NEOPRONOUNS & “THEY/THEM” pronouns - Are they *technically* correct? (linguist reacts)

[@FactThis]

Something worth noting is that problems with they/them occur when switching between the plural and singular form and when multiple individuals are mentioned. For example, if I said, "Jack talked to Jill at the carnival, then they went to a Chinese restaurant", who went to the restaurant? Jack, Jill, or both? Saying _he_ went to the restaurant is clearer. Juggling both the singular and plural they/them simultaneously creates confusion. That's why it is avoided when ambiguity can be dropped. It's particularly frustrating when reading articles about people who insist on they/them pronouns. I sometimes have no idea who is actually being referred to in parts of the text.

[@mysryuza]

At that point, it would be better to just use the dang name to lessen the confusion

[@girljeanschris107]

This woman must be protected

[@91722854]

and her cat too!

[@spicyspecial333]

Looks like she can handle herself pretty well to me! :)

[@growingoaks]

Shes too charming and willing to speak truth so, i agree.

[@gailseatonhumbert]

I follow a Filipino singer, Marcelito Pomoy, who often sings in the country's doble kara or dual voices (both tenor and soprano) technique. Some Americans refer to him in they/them pronouns which upsets Filipinos in particular because he is a happily married straight man with 2 children. Assumptions can get you on both sides "liberal" as well as "conservative".

[@blestbread]

that's the fault of the closed minded Filipinos in that situation not some Liberals

[@er4din903]

Okay I’m left leaning but that sounds insane. How do you think yourself, or anyone other than the person in question to be most qualified to say what pronouns should be used when referring to them. If the guy uses he him then the guy uses he him. End of conversation. For you to insist that “high pitched voice” = unconventional gender identity means disregarding the culture of the society to which the individual belongs to and impose western conventions and stereotypes, and still think yourself to be in the right? What?!

[@user-ck8kp8vb4l]

what does a gender neutral pronoun have to do with being married?

[@arvinroidoatienza7082]

​@@blestbreadnah I mean, he identifies as a man?

[@arvinroidoatienza7082]

​@@user-ck8kp8vb4lthe person identifies as a straight male. Also our language doesn't have gendered pronouns

[@Flippotycoon4583]

Loved the English lady's teaparty you did :)

[@INameIsGood]

the part of "them" trying to police HOW people talk ABOUT "them" is so fascinating from the psychology lens

[@nottechytutorials]

Yea I'm glad to see other people mentioning that too. They don't want to change their own language, they want to control OTHER people's language about how they talk and refer to them in the third person. Like who in their right mind sits down and establishes pronouns (contrary to their gender) just to let that other person know to be respectful when they're being talked about in the next room? And like what another comment said, if someone likes you and is nice about it they may use your preferred pronouns, but if someone doesn't like you they can say worse things than not using preferred pronouns.

[@IvanIvanov-ug5dc]

5:10 - I love this idea. My verbs should be eat, sleep, rest, laught... and not cook, clean, shop, repair, work or cry.

[@smallsignals]

Another example that we've probably all seen on the internet is order of adjectives. Most of us don't really remember learning it and possibly never did, but it sounds abhorrent to almost everyone when adjectives are out of order. It's amazing what we learn just from exposure.

[@growingoaks]

I have not gone to college for psychology, however, I do study it in my spare time occasionally and I have developed a theory myself. I used to hang out with a lot of people who use “neopronouns” or try to force people to use they/them. The common thread between all of them were that they were often abused in childhood in a way that limited their control. As a result, I believe they are attempting to control others around them in a desperate bid to feel a sense of control as a way to overcompensate. Demographic wise, they’re often white, female and part of the LGBTQCDIPLMNOP community/cult. This is threefold, however, because you mentioned them wanting to feel special, and I believe it is a lot of insecurity manifesting itself. Another common thread, I noticed between everyone was a lack of self-confidence and massive insecurity. They likely feel that they will be more accepted If they adopt the ideology. The last part of this threefold puzzle is trauma. A lot of these women have been victims of sexual assault and want to identify themselves out of being a woman, so that they do not have to feel the trauma. I believe it is partially a trauma response, and they want to disassociate themselves from themselves. It is an interesting, psychological phenomenon for sure

[@transandpets]

I’m a neo pronoun user Yes I am white Yes I was assigned female at birth And yes I’m a trans guy I was not abused. I have never been a victim of SA, DM etc. Also, I don’t appreciate you calling my identity s cult. If anything Heterosexuality is a cult.

[@nottechytutorials]

@@transandpets OP is talking generally and you make yourself out to be the special case, just like what the video showed too. Wanting to be the unique one in the unique group.

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

@@transandpets it just shows that you're a narcissist if you think your experience overrides his general perception of the group. Also, you weren't assigned female at birth. This kind of terminology was used for intersex people, because they were assigned a sex, and then they would remove parts of the other one (majority were assigned female, but others were assigned male. Nowadays they do genetic studies to properly pinpoint the kid's sex); you're just observably female. No matter how many hormones or surgeries you take, you will always be female.

[@transandpets]

Oh. My. Fucking. God. How to did you get that transphobic@@user-df8hl4zx2l

[@transandpets]

Did you skip biology or something?@@user-df8hl4zx2l

[@mapowey]

the “skin as a verb” meme caught me off guard. that’s hilarious

[@AJ-wy6zm]

Loved this. You raise some really important points about this topic. I would be interested to know what if any relationships there is between neopronoun users and personality psychology's big 5 traits - openness, contentiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Also, I'm curious to know about any relationship between neopronoun usage and narcissistic traits or personality disorders.

[@Manoffire97]

This is super interesting and I've thought about this a lot. My hypothesis is that people who use neopronouns are very high in openness, which in someway makes it difficult for them to construct a stable identity. Most likely low in contiousciousness as well as they priotitize feelings over rational thought.

[@Manoffire97]

To take it further, I think there is a relationship between openness and homosexuality. Also between openness and neuroticism. source: I am an artist and I am in a very creative circle. A large percentage of them identify as LGBT, and a lot of them ask to be referred to with neopronouns. Much to my dismise, lol (I'm okay with LGBT, just the more extreme aspects of it such as pronouns irritates me)

[@dronesclubhighjinks]

This was a really interesting video and I appreciate the education as well as the humour! You do a British accent very well and I love the dresses! I'm so glad you mentioned the third person aspect because I've been wondering about that for a long time - I've never heard anybody mention it. A person who has special pronoun demands wants to control how we speak about that person. I cannot wrap my head around the grammatical construction when speaking of an individual who wants they/them pronouns eg "They is over there." I am not gonna say "they are" because one person is not a plural. I get around this by using the individual's name which starts to look pretty silly but "they is" is beyond me. "Bob said Bob's vacation was fun and Bob had a really great time. Bob's favorite part was when Bob rented a JetSki." Thanks for the video! 🙏😎💐

[@saltykitty9215]

Seeing a non-native English speaker explain native English speakers their language is the funniest and saddest thing I had to witness in my life haha. Good one, Lana!

[@rachelthompson7430]

Often non-native speakers actually understand languages better, as they have to explicitly learn all the aspects of the languge that are, to the rest of us, intuitive. :)

[@keiotyk1951]

@@rachelthompson7430 that is totally on point. The worst person to ask the grammar rules of a language is the average person. They can only usually tell you if a sentence ‘seems right’ or not.

[@transandpets]

I’m a native speaker, from ENGLAND. My family are from London, I’ve lived a few hours from London my whole life. Leave us TF alone. We aren’t gonna tell you your language is incorrect, that would be considered racist.

[@orcusdei]

This is hard because we often have a different perspective on the language. I assume Lana is from a country where grammatical gender is used a lot. Therefore it is pretty easy to spot the differences in semantics cause it is a second nature to you if you learn linguistics. When you don't have this, grammatical genders, you are never taught about it, I can imagine it is very hard for you to understand the difference. Imagine you live in Antarctica and you have never seen a green color. Only different shades of white. You would have names for all the different white shades. Suddenly I would came there and say - hey, this snow looks green. And I would have an idea of all the shades of green and how they mixed with white. But you would say "what do you mean, it's white, it's a shade of white, there is no green color". We both would be right, I would be able to understand your perspective, but you wouldn't be able to understand mine because you are unable to see it from the perspective where green exists. And it can go further. I would be successful and explained to you what the "green" is. But since you'd never seen green, you would define it on your own terms when I left and suddenly blue or yellow could be green for you too, because they you no perception of the borders of colours since you don't know what blue or yellow are.

[@orcusdei]

@@transandpets hahaha, lol :D ♥

[@bebbization]

I think younger people are more adaptable for change, so that's maybe why they don't mind grammar changes as much. Back when I was in high school, the teachers and the adults found it very strange that we adapted English words with English pronunciation to our native language. We have a lot of influence from English media, so it was just normal for us when we were talking with other teens. The official language committee tried to add English words, but with the spelling and pronunciation of our native language, into our dictionary. It went poorly because people didn't want some superficial group to decide how to use imported words.

[@kimmiewise1044]

I mean it's no different from indoctrination or brainwashing of a cult and using those words among cult members. For example, Scientology redefined the word Engram from its original cognitive scientific origin to be a term specific to the cult. No scientist is saying the word Engram doesn't exist or that the people have no right to use the word, but most people outside of the cult wouldn't use Engram the same way cult members do and when cult members get push back from scientists, it's seen as offensive and they often complain about discrimination or attempt to silence any dissidents from the cult. So it's not that They/them pronouns don't exist or English imports themselves make no sense, but that there is a rational and logical way of using these words and then there's forcing unnatural illogical speech on others and screeching like a banshee when anyone dare reject the narrative in favor of facts and research.

[@orcusdei]

That is a different thing. You can use foreign words and every grammar is adaptable to certain extent to use them. You also often change them so they fit your grammar, so for example verbs, even tho they have an english base, they would have a complete language structure of said grammar. For example in my language, we adopted the word "chill" and we are able to change it to "vychillit" which means "to chill out", to relax absolutely - yet as you can se, we use our own grammar structure. But in these cases, you are not using the grammar wrong. You are still using it correctly. In the new form of "them" or new nouns, you are changing the concept of how the grammar actually works and the underlying concept of the language itself. You are presenting new concepts to the language that doesn't work in the grammar itself yet.

