pronoun : Gay & Black Glossary

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pronoun

English does not have a proper gender-neutral third person singular pronoun. You can placate the grammarians by saying he or you can placate the politically correct by saying they. e.g. Somebody came to the door. He said would you like to sign our petition? or Somebody came to the door. They said would you like to sign our petition? Whether they have a penis or vagina is utterly irrelevant. Why should you be required to specify?

Chinese and Mohawk pronouns don’t have gender. German has three genders, but they confuse things by assigning arbitrary genders to animal species and inanimate objects.

There are group of Canadian activists trying to get gender removed from passports. Gender is more complicated that we pretend. There are cross dressing people, transgendered people, people in various stages of male to female or female to male sex change operations and intersex people — people who were born somewhere between male and female and don’t identify as purely male or female. It is a lie to lump them in one of two categories M or F. Perhaps there should be three boxes to tick, M F and C for its complicated.


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