I’m someone who goes by Ze/Zir pronouns. I’ve done so for years. I originally went by they/them pronouns but I didn’t like them much and they just don’t feel right for me. When I discovered neopronouns they just felt right. Unfortunately I haven’t had much luck getting people to refer to me by my preferred pronouns.
Even here on Lemmy lots of people still refer to me by they/them or worse she/her. It feels really bad. Does anyone else on here struggle with this?
Could someone kindly explain to me how these and other similar pronouns work? Do they have some meanings or is it more about how they sound?
I’m from a non-English speaking country, where pronouns other than classic male/female are almost never used due to our language, so I’ve never encountered them yet.
I don’t think they’ll make their way to many languages any time soon, but I’m still curious.
It’s worth noting that until quite recently English used gender with words like: actor/actress, waiter/waitress, etc and a little further back there was: doctor/doctrix, navigator/navigatrix. etc
Neo-pronouns are for people who don’t want to linguistically identify as male nor female and dislike the use of the singular “they”.
They are gender neutral pronouns which are intended to replace he/him or she/her pronouns while leaving all other sentence grammar intact. Compared to They/them pronouns which function differently grammatically. They’re also singular in nature. Which they/them can be used singularly, but Ze/Zir, Xe/Xem/Xyr, Vi/Vis, etc. are always singular, just like he/him or she/her. It’s very easy to swap them out because English doesn’t have much gramatical gender in it, unlike other languages like spanish. Although I hear there are strides made to create gender neutral grammar in spanish.
Hmm, okay. I think I get the idea now. Thanks for the explanation.
Just one more thing. You mentioned pronouns Xe/Xem/Xyr. Why are there 3 forms? Is it like he/him/his, with the third one added for clarity, since it may not he obvious?
Yeah that’s how it is. For Ze/Zir Zir takes the position of him and his. Which is why I only included the two forms.
“I borrowed his car” becomes “I borrowed zir car”.
“I asked him for $20” becomes “I asked zir for $20”.
In the case of Xe/Xem/Xyr it goes
“I borrowed xyr car” and “I asked xem for $20” respectively.
Removed by mod
It’s a shame, this was a carefully crafted response that by looking at the up-downvote ration seems to have offended nobody and resonated with quite a few people.
Why do you people have to be like that??
Signed: an exhausted ally
This is a trans community where a trans person asked other trans people about an issue that impacts trans people.
It’s not the thread for an ally to come in and tell trans people they’ll just need to live with it, even if they do so politely.
Blahaj doesn’t do downvotes. Anyone with a blahaj account can only upvote and cannot see downvotes. Those from other instances can downvote and they do federate to each other, but the ratio means nothing.
I’ve had a situation the other day where I got scolded because in my comment I apparently omitted the existence of people who are plural.
If you are refering to us talking about non-humans, we apologise. We did not mean to come off as scolding you. If it was not us then that is very unfortunate and you deserve better.
Thanks, yes, it was that situation. Apology accepted, and I want to apologize as well because I do feel I was a little more caustic in one of my comments than I wanted to be. I’m still pondering why this made me so reactive, but haven’t fully understood myself yet. Work in progress.
English language isnt even very difficult to use gender neutral they/them or neopronouns, as many words are ungendered. In very gendered languages like ukrainian, it is impossible to use something other than he or her; there isnt even a universal way to refer to a particular person in gender neutral way.
The issue is that OP wants alternatives to they/them which is outside of standard English for many folks. The extra steps are what leads to communication breakdown and shutdown by the chastised speaker.
They do exist. Neopronouns are that alternative. People not understanding isn’t an excuse for them calling me a freak and saying that I’m making a mockery of trans. Which people have done to me regularly for my preferred pronouns.
but the people whose deleted comments you are responding to are being extremely reasonable and what you said here colors the implication of what they said.
if i wasn’t an instance admin i’d have thought they were shitting on neopronouns.
Neopronoun folk don’t need to be told the excuses. They live it every day. A thread where someone asking for support dealing with lack of acceptance from other folk, is not the place for those very folk to come in and list the reasons why that acceptance is just too hard for them.
There’s a lot of thinly veiled dismissal and denial of neopronouns and non-binary identity. A lot of us can be very sensitive to it, more so than other people might be. Saying neopronouns are confusing might be true for some people but it’s also said as a way of dismissing or belittling our identities.
Which is why a lot of mods on Blahaj communities are quick to shoot down that kind of rhetoric when it crops up.
I dont use neopronouns for myself, but as a non-native english speaker, i struggle with reffering to people with neopronouns because i dont know how to properly use them.
About they/them, i dont feel about it in any way offensive, even though i dont use it personally. For me, it is just a universally neutral way to refer to person, if, for example, i dont know their exact pronouns, and for every person that i reffered this way, they are okay with it, including myself.
As a native english speaker, i avoid using pronouns when referring to people with neopronouns because i don’t know how to properly use them.
Its really not through lack of knowledge its lack of exposure. I basically never hear neopronouns used in practice. So I worry I’ll get them wrong, in some way I don’t understand if I try to use them, as I lack an example to follow. Getting them wrong would be disrespectful, so instead I just try to phrase in a way that avoids needing to use pronouns, which I know for certain is not technically wrong.
I do want to be better than that.
Ze/Zir sounds pretty cool. I think that if I were to regularly hear or read others using neopronouns correctly, it would be clear and intuitive to use them myself.
Nobody in my peer group uses neopronouns, so I don’t get regular practice. I wish you peace in this.
