’m opposed to neopronouns, per se, but my motivation in defending something like xi/xer is more banal: I hate how ambiguous English can be about some things, and in particular, pronouns.
I am not from the South, but I adopted y’all as soon as I learned about it merely because “you” being both singular and plural drives me nuts. “Y’all” is clearly plural “you,” and if everyone used “y’all” then we could normalize “you” to always being singular.
Same with “they,” only there isn’t a common convenient dialect fix for the plural/singular issue. I happily embrace “xi/xer/xem” and whatever else necessary to provide a distinction between singular and plural. For me, the gender aspect is entirely secondary, but I’m happy to adapt to whatever.
I do object to open ended shit like “people should be allowed to define how they’re referred to.” OP’s joke would be funny except that Latin had distinct rules - people weren’t just making up whatever shit and flexing by socially pressuring others around them to conform to their own invented pidgin vocabulary.
Let’s define a set of pronouns that covers the LGBTQ+ set; we’ll end up with, what, 8 or 10 pronoun groups. I don’t think that’s the most absurd thing. You want absurd, look through a telephone registry in Paris, and see names like Jean-Franc Christophe-Luarde de Luc. That’s clearly naming gone off the rails. If someone wants to make up their own fantasy pronouns, fine, but I will not feel ashamed for not using “dragonfucker” as a pronoun for that one dipshit.