[@Diane_666]

I personally still have no problem with they/them pronouns most of the time, but the neopronouns (as in, the ones they invented from scratch) confuse the shit out of me. I already learned how to speak English and am learning two more languages... I'm not in the mood to learn the "genderqueer language" as well. Although to be fair, I did think you were exaggerating when you compared neopronouns to replacing verbs, until I realized that some people have literal "pronoun sheets" where they also write down their PREFERRED ADJECTIVES that are basically the descriptive terms they wanna be called by. They don't want to know what other people actually think of them, they just want everyone to affirm their own opinion of themselves. At that point, what even is the purpose of talking to other people?..

[@thestoriedcoyote3668]

The term you use that I like is "physical reality". That's what I use to inform how I communicate with people, and expecting us to forget reality is a big ask. On a side note, the Smurfs had preferred verbs/adjectives/adverbs, so I guess they were ahead of their time?

[@raven4090]

I'm confused about why some people want to be called, "She/they," He/they," instead of She/her," and "He/him." How does that make sense to anyone? Can you please explain that if you know? Thanks

[@mxdahliabelle]

Those combinations are typically used in a transitory fashion. The individual may be in the process of exploring what feels best for them, so temporarily accept either. The individual may be acknowledging a degree of ambiguity around how they are perceived by others, and therefore accept multiple interpretations. Lastly, some gender fluid individuals genuinely use multiple pronoun sets. Many drag queens, for example, use he/him and she/her interchangeably, sometimes depending on their presentation, and for simplicity will also default to they/them. I generally think of it as an allowance and ask which pronouns are actually preferred.

[@kimmiewise1044]

​@@mxdahliabelle I have never seen pronoun used as you described, either people use pronouns normally which is based on common sense impressions or use pronouns to virtue signal about their political agenda. The "She/they/cat self" nonsense is just nonsense to look cool and can be ignored as the childish toy we all know it is.

[@mxdahliabelle]

@@kimmiewise1044 I've never met anyone IRL using cat pronouns, as for the very real examples of pronoun use 🤷🏿‍♀️ Perhaps you don't spend much time around LGBTQ people in general and certainly not transgender, gender queer, femboys, gender fluid, or drag queens in particular. In which case, you probably needn't worry your little mind about it. It has nothing to do with you and no meaningful impact on your well-being.

[@kimmiewise1044]

@@mxdahliabelle I'm bisexual and am very active in my local community working close with a drag queen. And no he doesn't do the pronoun fad as you suggested nor do any other LGBT members of the community. Transexuals use the pronouns the individual presents as, male or female. Everything else you are talking about is either a fetish which doesn't require pronouns or another made up fad. Really? A slur against gay people (Q*eer) is being used as a gender by these idiots now??? I was called that slur while being beaten in middle school for being Bisexual. It's not cute to use it as a made up gender. So you can stop worrying your pretty little head about MY community and defending using slurs as a gender because clearly it has no impact on your well being if you can use it to pretend to be oppressed while ignoring that actual struggle we faced just so you can pretend to be us. So spare me your fake ally ship if you are standing beside people making a mockery of the pain I personally went through.

[@paulbeardsley4095]

To the op: I think they simply don’t get that it’s supposed to be subject/object, rather than singular subject/plural subject. Possibly they work for a company where they insist that you disclose your pronouns, and it’s probably years since they even heard the word, so they just put the first thing that came to mind and then got on with doing their job.

[@cyberpunkdarren]

Hahaha. I love the humor Lana

[@ariana_208]

An example I always use for They/Them pronouns as a singular is “if someone calls tell them to leave a message” Saying someONE implies one person is calling, not multiple people on one line. You don’t know the gender of the potential person calling so them is perfectly appropriate for a gender neutral pronoun for one person

[@yasink331]

It's used for when there's ambiguity about who the person is, not when the person is known

[@grimjoker5572]

Alright, yet how is this an argument against those who don't fit into the masculine or feminine gender?

[@grimjoker5572]

@@yasink331 What if it is known that they don't fit into either he or she?

[@yasink331]

@@grimjoker5572 what doesn't fit into a he or she?

[@grimjoker5572]

@@yasink331 A person who demonstrates both masculine and feminine secondary characteristics.

[@Alastherra]

As a Slavic person, I have particular trouble with this in English. I mean, if they didn't get rid of the you/thee, they wouldn't have to do such mental gymnastics, would they? Because when it comes to Czech, we have the typcal 'you', the "respectful" You (I'd say the 'you' if 'thee' was still a thing, or sie/Sie in German or heck, -san suffix in Japanese) and the nondescript/plural 'they'. And when your language is so heavily gendered as mine, when I have to bend EVERY. SINGLE. WORD. to fit the gender of the object? Seriously. Yeah, I can talk to You with the "respectful" You, but I still have to have GENDER of the person/object of topic in mind - and I quite simply refuse to talk about people in terms of non-animate objects to avoid gendering.

[@LanaMarie]

yep, same here! we have the 2nd p.sing. "you" and the respectful 3rd p.pl. "you", and nouns are gendered (in verbs that results in suffixation). using neopronouns in my language would be a nightmare

[@williamhcarlton]

Fascinating.

[@corpse1244]

you are quite literally using they to refer to an individual in this comment. why not just think of they as thee? it's fundamentally the same. the plurality of they is dependent on what you are talking about. i wouldn't take advice from someone who claims to be a linguist but fails to grasp a particular language of whom they are not native speaker of. ( i referred to the individual in this video using "they" and it is perfectly acceptable to do so, despite knowing what gender they present as, simply to show you that it grammatically makes sense)

[@kimmiewise1044]

​@@corpse1244 More proof you can't read English cropse. Not a single usage of they in this comment was towards an individual, it was always pkural towards a plural group, the group being all trans ideologues such as yourself. Its best if you actually learn English before criticizing an educated analysis of the language, ma'am.

[@teddybeeandme]

I am a native English speaker but have studied both French and German in the past. Both of these languages assign gender to objects, table, window ect. I have only come across 'they/them' or other 'preferred' pronouns in an English speaking context... Is this the case? and how does it work in a language with 'gendered' items... I love the etymology of words and their common history in multiple languages.

[@transandpets]

Fellow native, from England here I can’t remember the user but (native speaker I believe) made a video on exactly this topic.

[@Exetior_the_fish]

as a native English speaker this was therapeutic 1000% correct expressly the hidden rule part

[@corpse1244]

it's therapeutic to be talked down to about your own native tongue? for her to suggest that they/them becomes avoid after discovering someone's "gender?" she really makes no sense. I hope you can find better videos

[@Exetior_the_fish]

@@corpse1244 this is how i was taught English and no part of this video was she talking down upon anyone just because you don't understand doesn't mean she's in the wrong

[@kimmiewise1044]

@@corpse1244 Yes that's how object identification works love... If you know an objects name you don't keep calling that object "thing" even if the person that made the object wants to refer to the object as "thing". If I hand you a flower and you say "This is a very pretty flower" and I respond, "Sorry, that's not a flower, that's a thing. Since it's my special thing I would be really upset and might kill myself if you refer to this as anything other than thing." Would you call all flowers "thing" to prevent that fate? Or would you argue back and say "Well yes, flowers ARE things but we know that this thing is a flower. And if calling a flower a flower is really that upsetting maybe you should go to therapy and learn how to cope with negative emotion instead of threatening to kill yourself if I don't call flowers things." We don't just say "Oh, my husband got me a bouquet of things." "The things are blooming early this year." "A thing by any other name would smell as sweet." Grammar can't function like that. Because what would be the difference between a flower and an actual unknown object. "I saw a thing on the side of the road!" "I know roses are so beautiful aren't they?" "Not things! Thing! A thing like an unknown thing!" "An unknown species of thing?" "No, a thing like an unknown object thing!" So how stupid that is??? That's what gender ideology has done to they. They was the 'thing' of pronouns for people who are unknown. But known people cannot by they's anymore than known and named objects can be "things" and constantly referred to as things. No individual object is a thing and no individual person is a they. It's a generalized term. But if you genuinely think that people can be they's start referring to random objects a "thing" and see how far you can communicate with people. Try ording the "thing" at a restaurant, try asking a Retail worker where they keep the "things", try telling a child how beautiful their thing is. See how far that gets you in life and you'll see how every sane person sees they/them.

[@sannya6390]

@@corpse1244she absolutely makes sense and she’s 100% correct.

[@grimjoker5572]

@@kimmiewise1044 They/them is not used for objects and is only used for living organisms, usually people. Thus all mentions of "unknown object" are moot and void. In truth a nonbinary person is very much a known quantity; it is known that they do not fit either in the masculine social class or the feminine social class, aka "gender." Gender is a scientifically demonstrable phenomenon proven every single time you address somebody in the masculine or feminine without first observing their genitalia. Since you are obviously using other cues than strict dimorphism to determine the social interaction you will have with a person. Thus her argument is linguistically sound in the use of they / them but philosophically bankrupt in terms of actually addressing the concept of nonbinary.

[@nicbrown1304]

Grear video! Also worth noting is that pronouns in English are closed class, meaning that adding to them, altering them or even getting rid of them is a very slow process. By contrast, verbs and nouns are usually open class in English. That's why we can easily introduce nouns like "Google," then verbify them, as in, "I googled it." As for what topics I'd like to see you cover next, I'd love to see you tackle the issue/fad of young people who diagnose themselves with autism (among other things) and who claim that official diagnoses are oppressive and counter-productive. :)

[@ChanyeolsHaneul]

I always found quite nonsensical the prefer pronouns thing. If someone is your friend and likes you they may humour you and do as you want it (as long as they remember to do so) if a person doesn't like you there are worse things that they will call you, no just wrong pronouns but heavy insults too 😅 Also, because English is a second language for me, is really annoying how this people are trying to change no only their language but the language of other as well. Like when they tried to add the end -X to my mother language, Spanish, because in their eyes we shouldn't use the male version of a word as a neutral. Latinx is stupid and doesn't make sense 😒 My theory about this idiotic movement is that with the rise of social media most of this "trans" are just egocentric and ego maniacs with a narcissistic tendency. Every one of them want to be special and unique. That's why you find so many of them saying things like "I'm the first trans fairy/ racial/ non binary to do X" And that explain why they need to feel reaffirmed constantly, and are unable to participate in debates and conversations with people that have different point of views. They want to be different from their parents and older generations, so they have to destroy what came before them in order to achieve a sense of accomplishment. Because, sinceresly, their entire personalities are made out of nothing but illusions of greatness. In rural places and poor countries were people can't afford to do nothing else but work and survive there isn't enough time to worry about pronouns and how one desire to be perceived by others. Sorry I may have gone on a rant. 😅

