Zie/Zer/hir/xie/what the fuck ever

[oxfordtweed]

I hate these words. More than anything. They're not even fucking words.

Did you know that English has a gender-neutral set of pronouns? Ready for it?

They/Their/They're

Yes, they is also a plural pronoun, but it is also a singular gender-neutral pronoun. When I see comments like

On the other, we don't know where zie got that point of view from, what exactly zie had been through in zer life and how exactly that had affected zer, so judging zer motivations is nigh impossible.

my eyes just glaze over. You might as well just add 'chicken' and 'pig' in place of 'they' and 'their.' It would make about as much sense.

Who decided on this, anyway? I've only seen this crap pop up within the last year or so, and I can't believe that it's catching on. And don't you fucking dare tell me that language is fluid and that it evolves. I don't care. I still hate these phoneme combinations. This is just a case of me hating on your drive to be as politically correct as possible. And I openly hate on it, because it's fucking stupid.


Rant over.

Comments

[kimboo_york]

Language is fluid and it evolves...BUT rarely when it is forced with a hammer to do so. Fifteen years ago the they/they're/them was hotly contested, but it was a more "natural" fix than anything else on offer so it got picked up and used more often. And THAT is how language evolution happens, people!

Personally I put the "zie/hir" crap in the same pot with "womyn" as forced-use word!fail. Mostly, IMHO, the people who use those alternate words are doing so out of a sense of self-righteousness, not because they believe they are actually changing the world. (disclaimer: I have used all of them on occasion, usually as a "test run" to see how well they incorporated into my language usage. They totally didn't.)

[oxfordtweed]

I laugh every time I see 'hir,' actually. Because in certain circles, that's the pronoun that gets used for chicks with dicks, to be blunt. So that is where my mind goes every time someone uses it.

I have never seen womyn before. I fucking hate when Y is used to replace any other vowel. It was actually the very first reason I hated McSpaced. Who the hell spells it Apryl? *gag*

[kimboo_york]

On a personal level, all this language policing is very frustrating. I find "she-males" very sexually appealing, but I don't know how to identify them anymore, and I'm even concerned about admitting that for being viewed as a fetishist. Which I'm not; I just like the idea of a woman with a penis as much as I like the idea of a man with one. "Intersexed" is, of course, accurate and inoffensive, but that covers a HUGE variety of sexes. Language needs to be efficient as much as it needs to be fair and just.

And, it never solves the problem which is how the words are used, and the moralistic judgment values that get assigned to them. In that sense, using "chicken" in place of "his/him" is just as pointless as any other restriction. I simply do NOT understand why activists cannot seem to grasp that. I guess getting all hyped up and offended by a word is easier than attacking the underlying social stigmas. FFS.

/rant

("womyn" had a lot of traction in the late 70s, especially by radical feminists who had no concept of entomology; my mother *loved* it, for instance. Eh, it was an era of exploration, it doesn't bother me; still and all, it was a failed experiment.)

[oxfordtweed]

What really gets me too, and you sort of touched on it earlier, is that it seems like the ONLY people using these words are the goddamn white knights. I hate them so much. Not too long ago, someone went all white knight on me, accusing me of being ableist because I used the word gimp. Me! No, it's called I don't sit around feeling sorry for myself. If I tell someone to get over themselves, it's because I get the feeling that they are sitting round, feeling sorry for themselves.

That's why these gender-neutral pronouns kill me so much, I think. It's the fucking internet. GET OVER YOURSELF. People call me the wrong gender all the damn time. I don't care, because these people don't know me. They've never seen me. What the fuck does it matter if someone uses 'she' when I prefer 'he?' Most of the LJ/DW population is of the female persuasion. Of course people will default to she. If someone gets it wrong, how hard is it to correct them? A hell of a lot easier than it is to wank at them and ragequit, that's for damn sure.

[erika]

Not to be fangirly or anything but jesus christ I agree with this so hard.

I recently got corrected when I used "she" instead of "ou."

OU FOR GOD'S SAKE.