Wednesday, July 1st, 2015
gender neutral pronouns & animals
Wednesday, July 1st, 2015 08:05 pmZorro probably wonders why loud music always starts playing right after ze gets comfy and starts grooming zirself.
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Zorro probably wonders why loud music always starts playing right after they get comfy and start grooming themself.
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marahmarie questioned what pronoun to use for a burping squirrel, and it got me thinking.
There's not much point in using gendered pronouns for animals, as usually there's no need to distinguish them based on their sex. For example, "That bird is squawking so loud, it's giving me a headache." When there is a need to point out an animal's sex, one can simply say so: "That's a male bird"; "That's a female bird".
The pronoun "it" is gender-neutral but also impersonal/depersonalizing. We don't usually call a companion animal "it", but rather "he" or "she", because "it" sounds too impersonal. Generally, we know the sex of our companion animals, so we know which gendered pronoun to use.
Even so, calling animals "he" or "she" based on their sex seems silly to me sometimes. Those pronouns evoke mental gender-related connotations and stereotypes which are even more ridiculous when applied to animals than when applied to people*.
It's not usually obvious however, what sex an unfamiliar animal is. So one can either call it "it", or one can guess and call it "he" or "she".
If some gender-neutral pronoun other than "it" came into common usage for people, we could use it for animals too, both familiar and unfamiliar ones. We would no longer need to distinguish between them based on their sex, nor depersonalize them.
If that happened, I wonder if it would also affect how people think of animals in general. Would people start to feel more kinship/empathy for them? Would people who are unable to feel such empathy tend to call animals "it" while people who felt empathy would use the other pronoun?
* A character in a book I'm reading, in saying good-bye to his horse, said (translated from German) "You're the prettiest, smartest, and most dependable companion one could ever wish for." It was a female horse. If the horse were male, I doubt the character would have called it pretty. Yet, are female horses prettier than male horses? I think not.
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I was also thinking that while "they" is gaining traction as a gender-neutral pronoun, it would be good to have another option. One to use when we don't know or care about a person's gender, and another for people whose gender we know is other than male or female.
The singular pronoun "they" can already be used for both cases. But due to the first usage, it feels somewhat impersonal and distancing. While I don't mind being called "they" (and sometimes would appreciate it), it's not really my preferred pronoun.
But having 2 such pronouns might bring about too many complexities.
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The thoughts that spark a post like this take only a few minutes in my head. Why then, does it take me over 2 hours to put those thoughts into coherent written form? And even then, the sentences feel awkward, and I feel like I'm leaving out half of what I wanted to write?
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Zorro probably wonders why loud music always starts playing right after they get comfy and start grooming themself.
.
marahmarie questioned what pronoun to use for a burping squirrel, and it got me thinking.There's not much point in using gendered pronouns for animals, as usually there's no need to distinguish them based on their sex. For example, "That bird is squawking so loud, it's giving me a headache." When there is a need to point out an animal's sex, one can simply say so: "That's a male bird"; "That's a female bird".
The pronoun "it" is gender-neutral but also impersonal/depersonalizing. We don't usually call a companion animal "it", but rather "he" or "she", because "it" sounds too impersonal. Generally, we know the sex of our companion animals, so we know which gendered pronoun to use.
Even so, calling animals "he" or "she" based on their sex seems silly to me sometimes. Those pronouns evoke mental gender-related connotations and stereotypes which are even more ridiculous when applied to animals than when applied to people*.
It's not usually obvious however, what sex an unfamiliar animal is. So one can either call it "it", or one can guess and call it "he" or "she".
If some gender-neutral pronoun other than "it" came into common usage for people, we could use it for animals too, both familiar and unfamiliar ones. We would no longer need to distinguish between them based on their sex, nor depersonalize them.
If that happened, I wonder if it would also affect how people think of animals in general. Would people start to feel more kinship/empathy for them? Would people who are unable to feel such empathy tend to call animals "it" while people who felt empathy would use the other pronoun?
* A character in a book I'm reading, in saying good-bye to his horse, said (translated from German) "You're the prettiest, smartest, and most dependable companion one could ever wish for." It was a female horse. If the horse were male, I doubt the character would have called it pretty. Yet, are female horses prettier than male horses? I think not.
.
I was also thinking that while "they" is gaining traction as a gender-neutral pronoun, it would be good to have another option. One to use when we don't know or care about a person's gender, and another for people whose gender we know is other than male or female.
The singular pronoun "they" can already be used for both cases. But due to the first usage, it feels somewhat impersonal and distancing. While I don't mind being called "they" (and sometimes would appreciate it), it's not really my preferred pronoun.
But having 2 such pronouns might bring about too many complexities.
.
The thoughts that spark a post like this take only a few minutes in my head. Why then, does it take me over 2 hours to put those thoughts into coherent written form? And even then, the sentences feel awkward, and I feel like I'm leaving out half of what I wanted to write?