[@dronesclubhighjinks]

Your English is excellent, your comment is very insightful, and "Latinx" is ridiculous! In one of my first ever Spanish classes 30+ years ago, we were taught if there's a group of 99 girls and one guy, the group has the masculine pronoun. As there is no similar concept in English, we thought that was "unfair" but also knew that is just how this foreign language is set up. Spanish is a beautiful language which is very easy to pronounce and spell! 🙏🤩

[@justakathings]

@@dronesclubhighjinks Even in 2015 when I started learning French in secondary school, we were taught this as well. Thankfully it seems like this ideology is believed by a minority of people and it won’t affect most schools and places. Idk if it’ll affect it more in the future but let’s hope not

[@dronesclubhighjinks]

​@@justakathings thank you for your reply! I’m hoping this incredible idiocy is confined to English. German and Russian actually have three “genders” in their grammatical structure/foundation which are masculine, feminine, and neuter. For some reason, the word “child” in German is neuter (das Kind) but I find when reading older English-language books, even those under 90 to 100 years old, an infant or small child who is not present is often referred to as “it.” The German word for “girl“ which can refer to a female aged approx 5 to 20+ (similar to how English uses it,) is also neuter. Das Mädchen. I can imagine English-speaking feminists throwing a fit if they ever found this out. 🤣 But nobody in the history of human language has ever assumed that just because the word for girl has a neutral article means that a girl might not be a female - it is something only people who spend a lot of time in university could have come up with. Or something else English-speaking activists could get upset about: how every European language, as far as I know, has a formal “you“ and an informal “you”. This is ageist and probably also socioeconomic class dependent/enforcing. I wonder why English dropped it and when. I believe German, which was the basis for old English had it did already, and that post-Norman-invasion-of-England French did as well. The formal “you” probably stopped being in usage well before Shakespeare’s time. Welp, I’m starting to ramble, so I will stop now! Thank you for reading!

[@justakathings]

@@dronesclubhighjinks I speak Japanese and from what I’ve seen, the same conversations aren’t happening. But ye I couldn’t imagine what they would think with Mädchen 😂. I’ve never cared about grammatical gender, I’ve always thought it was arbitrary. But people get so offended by it for no reason. If you really want a gender neutral word, make it and move on with your day. But European languages usually are centrerd around gender, and if you mess about with it, it gets very confusing and unintuitive. It’s not only a social issue but a linguistic issue. You can’t mess around with grammar completely arbitrarily and make English make sense, it literally goes against the grammar of the language. Yes, grammar changes naturally but this is not natural 😂

[@dronesclubhighjinks]

@@justakathings Rem acu tetigisti is Latin for “you really hit the nail on the head!” 🎯 (I learned this from Jeeves written by PG Wodehouse. Most of the other Latin that I know I learned from Asterix comics. 😂) It’s a linguistic issue is absolutely correct. People getting offended by nothing in order to make TikTok videos is also unfortunately popular. I’m very glad that Japanese has not started any of this madness. I hope countries like Japan and Korea take their own culture and language seriously enough to resist English-speaking academic foolery. I recently found out that China wants to limit Western influence more. They’ve gone so far as strongly encouraging female gymnasts to use traditional Chinese music instead of western pop music for their floor routines. And the North Korean president or whatever he calls himself wants to forbid people from using South Korean slang, which they learn from soap operas and K-pop. I thought he had the ability to shut down all Internet, or to at least block 95% of it. Same thing with TV channels and radio. Thank you for your time! 🙏😁🌺

[@1337fraggzb00N]

As a German, I can say, that we already had a ton of pronouns before these goofballs were even born.

[@arisvalast7803]

I'm studying to be a linguist and an English teacher... I think of the they - them thing that when I don't know if a person is a man or a woman I resort to the use of he or she. I explain... in Spanish (my 1st language) person is a noun that has gender 《personA》. So, when I use she in spanish, because it correlates with the noun. In English I've been thought that using he - she is the same, so I go with he. I choose he because it allows my brain to form a correct idea and organize it.

[@Murdo2112]

If you non-native English speakers find singular they/them confusing, just wait until you hear how we (in informal British English. Australians too) sometimes use "us" to refer to ourself in the singular.

[@Rodger_Phillips]

you left out the New Zealanders, lol

[@Murdo2112]

@@Rodger_Phillips Please accept my most heartfelt and sincere apologies for such a glaring omission!

[@paulbeardsley4095]

@@Murdo2112Interesting one. When do we use “us” for “me”? The first thing that comes to mind is when we request something that we know we probably won’t receive. If I say to an attractive woman, “Give me a kiss,” her refusal is a strong rejection. Whereas if I say, “Give us a kiss,” her refusal doesn’t feel so strongly directed at me. I’m not entirely convinced by my own argument here. Alternatively, because I am deliberately using incorrect grammar, I know that the request will not be taken too seriously.

[@Murdo2112]

@@paulbeardsley4095 Sort of. I don't agree with your conclusions, regarding diffusing the impact of refusal, or signaling a lack of serious intent. And it's not so much a matter of incorrect grammar, as of informal, common usage, but often in a light-hearted way. The example you give is spot on. Others might be "give us a go on your bike" or "show us how you did that". I doubt it's in any academic grammar textbooks, but that doesn't make it less valid. Formal English tends to be focused around the middle to upper class, "Home Counties" form. Historically, this was due to it being the area contained within the triangle of London, Oxford and Cambridge, the centre of government/social influence and the two great centres of learning. But at the lower end of the social scale, and in other regions, such as the south-west and the north in particular, the singular "us" is not, and never has been, uncommon in everyday, informal speech.

[@allisk8001]

Other cases where "they" as a singular pronoun works is when it's an group entity of unknown size. Like how Disney pushes "their" woke agenda. It's used as a singular that refers to a collective, but we don't know if it's the decision of one person, or multiple. And it effectively doesn't matter. The overarching theme is that "they/them/their" is used when details are unclear, whether because it's unknown or meant to be a secret. It's an impersonal pronoun, and I would personally be insulted if someone looked at me and referred to me as a "they", even if it was just because they didn't want to assume or whatever. It's not very different from referring to someone as "it".

[@ryancruz1876]

You’re offended by pronouns? 🥴

[@allisk8001]

@@ryancruz1876 The pronouns itself? No. It's about the implications of its usage. If it's online, of course people don't know what pronouns to use. Whatever. But if someone physically looks at me and can't tell if I'm a man or woman, then yes, it's insulting. I am clearly a woman. To suggest otherwise is either a needlessly convoluted political game, or a dig at my appearance. It's like if someone asked, "What are you?" as if you aren't clearly a human.

[@paulbeardsley4095]

@@allisk8001Nice reply to an attempted put down! Yes, it’s not the pronoun. It would be the same if a doctor’s receptionist looked at you and called through to the doctor to say, “There’s a man or woman to see you.”

[@kingcrimson4554]

My first language is spanish and the use of "they them" is extremely confusing when using in singular form... it doesnt come up naturally

[@antioch4019]

In Swedish, technically we can use they/them (de/dem) the exact same way as in english to refer to a single person. But we already have a gender neutral pronoun that is unique (hen) so there is no need to use they/them. That would only confuse most Swedes, as you said, as soon as you know the gender the default is to go for he/she (han/hon) and it sounds very off to keep using they/them by that point, better to use hen wich can't be confused with plural.

[@darthvader4027]

Your channels about to blow up

[@SomeJerkOnTheInternet]

I appreciate the clarification on how to accurately use they/them and how the People who say it can be used with Gender idiology are either straight up lying or misusing it. Greetings from Germany/non native English speaker.

[@corpse1244]

oh, you can just use they/them for a single person. has nothing to do with gender "idiology" or whatever you meant by that. ideology? still doesn't make sense. for a linguist, this person seems extremely misinformed.

[@SomeJerkOnTheInternet]

@@corpse1244 yes, you can use it in singular, in VERY SPECIFIC Situations, not in terms of Gender Idiology.

[@kimmiewise1044]

@@corpse1244 Says the person that doesn't understand generalized vs descriptive terminology.

[@Tengokuchi]

​@@corpse1244not for a single KNOWN person. She explained it very well.

[@robbiefriend138]

WOW! Thank you for this video. I love your understanding of why we have language. I will definitely subscribe to your channel. Thanks again!

[@perspectiveiseverything1694]

First time watching you, & you have wonderful & logical communication skills. 💥"...words exists to share concepts, abstract things, and ideas... a person nor their gender are any of these... and pronouns are general, not personal."💥 I'm sharing this one with my students & families. Thank you! 😊

[@goatthulu6662]

Allow me to suggest replanting the orchid in a clear plastic pot. The roots of the plant help with photosynthesis and will encourage flowering.

[@NyctophileXIII]

I'm sure others have mentioned this, but I think it's just the easiest way the youth can rebel. When I was young, men wearing earrings was practically unheard of, so many of my male friends got earrings (but only in the left ear of course, guys with rings in their right ears were gay). Now so many parents veer away from the "norm" so much themselves that young people aren't rebelling if they wear their hair long, or dye it strange colors, or keep it short, or get tattoos or piercings. But gender play was something very far from the norms.

[@Prisonclown]

I am not a fan of neopronouns. But, I think the argument that neopronouns don't work well because they are not intuitive is weak. The far left would argue, not incorrectly, that intuitive forms of language and speech such as pronouns express unconscious societal/ cultural biases and bigotries. It is these cultural prejudices .that neopronouns are meant to combat. Unfortunately, neopronouns create more problems than they solve.

[@radrickdavis]

Culture can sometimes behave as a cult. A small minority can hold great influence over who is allowed inside or not. It can be devastating when a person is ostracized from their peer group. The easiest solution is often to conform to the culture you are expected to live in. It requires creative leadership for an individual to crack the culture. Some cultural traditions gain buzz because they are meant to highlight their unique differences from other cultures. So it takes a simple voice of reason to reverberate to change a future world of people now all dyeing their hair blue, that this is not a necessary rite to receive respect and equal treatment from others.

[@smegskull]

they (and them) displaces both the old "he and she" and the old "he or she" so even when it is being used to reference a single person it is still representing a plurality of pronouns. This was not often needed in the past, men and women lived very different lives, so you would intuit from the the speaker (and the context of conversation) the gender of the subject.

