There’s definitely some additional nuance (like a pronouns in bio/username situation) but this should cover the broad needs of anyone who is approaching this with good faith.

    • strayEnglish
      4·
      7 days ago

      I actually prefer it as the neutral singular, but everyone decided that was dehumanizing. To me it feels natural because if you don’t know an animal’s or a baby’s gender, you call it it.

      • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        3·
        7 days ago

        People didn’t so much “decide” that, as it was used that way by bigots specifically because it was historically only used for animals and objects. They used it as a slur to hurt folks in our community, and like any attempt to reclaim a slur, even though the reclamation is an act of power, there are going to be people who were targetted by the slur who struggle with the concept of reclamation.

    • psud@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      7 days ago

      use “Ms or Mrs”

      1. It was Miss for unmarried women before Ms was coined and popularised for “none of your business whether I’m married or not” so Ms was acceptable regardless
      2. Doesn’t Mrs look like it’s missing a possessive apostrophe, a Mr’s woman?

      And your main point, degender the male pronouns, it wouldn’t work. “Man” used to mean people, male men and female men and child men – boys and girls – had different words, some of which are still around. That’s why people say there’s nothing gendered in “chairman” (which 50 years ago was logically equal to “chairperson”, unless you count other species as people).

    • spujb@lemmy.cafeOPEnglish
      27·
      7 days ago

      make he/him gender neutral

      ???why not just use they/them like we have been for centuries lmao. your plan would cause so many problems.

        • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          6·
          7 days ago

          Just a quick heads up but, linguistically speaking, you are mistaken with what you said about “they/them”.

          • danc4498@lemmy.worldEnglish
            18·
            7 days ago

            Maybe you misunderstood my actual comment. I’m saying we should use he/him as the general neutral pronoun. That Tom Scott video is saying the same thing as me, just with a different solution.

            You said my plan would cause “so many problems”, and outside of the obvious transition problem, I still see no problems.

            • spujb@lemmy.cafeOPEnglish
              171·
              7 days ago
              • problem 1: why are you choosing he/him to be gender neutral and not she/her? it gives the impression that grammatical maleness is default and you are going to get pushback for that, whether your intentions are sexist or not.
              • problem 2: making he/him gender neutral strips the identity from male and masculine people.
              • problem 3: you’re suggesting a massive overhaul when there’s literally already a word in place.

              and NO they/them doesn’t “refer to multiple.” the tom scott video abjectly disagrees with you on that, so don’t twist things. even Shakespeare used they/them to refer to singular people.

              honestly this conversation is pointless and boring so i’ll end it here.