- I’m she/they
If you enjoy scifi, you may check out Ann Leckie. She uses some neopronouns for a small number of characters. They are all great books as well. She’s created an incredible universe full of wonderfully thought out gender diversity.
Also Ruthanna Emrys in A Half-Built Garden has excellently diverse and interesting takes on pronouns!
I wish pronouns weren’t related at all to gender, like in Finnish where it’s hän, or Turkish where it’s o. Imo gender should be no more than an adjective in language, just like “British” “black” or “lower class” is. Thus I’d rather use they/them for everyone, but I will begrudgingly use he/she for people if they request it, since it’s so ingrained in the language. But neopronouns aren’t as ingrained, so imo this makes things unnecessarily confusing and I’d rather just use they/them for these people
Sorry if that makes me a transphobe
I wish pronouns weren’t related at all to gender
Yeah, in English they don’t really have to be. Pronouns can be used by anybody for any reason, whether they are a specific gender or not.
Edit: With their consent, of course.
Im just a random dude
But i just find it difficult to remember
And confusing, especially when its ze zir? Never heard that before
And they/them is already used in other contexts (groups)
You will find making up some word to describe you, and then expecting people to remember and use it, will be difficult and you care more than they do
Just my two cents on this subject. I mean no offense. Ive met someone who tried to go with some native language alternative, and nobody picked it up, so he switched to he/him. Thats a term people are familar with, so much easier to get people to use AND remember, in the future
Hey so im pretty sure weve interacted before and im so sorry if i messed up pronouns!
I sometimes go too fast to read the username all the time, but ill be adding a user tag to prevent this in the future. If its big and red i notice lol
Sorry again ❤️❤️
Thank you, apology accepted. I’m not sure if you did actually. The fact that you’re willing to learn and do better means you’re a good person. I’ve encountered a lot of people who refuse to do better or say that I’m wrong for having pronoun preferences.
Well in any case i dont like if i did so i do the work to change it. If i want (she/her) then its hypocritical to gloss over others pronouns. Also im older so im learning all the time. I think its lovely, every being on earth deserves to be referred to the way they want❤️
Its no problem at all ❤️
Try me.
!!!
I now know that apothipronominal is a thing that exists. Thanks so much!
I felt like this since childhood. Never comprehended why folks used pronouns, or when addressing me. “Just call me by my chosen name, address me, in fact, address me directly. If you have a conflict with me, is it not better to address me directly to address the conflict? Why do you have talk behind me when the conflict is something that can be addressed?” etc…
Only decades later I found out I wasn’t alone in those feelings, and Greeks and Chinese people felt the same too.
Yes. We do, constantly. We have even been told that folks do not come to lemmy to pay attention to things like pronouns, dissapointingly.
We have our pronouns in our display name and in our profile, but apparently a lot of clients do not show display names nor can access profiles.
Why any would want to use clients missing such basic features is anybeing’s guess. However, we imagine it has something to do with what we have been told about why beings use lemmy.
I’ve been trying some new phone clients recently, and some do not show screen names anywhere. Any client that doesn’t show the screen name is not fit for purpose.
I don’t understand neopronouns. I almost never hear them said, so I generally avoid sentences that require pronouns because I’m worried I’ll get the neopronouns wrong. Can you provide an example of cele or celes in a sentence? I want to refer to cele correctly. (was that right?)
Is there an android client that gets it right? It seems Voyager never will
Summit can show display names, I’m not sure if it’s the default though
That’s the one I was testing recently. I was hoping it was just an option I hadn’t found yet, but apparently no. Uninstalled!
I’m using jerboa. Has some issues but I see “pooberbee (she/her)@lemmy.ml” above your commemt. That’s correct isn’t it?
Yeah. Maybe i switch back to jerboa then
The main issue I’ve had with jerboa is that it doesn’t play nice with the default keyboard’s autocorrect. Backspacing to correct words deletes spaces before words. It’s odd but most third party keyboards work fine.
Err… It doesn’t show images in the list? Hmm…
For me personally, I prefer usernames since they’re immutable and unique per instance. I feel like actual pronoun tags would be a good feature, but then that’d be another thing only a subset of clients implement.
Unlikely that’ll happen since most of the threadiverse developers are very strange about trans people.
Yuuuup. We try to get people more comfortable using them, especially when it comes to conjugating because even we trip up with the proper forms for some of them. It’s a lot easier in spaces where you can display your pronouns, especially online where it’s harder to miss, but it goes beyond simply being aware of them. Not much else to do on this end of things but ultimately it’s all a matter of people being acclimated to them, I keep encouraging folks who use neos to any extent to stick with em so that more and more people can get used to it but yeah it takes tons of patience with others.
- Cass (xe/xem)
Honestly, I feel you. I might be responsible sometimes for misgendering people.
It’s not a will to do so but mostly it becomes hard to remember every person I encounter what are their pronouns and name.
I know it is common courtesy but I’m having a hard time sometimes. So I tend to ask again and try to not misgender but sometimes I fail.
Even though misgendering sucks I am happy when people do actually try. The thing I have no respect or forgiveness for is people who intentionally refuse to use my pronouns out of principle or say that I’m crazy or making a fool of trans people.
That’s plain disrespect and a denial of your own identity so yeah. I get that. I have been deadnamed on purpose by my ex sister-in-law and misgendered out of spite.
That sucks, I’m sorry you had to go through that. No one should have to go through that kind of shitty treatment.