[@paulbeardsley4095]

Interesting point. It seems quaint now that if someone referred to a doctor, say, you immediately knew they meant a male, and the nurse was female. This was the case in my lifetime.

[@roxierootsxx]

Could I ask you why you, as a linguist, chose to use 'gender' instead of 'sex'? Because as far as I have learned, the word gender was used for language while sex relates to ... well, the 2 sexes.

[@keiotyk1951]

Because outside of specifically referring to 'linguistic gender', 'gender' in English is the polite French inspired form of the vulgar Germanic word 'sex'. The absurd new distinction between the two is a recent invention.

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

​@@keiotyk1951exactly. Gender is a more polite way to say sex, since sex also has the meaning of a sexual act.

[@corpse1244]

they might just be a not great linguist. they fail to grasp how the English language works, but appear confident enough to misinform an online audience.

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

@@corpse1244 who is "they" here?

[@kimmiewise1044]

​@@corpse1244 You literally couldn't tell the difference between plural and singular nouns, love. I don't think you have any footing to discredit an actual linguist when you can't even speak one language properly.

[@CommenjouerFr-gplus]

In France, we used the "He" neutral (Il) to distinguish someone who we don't know their gender (as it is more noble and easy to read, and not because the "Male is more dominant" by those feminists activists who are all about themselves). But now, the Gen Z want to use "Iel" (the equivalent of "They") as a way to "identify as someone who's gender neutral", which is...selfish. Like with your previous video, it seems it's more for "validating their existence" rather than logic.

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

Yep, and that's a big problem. You see, most of these issues with languages with grammatical gender come from the Anglosphere, and this view that using the generic "he" in a language is sexist also comes from their own preconceptions, and prejudice against our languages. If you read some papers, and books on comparative grammar from the US and the UK even from the 80s, it's not rare to see the author refering to languages with grammatical case declension, and gender as "inferior", "less cultivated", "unnecessarily complicated", "unsofisticated", and even "uncivilised" (the last one being especially common with African languages). This prejudice just remained strong in "Feminist Linguistics" (which isn't actually a scientific area, it's just them making the interpretations they want about linguistic features they believe is sexist), and now is pushed towards the rest of the world.

[@kimmiewise1044]

​@@user-df8hl4zx2l And this stems not from the English language itself but rather a political ideology that took root in English and other radical schools of thought like the Frankfurt school, the radicals of the French revolution and the Bolsheviks in Russia. For example, calling a woman a lady or madam or miss or mistress has a history of nobility and title throughout Europe indicating a wealthy land owning female prior to just being a respectful term for a female. Because of this history, these different radicals wanted to make women of all statuses and even men and women identical at the lingual level. Thus in Russia you had "Comrade", in revolutionary France you had "citizen" where anyone caught calling someone by their title (Mister, master, governor, sir, sire, lord, etc) instead of just citizen or their name was immediately suspected of anti-revolutionary ideas and being a crown loyalist...Just for being polite and using a title... The feminists of our times have not escaped their bloody history and while there is no longer a guillotine, the cancel culture is a good enough replacement. What's sad is that in neutering these words and titles of esteem, they have demoted women to nothing more than sacks or organs to make them identical to women. Think: People with uteruses, people who are pregnant, chestfeeding, people who menstruate...instead of the titles, Mother, Woman, breastfeeding, Girl... Because titles naturally exclude those that don't meet the criteria for that title. If you call a slave, Master, that's an insult because the slave owns nothing, he is a slave. If someone did call a slave "master" it would be in jest, mocking his circumstance because it indicates he would never achieve that title. Calling a scullery maid "Lady" was also relentlessly mocked. And vice versa. Why do you think in ancient fairytale's the heroine who is really a lady of noble birth being demoted and called a scullery maid is such a horrible fate? What, being working class is tantamount to being abused? No because she had a TITLE and was DENIED HER TITLE. That was the insult, that was the egregious abuse to these heroines for which they receive divine retribution (fair godmother, marrying the prince [an elevation in title!], the death or removal of the offending party... Titles matter and they are of dignity and respect. To remove someone's title and to demote them to lower than a working animal is nothing short of disgusting no matter how one spins it. But that's the only way identical equality will exist. Because if everyone is just a stupid animal with working parts, then we're all equal. Equally treated like shit. All because some lazy upper middle class hooligans from the 18th century didn't like the fact that some people whose ancestors worked extraordinarily hard had better titles than them. Granted some of the ideas had merit, such as the suspicious nature of the church and clergy on its face became a corrupt arm of the nobility and royalty, which spurred the reformation and the split of Christianity into dozens of sects. But I don't think you need to erase the base civil principles of respect and honor to achieve this. When King Henry the VIII split from Catholicism to pioneer the Anglican Church he didn't stop becoming a king and the titles based on Catholic social order didn't magically disappear. Nobles of England who at one point were technically Catholic, kept their noble status, titles and respect. Not because some religion TOLD them that was their status but because IT OBJECTIVELY WAS their status regardless of the surrounding changes. However when you demonize even these basic objective principles, such as a lord of an estate not being a lord anymore because a lowly street cleaner wants to be seen as his equal, it of course leads to the utter degradation of all people. There is no respect anymore because everyone is the same. And I think this is where the pronoun game started. Because the woman or man titles were getting more and more identical in function. A woman wasn't special, she didn't have a special protected status, her body was no longer scared and honorable. Who cares about your womanhood when some dude in a dress can basically do it all but better than you do? Woman is no longer a noble title given to females that experienced the biological realities of maturing into female adulthood. It's an "identity" that any one can start slapping on himself and if anyone says otherwise it's transphobic and sexist. What else are young girls (notice it's now a majority of girls who are doing these games) supposed to do when the title 'woman' loses utility? Cling to a title that does. Trans. It's a title of artificial nobility. She doesn't work for it or meet any criteria to earn this title. It's one she can claim simply by saying so and all of the respect, dignity and humanity that was stripped from womanhood returns in the trans title. Trans people aren't mere men and women. Trans people are not subject to these reductive terms and disrespect. In fact, if you dare to misgender a trans person the whole wrath of society will descend upon you and in some backwards societies it's equivalent to threatening violence...Let us reiterate, in some places, not referring to someone by this artificial title which could change at any time and questioning this title is tantamount to physical violence... It's no wonder with such vehement social pressures that girls and women by the bucket load have ditched "woman" and become "She/they non-binary" to get the social difference and protection being stripped away from women. All because women want equality. Equality sucks.

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

@@kimmiewise1044 I couldn't have written a better text about this subject. Good job.

[@churka5984]

I always like to look at things from both sides and I've been also using tumblr for a couple of years in the past (unfortunately). What I believe is the deal with non-binary being popular is how humans generally attach to their identity and how we imagine or conceptualize reality. Most of us view gender as sex or secondary sex characteristics and presentation, but in the trans/non-binary community, they see it as an internal subjective identity that the other person *needs* to also imagine while talking to them. When someone has spent a lot of time with these kinds of people, they begin to view gender, sex, identity, personality etc. very differently than most other humans. This subjective imagined gender becomes as real as anything other that we see or experience. Nowdays, way too many teens and young adults struggle with finding purpose or meaning of life. It's incredibly difficult for most of us to accept the position or role we were born into because our "culture" makes us believe that the role is *our identity.* To me personally, being female is a role of someone living in a biologically female body. It's not who I am. I like being percieved as female because I've never had a problem with it. Someone else can have a very different experience, but instead of analizing why that might be the case, everyone is now jumping to the conclusion that they have an "inherent identity" that's different than the "assigned identity". I have no problem with people trying to live as non-binary if it fits them well, but this whole idea of abstract gender identities is, honestly, a bullshit byproduct of 21st century western thinking, rather than something real that exists outside of our current social constructs and ideas.

[@mxdahliabelle]

We are far from the first or only culture to adopt a spectrum of gender. People have deviated from gender norms for as long as gender norms have existed. What you may have difficulty understanding, because it's not your personal experience, is that most transgender people try very hard to fulfill cultural expectations. When that fails, we often try to abandon all such norms. Once that fails, we embrace whatever norms and stereotypes feel best, and doing so often impacts how others perceive us. The way most people interact with me if they think of me as a woman vastly differs from how I was treated when assumed to be a man. I prefer being treated in ways that align with my self-perception, in much the same way you would probably prefer to not be treated or seen as a man. I can understand and respect why being female means something to you, though your reasons are personal preferences for which I have no concrete context. All any transgender person truly wants is to experience the same level of acceptance that you hold so dear.

[@AshtasticAcrobat]

@@mxdahliabelle Then you need to experience that acceptance within first because relying on people to do that for you will always result in disappointment. That sentiment goes for anyone trans or non-trans. We have to accept and love ourselves first before we see that reflected back.

[@mxdahliabelle]

@AshtasticAcrobat exactly. Loving and accepting myself has resulted in behaving, expressing, and presenting myself in ways that most people associate with women, causing them to reflexively respond to me in a way I find more tolerable than when people assumed me to be a man. Most importantly, I feel better about myself when not fulfilling any expectations of manhood. I feel safer in the company of women, and many women, like myself, feel more at ease with other women (or people who more closely resemble stereotypes of women attracted to men). By outside standards, I could be thought of as a gay man, and I tried fitting into that box, and it wasn't a good fit. Gay men do not interact with one another the same way men interact with women. Women don't interact with men the same way they ("we") interact with other women. Were there no norms or expectations (or stereotypes), I don't believe transgender people would exist, but those things do exist independent of us, and thus, we also exist as we do.

[@churka5984]

@@mxdahliabelle the gender specrtum in other cultures mostly relied on roles and presentation rather than a concept of "inherent" identity. I'm not denying any forms of gender dysphoria (including social dysphoria). What I'm critical of is the idea of an *innate gender identity,* rather than something that we take on as we develop in order to adapt to our social enviroment. Again, I have no problem with taking on a non-binary identity as it should be a basic human right to be allowed do so. If a someone feels a lot more aligned with who they are in society as a non-binary person, no one should tell them what they should do instead. The problem is with this idea of an innate identity. It doesn't really exist in the way people see it nowdays. Before the modern age, identity was mostly tied to your clan, family, kingdom or tribe and the role you played as an individual. Modern idea of gender identity is very abstract and relies on many other relatively recent western ideas and concepts. Not saying everything that comes from the modern west is *bad.* We should be thankful for many of the ideas we have now, but there are western ideas that are just unproductive and make people's lives harder for no reason.

