JWeinCom said:
First off... "I don't like Bungie pinning all their hopes on it, especially after they've changed it to an extraction shooter, I'd have rather they tried another Halo-like success, a game with a strong SP/MP but I hope it works out for them because although I'm not a big fan of Destiny, Bungie is my childhood developer, the first I knew by name, they gave me my favourite IP ever. Amazon Prime apparently has a whole episode dedicated to Concord. They sure put the cart before the horse there. If Sony decides to shutter the studio. They should just assign them to other projects/studios rather than layoffs. Manchester Studio was closed after they spent so long, without a single game. " What do these quotes from this thread have in common? They all use they to refer to a singular noun. Strange how you did not take issue to any of these, or any of the dozen other times people have used they as a singular noun. It is a perfectly acceptable way for a person to speak or write if they don't know the gender of an object or if the object they are referring to is sufficiently clear. "I.e. I love my cat, they're the best cat in the world" and nobody has ever cared. Oh you had lunch with Bob? Aren't they the best?" I do this all the time, not with any woke purpose, but because it's natural to me, and nobody has ever said anything outside of an academic setting. Gender has existed for at least all of human history, and probably before that. Look in the bible, which contains different rules for men and women. There is no biological reason women should not be able to speak in church for instance, that is not about sex, that is about gender, the socially constructed rules we apply to different sexes. Absolutely not a new thing. Unless you are performing an anatomical exam on every person before describing them with a pronoun, then your pronoun usage is based largely on their gender, your perception of their sex based on how they present themselves. So even if we want to be strictly grammatical about it, it's fine for someone to ask me to use they/them especially in an online game. Unless they choose to tell me their gender/sex I have no idea what it is. If they don't wish to disclose that, then I really should use they/them, because that's what you're supposed to do when you don't know the gender of the noun. But most importantly, I do not believe for a solitary second that anybody is so deeply concerned about proper grammar that they throw constant hissy fits over pronoun usage. The English language is routinely violated on a daily basis. You was originally used for formal situations (the equivalent of the usted form in Spanish), yet now we use it in very informal situations (i.e. you are late to the orgy). Yet, nobody is clutching their pearls and feigning outrage that the way we used a pronoun has changed. In fact, I can't think of any other time improper language usage has caused such disdain. As someone who has a degree in English, I am perfectly happy to use incorrect grammar if doing so will make someone else feel seen and respected. Because, it's fucking grammar. I don't give a shit. Nobody gives a shit. And the fact that they only give a shit in one narrow situation which involves a group of people that is constantly discriminated against is sus as fuck. Seriously, if anyone is actually upset that they have to use a plural pronoun when they think it should technically be a singular pronoun, they should be in a padded cell. |
You are pointing out how “they” can in fact refer to companies, even though these are single nouns. Makes just perfect sense for me too: sony is a thing, a company. But it is comprised of many people. So, when we talk about sony doing something, we mean the people working there. “They” did that. I am afraid this does not address my complaint at all: using plural pronouns for a singular person (not company).
And I would say how you refer to your cat as “they”, even though he / she is a singular pet and has a sex, is wrong. That one does not concern me much though. Perhaps I did not lay out my concerns clearly enough in my comment. So another try: talk the way you want. And if you want me to refer to you as the sex you are not, depends on you (how you look mostly).
What concerns me most is that gender (not sex) quickly becomes a protected category in legislation. In the UK for example thousands of people are charged with wrong think, wrong speak, wrong post online etc., because they would not want their speech dictated by a tiny, authoritarian, censorious mob of bullies. (I am not accusing anyone here of being part of that group.) I see “misgendering as a hate crime” in the same category as “you spoke the name of the lord in vain, 10 whips on the back”. And Concord, by inclusion of pronoun choices, gives legitimisation to these people and this claim: “as long as I perceive hate, it was given criminally, and the level of my indignation should be equivalent to your punishment.” That is horrible of course, but the woke crowd, clearly seizable enough to influence legislation like this, is exactly behind such statements.– I know this sounds hyperbolic, but the list of people suffering because of the gender-craze is almost never ending (including the ones prosecuted because of thought-crime and the poor women having to deal with ill men in their sports, in their changing rooms, in their prisons, as much as the ones misdiagnosed with gender-illness themselves and how they are treated medically and many, many others).
And it is true that social roles have existed forever. But not gender. Not how we think of it today. Not in the sense that gender, instead of sex, dictates if somebody is a man or a woman. Not in the sense that people can be neither, as long as that is what they feel internally. Not in the sense that sex becomes utterly unimportant, given how we are just tabula rasa and everything is nurture. That is extremely new. That is from Simone de Beauvoir (a certified dolt) and John Money (suffering from gender-illness himself and a paedophile monster), among others. (And just as an aside: I never get how “this is old” is an argument for the good quality of something. There are many old ideas we now thankfully live without.)
To your amusing suggestions about performing anatomical exams before using pronouns for any person: No. You know that we are a sexually dimorphic species. Men look different from women not because of how they feel inside (gender), but because of their biology (sex). I am basing my pronoun use on how people look (sex). Very rarely it is the case that how people feel inside makes their outward appearance closer to the other sex. But again, if a man puts on a wig and wants to be called “she”, perhaps.
You also made two claims I want to question: 1) Gender-ill people are constantly discriminated against. I don't see much proof of that. 2) Using incorrect grammar makes someone feel seen and respected. I don't see much proof of that either. It should not be our highest goal to appease the mentally ill the way they see fit. We should much rather try to really help them. Also, your suggestion at the end should be mentioned, too, in parapharse - please tell me if I misrepresent you: ("Nobody gives a shit" and "The only ones who do are sus" =) I know what group of people are the only ones ever complaining about misuse of language - the racists and sexists. Is that you saying how "sus" it is if somebody disagrees with you on language?