[@mxdahliabelle]

@churka5984 We are once again in agreement. I don't believe in a concrete individual self. The old saying "no man's an island" comes to mind. My belief is that most creatures are simply struggling to make the chaos of existence somehow tolerable, and in the case of humans, that often means making shit up as we go along.

[@beans69beans]

In a way it’s more about ideology than linguistics imo. Liberalism (encompasses neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism, social democracy, and more) is an ideology based primarily on individual freedom, which includes preventing others from limiting your freedom. This could lead someone to believe that a person has a right to their identity, and others should not be allowed to infringe on that identity. I agree with the sentiment, although I think that it has to be balanced with practicality as well.

[@phillippenna5558]

pronouns are general not personal...yes! Thank you!

[@laurelin3422]

I loved the skits. I love to see more like it form you.

[@PlantMusicLife]

One thing I’ve been noticing in my own neighborhood is a lot of men dressing like regular men from the waist up but from the waist down, they’re wearing a skirt, heels, and have shaved legs. I’m a pretty open-minded person but even I’m not sure what to call a woman-identifying person who does this. 🤷🏼‍♂️

[@nottechytutorials]

We just call them perverts. They just have a fetish for women.

[@MrRazielKOH]

Don't mock replacing verbs... Smurfs are intelligent beings with feelings, and they don't appreciate being the butt of your joke.

[@TheSpeenort]

When I speak with you, you are involved and "you" is the proper pronoun. When I speak about you, you are not involved, and I'll use any pronoun I deem to be appropriate.

[@freaksed]

the "you're supposed to ask" response also doesn't work with the example. if you "see" someone and then go to tell someone else about it, then at no point did you even have the opportunity to ask what their personal pronouns are.

[@teallineart8805]

2:08 Correct. That’s how most people use it from my understanding. And since you can never be fully sure who has which pronouns, it only makes sense to default to they/them. :)

[@isabelee7262]

i feel like this idea that asking to be called by certain pronouns is as absurd as saying to change the verbs entirely is kind of a false equivalence. we switch pronouns for pets and babies all the time when we learn that we said the wrong thing and we do use singular they all the time. i think that ze/zir and all that other stuff is whack but i think that it’s important to refer to people how they want to be referred to. if a trans woman looks like a woman and wants me to call her a she, who does that hurt?? if we want to extend the usage of they/them in the singular to apply to specific persons and not just non specific ones, who does it hurt?? i feel like the thing that’s being forgotten here is that we do change our language for people all the time. we don’t call people colored, oriental, retarded or various other words any more because they hurt. and we often will refer to people with different adjectives or titles. i’ve also met people who say like, hey don’t use blank adjective or noun cuz it’s hurtful and then we stop. there have been other gender systems in the world that have male, female and trans woman (Oaxacan Muxes thai kathoey, indian hijra, tongan fakaleiti, Sakalavan sekratas) or male, female, trans man, trans woman (mohave alyha and hwame, samoan fa’afafine and fa’atama) , or even male, female, trans woman, trans man, androgyne (bugis people in indonesia). i think that across history and across human culture, there have been people who we would call trans, enough to the point where many languages and cultures have specific terms and roles for them. using they/them pronouns when someone wants you to acknowledges both the physical reality of bimodal sex distribution and the sociological reality of having more than 2 genders. biology, language and societies have all shown us that there is more to the world than just he and she

[@mariaaleksandraantuszewicz4933]

Dear Lana, I'm from Poland. Polish language is very gendered, yet I never met a person who'd ask me to refer to them using some made up, gramatically suspicious pronouns because they identified as neither he nor she. I'm beginning to think this is strictly eglish speaking world's problem. I'm wondering if you met any they/thems in Slovenia?

[@LanaMarie]

hello, thanks for your comment! i personally don't know anyone, but my younger cousin (she's 19 and just started college) had a few classmates in high school last year who did "identify" as something else and requested to be referred to as "they" by teachers and classmates. this is a linguistic nightmare, because in slovenian we have the neuter gender that is very demeaning when used for a person, and using "they" (we have dual and plural) is incredibly confusing, probably even more so than in english.

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

It's like some kind of mind virus that affects people who enter in contact with it in the English world. They invented the pronoun "elu" in Portuguese, and the only people forcing others to use it are girls who were infected by Tumblr or Tiktok. It's chaos.

[@mariaaleksandraantuszewicz4933]

Polish neuter gender refers to, with few exceptions, inanimate objects. Thus using polish equivalent of it to describe an adult human being would also sound slightly demeaning As well as completely counterintuitive to the person forced to do these linguistic gymnastics. Correct me if I'm wrong- aren't all slavic languages not even equipped with singular they, so all we're left with is the neuter it? I truly hope this pronoun virus won't spread to our "less westernized" countries...

[@wlodek7422]

Yep, same here. Never met a single person which requested that in Poland. Also i never met people considering themselves non binary etc and i study in warsaw so i would expect to see it knowing that city

[@cradica]

My mom is Polish.I speak both languages

[@donnahanna10565]

Again, YOU ARE AMAZING!!!!! ❤ I saved both videos to share multiple times! I have also sunscribed ❤

[@anonymussicarius8899]

Beautiful dresses! I also like the butterfly. :D - Btw. you can confess it, you just wanted an excuse to show off your colletcion of dresses. ;p

[@LanaMarie]

guilty as charged, haha

[@VocalEdgeTV]

This is prof that Algorithm listens and possibly knows our thoughts. I’ve been pondering this subject for the past few weeks.

[@christofyre]

To say nothing of the fact that pronouns are function words, not content words. Languages willingly accept new content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) because they are full of semantic content and can typically fit in many places in a syntactic structure (hence nouns like Google doing double duty as verbs). Function words (articles, pronouns, prepositions, and the like), on the other hand, are very limited in the places they can fit in a syntactic structure and are notoriously hard to define because they don’t have much semantic content, serving more of a grammatical purpose than semantic one, as they do. These categories are therefore much more resistant to new entries, and typically remain more or less the same for the duration of their language’s lifespan.

[@evanmak7837]

This idea, iirc, came from the obsession of young people (mainly at tumblr) over biological sex and going against social gender norms. As people, our instict is to take everything at face value at first, aka we will call a cisgender woman a she without much thought. We have no reason to ask one's preferred pronouns if they are not part of our social circle or close friends, and when we do, it has a cringey quality of TMI. The saddest part, most of the people who supported this at first were ironically doing so. The anonymity of the website, as well as the chaos of replies in posts made many people think this was unironic and spread it everywhere, from other sites to reality, like a virus. People joked about it, got it to memetic status, made 1000 sexualities and pronouns just for fun, and the small amount of people who took it seriously made this mess happen. Unrelated but also related: Along the way coming out also became a meme. As a gay 90s man, seeing one of my lowest, hardest and most emotional moments being treated as a joke made me completely lose hope on the new generation. I hope they realise how tasteless of a joke this really was after all those years.

[@forestriver8596]

I’m other countries there’s a singular pronouns for people regardless of what their gender is. Gender is a personal thing to each people and it’s experienced differently depending on the person. Above all, language is ever evolving and changing

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

Diferent languages have a different logic and structure. Language evolution is systematic, and logical. The fact one language as a specific feature (non-gendered pronouns) doesn't mean that all languages should have it or are going to have it through evolution. Pronouns aren't about identity or how people experience their identities, they're descriptors of how the person talking perceives the person who's talked about. In other words, its focus is physical, not mental.

[@sudokode]

"It" is used to refer to people in proper English, but it only happens once. That's when you refer to a baby of unknown gender. "Is it a boy or a girl?"

[@paulbeardsley4095]

I think it is also used when you know for sure that the unknown person is singular. If someone broke into your shed last night you will refer to the intruder as they/them but if someone breaks off a conversation with you to answer the phone, when they return you will say, Who was it? I once had difficulty explaining this to my English as a Foreign Language class, who thought it sounded rude. They thought you should say, Who was he? or Who was she? Eventually I got through to them that if you would only know their gender if you knew who had called, in which case you wouldn’t need to ask! Interesting that we don’t say, Who were they?

[@jameskreth3681]

Another great video! Those were some funny skits 😂!

[@_DROM_]

People that think they are neither a man nor a woman need hobbies. They need to find something to do. They have way too much free time in their hands. They need a purpose in life.

[@robynski275]

its almost always neurodivergent ppl who use neo-pronouns, mainly because most of us genuinely dont see gender as 2 categories (especially because there are more than 2 sexes but yk) and tend to be extremely alienated by most people so we start feeling more connected to things that are less than human, which manifests as neo-pronouns. thats my theory as an autistic person who likes to use it pronouns

[@sageoverheaven]

What is the third sex? Are you referring to intersex people?

[@robynski275]

@@sageoverheaven yes

[@Tulin730]

Tldr; A word being complex or diverse doesn't mean it's not still used to relay sprcifiv information. A word requirimg knowledge of a specific society is still useful. The reason we categorize people, animals, or anything it's so we can identify, refer to, or make basic predictions of the members in that category. In social situations, we would use social information and words. In biological situations, you b would use biological words. This is straight forward and logical. In many cases socisl groupsb and words can change based on society, time, or context. Ie in the US an adult is genetslly 18. However you n have to be 21 to buy an adult drink. 16 olds are routimly put on trial as adults for violent crimes. That's just in the one diciety too. Many differen ones use the word diffrently. The WHO is 19 and therev are rites of passage in some societies.

[@nuca9087]

this very very insightful, i share the same opinions as you. the whole pronoun/neopronoun situation is very bizarre, especially if you're not a native English speaker. My first language is Georgian, and cool thing about Georgian language is that we have no gender pronouns - no he/she, there's just one word for both. We also don't have separate words for daughter/son, gf/bf and so on. So basically no one has ever fought over the topic of identifying any other pronoun. (I don't mean trans persons). Pronouns, at least for me are just pure grammar and pretty useless thing to argue about. And i've seen so many people making their pronouns their whole identity when in reality it doesn't really say anything important about that person? Off topic but I love your outfit and hairstyle💚🌷

[@mongolloyd7839]

Mmmmm. Logic and reason. Lovely.

[@cd92606]

Brilliant take.

[@TheDarkLadyOfTheNight]

If gender isn't a concept, what is it?

[@hudiscool4186]

French 2nd person singular; tu French second person singular polite form : Vous French second person plural :Vous!

[@IGuessItsSketchyT]

I don't think there will be time I'll ever acknowledge ze or zim as pronouns. I too much self respect...

[@themeaningofgender]

Good work.

[@pilroberts6185]

This and your last video, well done. If only you were teaching our college students and not the ‘activists’ posing as professors (and sorry in advance if this turns into a long essay). 'Preferred Pronouns'... sigh... this trend exemplifies why societies/cultures have rules, standards, stigmas, etc. Some will say our societies are built upon individual liberty. This may be so but liberty is not license. No different than marriage which requires us to individually compromise and prevent us from succumbing to the whims of our superego. We are better for it. Liberty requires citizens exhibit self restraint and self control to ensure society maintains cohesiveness. Society can only protect the individual if the individual protects society. Failure to do so rapidly leads to the opposite of individual liberty; license and narcissism. Both of which risk imposing upon the rights of others. In this case the right of freely speaking one’s language. If language cannot be freely spoken, then it will be lost or die. If that happens, society and culture soon follows. And I'm quite sure our Liberty will not be at the forefront of concerns among those imposing the replacement. As an aside, ironic that a lot of these lost souls searching for meaning from faux pronouns are the result of children growing up in divorced families. Thus the root of this goes back to the West’s decision to make divorce as easy as possible. Done so people can express their ‘liberty’ to be unmarried. But as I said, liberty is not license. And divorce is not liberty, quite the opposite. So children lacking (in most cases) a father, they grow up emotionally fragile and require endless attention to feed their egos. Sadly society seems all too eager to provide. But it's a false salve for their injury of insecurity, an empty ego cannot be sate. What they need is the rules, standards, and stigmas of society to help them constrain themselves, and live as best as possible an ordered and well meaning life.

[@GriffosRetroGaming]

I never understood why they put pronouns on a name badge…their name is on the badge which is what I will use when address that person

[@viennawalker7002]

Your English is very good. The pride verb example was perfect.

[@gary7181]

Which Balkan country you from? Your accent is great, sounds almost Swedish with the tone but not quite, with a hint of Slavic.

[@arandomhuman9398]

I may be incorrect but I think she's Slovenian.

[@TheLookatGodPodcast]

Thank you for making this video! So informative. It’s so crazy how the west is changing. As I am helping my parents learn English it is so confusing for them especially with all these new identities and pronouns. It just makes a big mess. My heart goes for the people who are trying to learn English. Can you make a video about this new term called LatinX? They are using it to describe Latino but it doesn’t sound grammatically correct.

[@mxdahliabelle]

Most people prefer Latine as a nongendered alternative

[@floptaxie68]

@@mxdahliabelle most people just say Latina/Latino

[@mxdahliabelle]

@floptaxie68 I am well aware. And those seeking a gender-neutral *alternative* have stated that Latiné is preferred. Most people, myself included, use the word Black when referring to racialized people of African descent, also known as Africans, Pan-Africans, diasporic Africans, or Blaque (when specifically referring to intersecting Black and queer identities). In English speaking countries, server has largely replaced waiter/waitress; actor is generally used in place of actor/actress; flight attendant has superseded steward/stewardess. The late 20th century also saw numerous feminist efforts and attempts to respell "woman" and "female" in ways that didn't contain man/male. That's one of the fun parts of language. We're constantly making it up as we go along and try things out to see what sticks or doesn't. (see also color/colour, fish/fishes, calculator/counting machine, water fountain/bubbler, soda/pop/soda pop/soft drink, Indian/American Indian/Native/Native American/Indigenous vs defaulting to specific tribe or nation) It's just not that serious.

[@nottechytutorials]

@@mxdahliabelle For one of your examples you should look up the history behind words like "female" and "woman". The word "man" is not meant to make the male gender the default word, it generally includes men and women.

[@mxdahliabelle]

@nottechytutorials I am well aware and invite you to look up "womyn," "womban," "womxn," etc. Since at least the 1970s, various feminist groups have objected to "man" being the default term for humans, deeming it to be linguistic sexism. I'm not arguing for or against any of these linguistic innovations. What I'm arguing is that language constantly changes to suit various needs and preferences, and being offended by that process is wantonly ignorant, overly sensitive, and has sociopolitical underpinnings. In the case of Latiné, had it been proposed for some reason other than accommodating intersex and gender non-conforming individuals, no one would care, but because it's perceived as giving legitimacy to a maligned minority, it's seen as an affront to civilization. Ultimately, language is a tool to be modified and utilized however we see fit at any given time. Many words (e.g. "bad" or "minute") can take on contradictory meanings depending on context.

[@suiinside]

honestly i think the whole pronoun issue is two faced, as you pointed out there is this youth subculture desire to belong to a sub culture, and those who institute subculture to subvert the norm. in history you can see this with the music world and the deliberate promotion and deliberate subversion of certain musical influences in the main stream (the money and power game high up influencing youth) the "belonging " of the youth a group to be with is thus created outside the control of the youth but made to appeal and be "youthful" in the pronoun case i would say extreme "freedom of choice" on the outside, and extreme 1984 on the inside by design. the youth only sees the extreme freedom of the pronoun issue where they can be free to create a pronoun and separate them self from the norm and unknowingly destroying the norm then there is the narcissistic tendencies and the ignorant and rebellious as this pronoun issue is raised, they forget they want to hold EVERYONE hostage in a NEW SPEAK distopia, where they want to force others how to speak and what words to use freedom of thought and speech destroyed by theem taking so much liberties that it becomes unusable as with all things introduced, there is always a slippery slope tied to it as things continue to escalate

[@MiaogisTeas]

As a former language acquisition and literacy expert, I concur. Fwiw I fought against this in University back in the 2010s. I could see Chomsky's subversive influence on linguistics back then and felt dread that people were trying to make the changes that would allow this B.S.

[@corpse1244]

haha how do you fight against pronouns? every single essay i have ever written uses they instead of he or she and it was never a problem. it's so strange that people like you want to find problems where there are none

[@kimmiewise1044]

@@corpse1244 So you never gendered a single thing in any of your academic writing what so ever? Clearly not a part of the hard sciences then... But seriously, you can always fight against language used to destabilize society. Language like n*gger, f*ggot, q*eer, tr*nny...Can you really fight against these terms and their use. These are nouns, can you fight against nouns? After all these terms were even in academic literature at one point so it must be okay. Or do you recognize that language can be harmful and that we can actively fight against language that destabilize and harm society?? If you do recognize that language can be fought against for the benefit of the greater good, then you realize why people are fighting against the pronoun nonsense. It's harming women and stripping women of their safety, dignity and respect. It's destroying a scientific understanding of the world and perpetuating falsehoods that will erase anything resembling respect and human dignity. So maybe, maybe, if you can stop with your pedantic narcissism and think about how harmful it is to change language to suit your personal feelz.

[@georgelane6350]

I always find it odd that people introduce themselves with preferred pronouns. Pronouns are selected based on the characteristics of the subject, so why not specify that you are male, female, genderfluid, or non-binary. No one has trouble correcting their pronoun use when they find out that they have misgendered an animal. Many times I've discussed people who aren't present, and the person I am talking to has assumed their gender. When I point out that we don't know the subject's gender, no one has ever had trouble correcting their pronoun use to use the gender neutral pronoun. If you knowingly use the incorrect gendered pronoun, everyone thinks you're an asshole. I think that also extends to knowingly using a gendered pronoun when you know that the person doesn't express gender. So why not just specify your gender.

[@nottechytutorials]

That's an interesting observation. These people would find it easier to just introduce themselves with their gender than it is to use a descriptive word like pronouns. But its still stupid. No one does that.

[@georgelane6350]

@@nottechytutorials the only times that it makes sense to do it are: a) you are introducing yourself to someone who would not be able to identify your gender from your voice or name. (non-gendered name, androgynous voice, introduced by text) and your gender is relevant. b) you see someone for the first time since you changed the gender you outwardly identify with and it isn't obvious to the person you are talking to. c) you are introducing yourself in a context where gender is specifically relevant and want to avoid any doubt. Gender is a spectrum and the pronouns changes at an entirely arbitrary point. I think that oddly, the virtue signalling we see from cis-gendered people who advertise their pronouns is that people have become more focused on gender. In almost all contexts, gender is completely irrelevant.

[@williamberry9013]

algorithm. I have nothing to add and generally would stay a fly on the wall, but KZbin's algorithm punishes you for my learning so much that I have nothing to add. Next time I'm told someone's preferred pronouns I'll ask them their preferred verbs. :)

[@DonswatchingtheTube]

You use 'they' and 'them' when you're talking about a person, not to them. So the person making the request is controlling you.

[@Tulin730]

Are they controlling you by telling you their name?

[@DonswatchingtheTube]

@@Tulin730 It assumes you agree, then demand you comply. Pronouns replace the need to repeat a name. Their name wouldn't be the person's sex, I wouldn't need to know their name, or the person to talk about them. So I would be controlling to demand how I talk about them. A person could believe they are male or female, neither male nor female, another species, an inanimate object, an alien, a mythical being, another age, and all these, people do believe, but it doesn't follow that I have to agree with them, then be considered a threat, hatred of them because we disagree.

[@Tulin730]

@@DonswatchingtheTube"Their name wouldn't be the persons sex," right. The comparison was because it is a way they tell you to refer to them. You said asking you to use a pronoun would be them controlling you. So them asking you to use a name should be the same. You don't seem to understand what transgender means. It's not male or female. That is sex a still real and important category. Age, object, species and whatnot are also not social groups.

[@DonswatchingtheTube]

@@Tulin730 You can't tell someone how to subjectively apply meaning to words that have objective meaning. Transgender is a term used to describe an individual belief that they are in transition between two or more objectives. The list I gave refers to the mental state of the individual which is subjective external parties. They are real to those who believe them and therefore also societal. To demand how someone refers to you has to match reality. A proper name would be objectively true and not a subjective opinion. Controlled or compelled speech is a form of control.

[@Tulin730]

@@DonswatchingtheTube first, words don't have objective meaning. They are subjective to society and context. Unless maybe you are referring to the dictionary that shows sex and gender are separate. Maybe you can refer to every major medical association in the Western world? No, being transgender means you do not identify with the gender commonly associated with your sex. The list you gave has no relation. Please, give a source. Mine is the dictionary. A proper pronoun would be objectively true and not subjective. What makes a name objectively true? They its on a piece of paper? The only thing making they name or paper true or important is your societal belief. The paper is controlling or compelling your speech now. Control would be a form of control. Good job piecing that together. Nobody is controlling your speech though. Notice how you can still say what you want. A person or business may not allow you or ask you to not use a slur. Is the fact that you might face repercussions to saying the n word control. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. You can say what you want.

[@nuotatorre8741]

A very informative video and it also made me giggle a few times. Personaly I don't have a problem if an androgenus persons asks me to refer to them as "they/them" because I regonize that many non-binary peopole feel gender dysphoria like binary trans people do. However I'm not quite sure where it stops being a need and becomes a trend. Unlike binary-gender dysphoria there aren't much studies done on non-binary peopole, which I hope there will be mkre someday because it's becoming an important topic, so I personaly tend to draw the line when I can no longer guess your pronouns from your apperence. If I were to meet someone that I can reconize to be biologicaly male, but presents themself as more androgenus and says they use all the standard pronouns it's not a problem for me. But if I can't even remotly guess your pronouns from your apperence I'm like "Ok I'll do it to be kind, but I think you are making it a bit more complex that it needs to be"

[@StuArts-Kustoms]

Just want to say, You are absolutely gorgeous in so many ways. Have a good day 😊

[@paulbeardsley4095]

Excellent.

[@justsaying.8017]

Love this, it’s so interesting✨ (Edit-I’m learning new things😃)

[@Holy_Grapefruit]

I only use They/Them if I'm unsure about the person's gender. That's it.. Now if a person has a preference for a pronoun that doesn't seem to fit what I observe? Sure! But I'm keeping it to He/Him, She/Her, They/Them. If I were to accept all these science-fiction level pronouns, I would have to learn every specific nonconforming pronoun for every individual, that would be more work than going into retail and learning all the products' names, specs and prices. And I am sorry if that offends anyone but I refuse to do more work than actual labor just to be able to refer to you. Also don't we use pronouns more often when said person isn't around than when they are around?

[@coleslaw_]

ok i’ll try not to come off as harsh this time. i’m not stalking you this was just recommended. I have an answer to both of your questions (i’m gay and a psych major). The xe/xem treegender community was made on Tumblr in the early 2010s and is called MOGAI. by alt right trolls that knew this would make actual gay people online. Sane people have deep dived on this and you can find them on here. Sadly a bunch of edgy 13 year olds thought this was cool and actual gay people starting using them. Now I live in a conservative area and there are some MOGAI people that go to the GSA clubs and I think it’s partially a reactionary response to being in a super homophobic area because when I talk to gay people from big cities they are SHOCKED and didn’t know those people actually existed. They are a VERY small and VERY loud minority. Like 99% of ppl in the LGBT community despise MOGAI because homophobes use this against us all the time. As to the issue of they/them pronouns and changing pronouns in general… psychology has proven a direct correlation between respecting pronouns and transness as a whole and suicide rates. People who are trans are more likely to kill themselves when they are not respected because there is a biological difference in their brain. Being perceived as the gender they were assigned at birth is sickening to them and can even cause physical pain. Now I hear everyone saying “THERAPY” and oh boy let me tell you… if therapy worked for dysphoria trans people wouldn’t be spending 40k to transition. The only known treatment is transitioning, which again, saves lives. Pronouns are a big deal to them because they are in serious pain. Most trans people do not expect you to know their pronouns when you see them and will tell you nicely if they feel safe around you. They care about what you call them when they aren’t around because it shows that you respect and can empathize with the genuine discomfort that they are going through and trying to ease. Most of them aren’t trying to “control” your language, they are trying to live their life as comfortably as possible. While you may be technically be correct that they/them isn’t singular language changes ALL THE TIME (again we aren’t trying to do drastic shit like neopronouns) and if you understand WHY and HOW to use they/them pronouns it’s super easy to get used to using them. I never have a problem distinguishing between a singular they and a plural they because I am used to using they/them pronouns and my brain is used it to them and naturally picks up on the context clues. This goes for most LGBT people and a large portion of gen z. I get that it can be hard to get used to saying they/them pronouns. When I first learned about them and had to use them on someone it was a bit weird at first but honestly after a week I completely stopped thinking about it. Also, no one is expecting you to be perfect, and the ones that are are the crazy out of touch reactionaries. Those people exist on both ends of the political spectrum and we shouldn’t judge the whole group on their craziness. Most trans ppl are chill and laid back people. also gender as a concept is a WHOLE field in sociology and there are sound arguments. Sociologists have studied gender and have come to the conclusion that a lot of our gender identity is based on the social constructs and gender roles that the society values and aren’t actual biological traits, nor are they set in stone.

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

It's funny how you can say that transitioning saves lives when we have no studies other than surveys that can be easily affected by the placebo effect, and the fact that there was just one single study that evaluated trans people in Sweden for a period of decades, which found out that the suicide rate of trans people increased after transition , it hasn't decreased. Actual scientific studies in this area are even censored depending on the result, even when the researcher is pro-trans such as was the case of James Caspian who was censoring for trying to study the phenomenon of young people transitioning, and then detransitioning. None of your affirmations here are scientifically proven due to the lack scientific rigour, methodology, and lack of experiments that can be falsiable. And there's no kind of blind experiment with people with gender dysphoria (note that even CANCER has experiments like this), and there's no comparative study between psychotherapy, and transitioning. In other words, all of the research in this area is quite weak, and inconclusive at best. And I say this without even touching in the physical dangers of transitioning,.

[@Revengeoftherooster]

@@user-df8hl4zx2l We’d have a lot more research if bigots and losers didn’t spend so much time and effort in preventing more research or outright destroying swaths of trans medical research like the nazis did. So many people have such a stick up their ass for what other people want for their own happiness. Is there nothing better for y’all to do than complain and police what other people want for themselves? You have to ask why their isn’t enough damn scientific research. It’s not like it hasn’t been done in history before, and can’t be done now, with proper funding and freedom to do so.

[@nottechytutorials]

@@user-df8hl4zx2l Yeah I stopped reading OPs comment after he said using preferred pronouns saves lives. As for things like surgery, I did read that there is something called the "honeymoon phase" thats probably around the timeframe of 2-3 years where people are very happy and soon after they go back to being depressed. It makes me think that any studies, if there are any, will only take survey's within this time period.

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

@@nottechytutorials yep, most studies about transitioning are taken during the first two years, and they ignore people who transitioned after this two year period has passed. In other words, it's a completely biased study, with no follow-ups or evaluation of people who have transitioned for a longer period of time.

[@nottechytutorials]

@@user-df8hl4zx2l Exactly. There's no long-term studies as far as I'm aware. Its the same for the children, since its still so early, so that makes them the test subjects.

[@kuroon7553]

English is not my first language and I'm a person who has been called different pronouns based on how I was dressed my entire life (I don't really care what pronouns people use to talk about me, no matter the language). I'm also old, like "internet old", I'm turning 30 next January and I've been active on the internet for a long time. Here's my take about this. I don't think "they/them" are very hard for people to use it, because when this started to be used, it was very natural for most people and I believe it's because these pronouns have existed for a long long time. You said on another video that language changes "organically", and i 100% agree it does. The use of they/them at the beginning didn't feel very forced since those are well-known pronouns, so it had the potential to be an organic change. But "neo-pronouns" aren't part of the everyday vocabulary, which is why they feel weird to the mouth, and they hit the "stranger danger" wall, let's say like this. Because they're so far away from what people are used to, that's why it's so hard to accept and understand. And unfortunately, they/them got caught in this. It's not difficult to look at a person and go "oh, they look nice". It's not, "they" is something you know, and you know how to use it when you know nothing about the subject you're talking about. What makes it difficult to use is that your head goes "but if I use it like this, I'm gonna have to use zir and xers and whatever else people come up" which is something no one has the time and patience to do and then you build up a wall and simply refuses to use something neutral. And I say this as someone who is queer, who is actively part of the community and who completely gave up on using people's pronouns and just simply refers to them by their names. I believe it became too much too quickly and that's why most of the people closed themselves off. It's not that people are against new things, it's just that too much too quick is scary sometimes. But one thing I'd like to add is that, as I said, I'm not a native English speaker, and for me it was easier to get use to grammatical changes in English than it was in Portuguese, which is my native language. My theory is that since you're learning those rules in school, it gets so ingrained in your head that it's very hard to detach yourself from it to learn new ways. But when you learn another language, depending on which phase the internet were when you learned it, it's easier because the new things just bundle up with all the other new things you're learning about that new language.

[@isabelee7262]

also i feel like the argument that they/them being used in the singular for known people isn’t intuitive is a weak argument. strong and weak verbs in english and german aren’t intuitive, the subjunctive mood in french isn’t intuitive, plurals in arabic and german aren’t intuitive, the distribution of the danish suprasegmental feature the stød isn’t intuitive, swedish, norwegian and japanese pitch accent aren’t intuitive, russian stress isn’t intuitive. they has also been used in the singular for hundreds of years, extending it to specific singular people isn’t that much work. and we do change adjectives for people. taiwanese people don’t want to be called chinese, asian americans don’t like being called oriental, gay people don’t like being called f@gg0t. and we change our usage of our lexicon for them. not because they’re controlling us but because words have an extreme impact on us and can hurt. and we should want to not hurt people even if it means a little more effort on our part

[@LorreeAppleby]

“Pronouns are general, not personal.”

[@ryancruz1876]

Yet, in linguistics we call them “personal pronouns” anyway. 🤔

[@bocckoka]

I use these pronouns - no, other people who refer to you use them.

[@samaelreidrev4938]

Heya just here to share some thoughts ! With the rise of feminism and equal right and consideration between man and woman + with the LGBT+ mouvement the definition of masculinity and feminity gets muddy. I think we can all agree on that, be it sexuality, occupation and clothing men and women become increasingly similar. (And sure you can always look into someone pants to tell but... that's rude) Because of that some people started to reject or oppose those definition and are in search of a new them something that fit themselves better, that can come in the form of a new hairstyle, new clothes, new names and new pronouns. Sometimes it's indeed just an innocent and victimless phase (brought by peer pressure, confusion or experiment) and other times it's permanent. Yes pronouns can be a bit messy to deal with but, except for people with in actual mental distress, it is rarely a big deal to misgender someone (as long as it's not done maliciously) And it such a tiny deal that if you don't know the person... well give them any pronoun you want, it's not like they'll care if you aren't going to meet them again. As for talking about someone with prefered pronouns to other... Just use their prefered pronouns. I mean, it's common courtesy to speak about someone the same way you'd speak in front of them (don't speak behind people's back and all that). But yes, it's a change, it's difficult and messy and counter intuitive, but it's not the end of the world ? Is it ? And if you can't stand it, don't. If it's a deal breaker for this peculiar acquaintance well... shame but it happens all the time for thousands of reasons. We also need to say this, languages change, they evolve and, kinda like water, they often go to by the simplest path. If you don't like this "trend" wait it out, if it's really a trend it'll soon die out. The question is, and deserves to be asked : What if it's not ?

[@coleslaw_]

you phrased this so much better than i could have thank you

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

Language change, but the change is often logical, and systematic, to the point we can retrace the changes, and even reconstruct how the language was in the past. Every single attempt for change is filtered by its speakers, and, yes, filtering also means DISAGREEING with them, and going against that notion. This can be seen in the attempt to add gendered pronouns in Chinese during the early XX century, and various other attempts to change how a language works (which weren't successful at all). In other words, opposing "change", and correcting is also part of language evolution. Also, using preferred pronouns isn't a form to be polite to someone, in the same way treating a person who thinks he's Napoleon Bonaparte as if he really were him isn't polite it's just stupid.. It's similar to preferred adjectives. We, humans, distinguish other people's sex extremely fast, and will use that information, pronouns are descriptive of what we see, in the same way adjectives are descriptive to what we perceive. Even languages that have an additional pronoun for priests, people at least have a visual indicator that that person is a priest (through the use of clothes), which isn't the case of NBs. It comes to the point that it's even impossible to differentiate a woman who's masculine from an NB woman. Pronouns are used to simplify how we speak, and to create an easy anchor for a specific individual. If pronouns are chosen, they can be considered random. If they are random, they become useless, and it's better to repeat the name of the person instead.

[@samaelreidrev4938]

@@user-df8hl4zx2l I com^letely agree with you on the first part. Language change by the people who speaks it and I agree you can oppose that change that's part of language evolution just as you said. For the rest, I can't say I agree. First thing first, let's be honest, it's not like identifying as Napoleon Bonaparte or an attack helicopter or an animal or anything like that. I'm sure you yourself agree that its completely different. On one case you got someone saying "Can you adress me as another set of pronouns ?" and on the second "Can you adress me as if I had a completely different history/biology/physionomy ?" and, once again, it doesn't work as a metaphor for trans people either since the difference between man and woman (especially in their role in society) is, for the USA or europeans country, interchangeable. Pronouns aren't descriptors (or at least they aren't JUST descriptors) they are also a part of your identity, something that other adress you as and speak of you as. And, It's your right if you want YOUR identity changed, and it's normal to ask for other people to comply with this change and shun the people who don't. Also, I don't really understand the last part but from what I get, you say it has become impossible to assume the gender with just a glance now... Is that a problem? Just use them or any, they'll correct you if you're wrong it's not the end of the world. "If pronouns are random they become useless" Indeed they are. Pronouns especially gender pronouns is a HUGE thorn we put in our foot and I hope that the language evolution will wipe them away (hopefully in my lifetime). And no, it's not better to repeat the name instead, it's fudging long. (But if you don't know someone pronouns and doesn't want to assume it's a very legitimate tactic) So it'll all depends on the evolution of the language then. In true democratic fashion : Let's the more numerous wins !

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

@@samaelreidrev4938 pronouns aren't part of your identity. This is a novel idea that's not even confirmed on scientific basis, nor linguistic ones. Pronouns are descriptors, especially categorising descriptors in a specific language. I don't know from where you brought trans people into the frey. Trans ≠ Non-Binary. And the whole point of transitioning is to actually be perceived as the opposite sex, in other words, to be seem and described by others as one of the opposite sex. Saying you're neither male nor female is comparable to someone thinking they are another person (i.e Napoleon) or another species. It's an impossibility. But even in the case of trans people, it's completely acceptable for people to not accept their views, because, again, language is descriptive, and if I don't see you as what you want to be seen as, I won't describe you as you want to be described as. And for this, I can even bring the case of Hindi. Hindi is a language with only two genders (masculine and feminine), but they have a third social gender (the Hijra). Although the Hijra are considered a third gender, the language follows a descriptive approach, and treats them in the Masculine. The own noun "Hijra" is masculine, and it has a feminine form "Hijri". The Hijra however don't treat the masculine treatment as if it were an attack on their identity. They are sure of who they are, and they accept their biological reality. There's not much information about their secret language, Hijra Farsi, but from what I read about it, they also treat each other in the masculine, just like in common Hindi. If you think a pronoun is a defining part of your identity, then you're completely screwed. And this is something that could only have been born from the mind of an anglophone. What you said in regards to pronouns being linked to one's identity isn't the case in a great part of human languages. In languages with grammatical gender we treat men in the feminine, and women in the masculine all the time. Collectives are usually feminine, so in Portuguese "rapaziada" (group of men) would be described as "she", while a mulherão "big woman" is treated in the masculine. It's not rare to say she to talk about a man when you're focusing about him as a person (pessoa is a feminine noun), or say he while talking about a woman when you're talking about her as a human being (ser humano is a masculine noun). In the other words, the idea that pronouns are a part of someone's identity isn't just stupid on itself, but it's also a completely anglocentric remark that ignores the logic of how a big chunk of human society speaks. In other words, the idea that pronouns are linked to one's identity dods not hold water. Also, your last remark is incredibly ignorant, not only about how languages work, but also how language evolves. Languages that lose grammatical gender take centuries to lose it, little by little, and even the distinction with pronouns is something really hard to change. In the case of Indo-Aryan languages such as Farsi, it happened because the only difference between a feminine and a masculine pronoun was vowel length, and the vowel length of both pronouns merged. Similar cases happen in other languages, but it's really rare to lose gendered pronouns in a millenia, let alone if this happened in a lifetime. Sorry to disappoint you, but languages will probably remain using gendered pronouns for next millenia. The only way your desire could become reality would be if majority of the languages went extinct in this century, and only one language such as Mandarin Chinese survived as a majoritary language.

[@rusoazul945]

6:53 I'm a high school student who took psychology for a year. I think that people nowadays wish to be referred to a different way to pretend that they are a different person. They might have suffered trauma to the point of wishing they were someone else altogether, and undergoing many unnecessary changes in order to create a façade that can help them cope. Considering how we just recently came out of a pandemic that affected many people, that could be the main source of gender switches, or something before that, something that they couldn't cope with, but found the gender ideology and the cult that's associated with it, and just ran with it. That, or they just want to belong. In short, it's either a coping mechanism, or a result of peer pressure/wish to belong.

[@Tulin730]

It seems much more likely that they have always been around, we just stopped killing them as much. As recently as the 70s a female could be arrested for being in public with less than the pieces of feminine clothing on and a male could be arrested for suspicion of homosexuality. Other countries have been worse too. They were burning trans literature in 1930s Germany. The raised rates are what we would and expected. Look at how many more left-handed people there were following raising the stigma in that.

[@gothicwriter9897]

Totally agree. Great to hear an expert discuss this. I mostly use three singular personal pronouns for people; he, she and fool. I also use they and them if relevant. What the individual spoken about thinks is irrelevant because they are the topic of conversation so what right do they have to direct what pronouns I use? It's like having preferred pronouns on name badges or email signatures. What is the point? The name badge and email signature give us the name, ergo no need for a pronoun. It's getting stupid.

[@redneckinthebardo]

Let's make up one new pronoun for narcissists and be done with it.

[@bunny_god]

been loving your videos

[@k21bg]

I need to to subscribe to this channel 😂😂😂 lovin' the discussion so much,, very educative..

[@troffle]

... English... accent... from two instances... of... Lana... ... brain locking up while I hit rewind and watch that scene again a few more times...

[@lastunicorn846]

*>> "In short, yes, using they them pronouns for for just one single person is not grammatically incorrect that's it end of the video"* False. It is only correct in the special case when referring to an implied plural. For example, when Shakespeare wrote _"There's not a man I meet but doth salute me As if I were their well-acquainted friend",_ the "their" implicitly refers to multiple men.

[@Soufriere84]

Did you WATCH the rest of the video? You certainly imply by your comment you didn't. Regardless, you're being prescriptivist, which automatically makes you wrong about everything.

[@Rodger_Phillips]

They/Them has been used since before 1375, when the first known written form was noted. They/Them has been intended to be used in place of Gender pronouns for a very long time. I am fairly certain that about 99% of the people creating all these neo-pronouns have no true understanding of pro-nouns and historical use of them which lead us all to today. I am in my 50's and have always loved languages, even today I am trying to learn Welsh, Te reo Maori and Norwegian, but I learn something new about my native English every day as well. thank you for your videos they are fantastic.

[@nottechytutorials]

I agree. I saw some comments on other videos on how they/them as a gender-neutral use has historical precedence, but they are 100% not using it because of its historical use.

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

I have to disagree. They/them was taken from Old Norse because the native 3rd person plural from English merged with the 3rd person masculine singular (he). Taking "they" into English never was about gender, since the plural behaved as a gender of its own (similarly to German), and it was only used in the singular to denote a person of unknown characteristics, sex, and sometimes number.

[@Euphrosyned]

I always knew certain accents could make a person more attractive to me like Scottish or Spanish (Castilian) I knew knew that certain accents I wouldn't say I didn't like or that they make people unattractive to me but not my favorites like NY accents North Carolina or some British and Australian and German and a few European and Asian accents and idk yoursnidnguesw like Russian Hungarian idk I'm sure I'm way off but it's amazing how hot an accent can become on a person that you may not have liked before but when they speak so intelligently and have eyes like danyerus hair and skin completion ike a Disney princess. You're very pretty. But the intelligence too makes your accent way more attractive to me. But it's fruitless. These people want to be oppressed and victims and the protagonist of everyone else's story . They want no commitment or responsibility and would argue that all languages is sexist and racist and homophobic and transphobic and whatever else. As a lesbian I just want lgb to drop everyone else in the group even tho theres great ts like Blair and Marcus I have nothing in common with them . Is abbreviation and acronyms grammar the whole lgbtqia or whatever the fuck. Tell ne it's horrible grammar too.

[@satomizukutomekitoari6144]

I wonder if using one/oneself is a viable option or if it has the same issue as they/them

[@user-df8hl4zx2l]

The problem with "one" in particular is that it can be confused with the number one in some cases, but it is a better fit than they/them, and is already somewhat in use. I really think it's a better alternative to use as a generic pronoun.