The Some Like It HOT TAKES thread

Cringe is a verb and anyone who uses it as an adjective needs to have all their electronic devices destroyed and internet access revoked for a year.

Cringey is fine.

"Cringeworthy" is the word I was always taught.

Right, that's the proper word. Cringey is at least an adjective form though. Not bad for slang. Now if we could just stop "them" being used for singular antecedents that would be real progress. Pick literally any word that isn't for plurals for your singular pronoun.

Keithustus wrote:

Right, that's the proper word. Cringey is at least an adjective form though. Not bad for slang. Now if we could just stop "them" being used for singular antecedents that would be real progress. Pick literally any word that isn't for plurals for your singular pronoun.

Wow. That is one hell of a hot take. Just...wow.

Um, yeah, I'd walk that back.

I'll hot-take this point, because as a language person it bugs me in both directions.

Singular they/them/their in English is standard usage and has been for centuries. "I called on a student and asked them a question. The student read their paper." etc. Any native speaker says such things every day.

However, usage like this is only commonplace in cases where the antecedent or their gender is unclear. If you say: "John asked a student to read their paper" listeners will assume "their" refers to the student, regardless of John's preferred pronouns - because referring to a known and specified person as "they" is a very recent thing, and is not standard usage.

So my cold obvious take is, anyone who argues against "they" for singular antecedents is going against centuries of usage. But my hot take is, anyone who wants to be referred to exclusively as "they" should know and accept that most people will have trouble doing that consistently, even if they're sympathetic, because it's a usage that most people are not accustomed to hearing or using.

"cold" take: Language changes and mutates constantly, and the dictionary gets updated all the time. The kids don't seem to struggle with alt or neopronouns much at all, anyone fighting it is probably just old.

Amoebic wrote:

The kids don't seem to struggle with alt or neopronouns much at all, anyone fighting it is probably just old.

Exactly this. Complaining about "they" being a bad thing when whole generations don't bat an eye is very much a "you" problem that needs a lot of introspection why it bothers you so much.

Amoebic wrote:

"cold" take: Language changes and mutates constantly, and the dictionary gets updated all the time. The kids don't seem to struggle with alt or neopronouns much at all, anyone fighting it is probably just old.

As someone who's constantly, in spite of my best efforts, accidentally using the old pronouns of a dear friend who recently switched from she to they, yuuuup, I'm old.

I'm fighting it, but what I'm fighting is 15 years of habit and decreasing mental plasticity.

Folks, I was not arguing against any particular pronoun usage. I was pointing out that the "singular they/them goes back centuries" argument is referring to a different usage from the "Joe uses they/them pronouns" thing that people like to argue about.

More generally, I'd say that whether a person fights against a usage is very different from whether they find it familiar and/or use it, and the two often don't match up at all. E.g. 100% of old people who argue against "singular they" nonetheless find it familiar, and use it unknowingly like I said. At the other end of the spectrum among young people who actively promote neopronouns, if you look closely they often forget to use them even when intending to.

(Again, not making any normative argument about that - it's just an observable thing that you'd expect to inevitably happen in the course of usage changes taking place.)

fenomas wrote:

Folks, I was not arguing against any particular pronoun usage.

So, I don't think you were the one people were arguing against.

fenomas wrote:

Folks, I was not arguing against any particular pronoun usage. I was pointing out that the "singular they/them goes back centuries" argument is referring to a different usage from the "Joe uses they/them pronouns" thing that people like to argue about.

It's using an old construction in a new context, and I'll take that over a goofy neologism plucked out of thin air.

Aside: it would be easier if everyone just agreed to speak Japanese, where pronouns are basically unnecessary.

Is that too much to ask?

fenomas wrote:

Aside: it would be easier if everyone just agreed to speak Japanese, where pronouns are basically unnecessary.

Is that too much to ask?

Fascinating! A lot of austronesian languages are gender-neutral aside from outside influence (i.e. tagalog until spanish colonizers infiltrated the language with role-based gendered titles). Has something similar happened within the japanese language where gendered terms have made their way in via modernism, or has the language remained fairly neutral?

Amoebic wrote:

"cold" take: Language changes and mutates constantly, and the dictionary gets updated all the time. The kids don't seem to struggle with alt or neopronouns much at all, anyone fighting it is probably just old.

I am old, and my "hot take" is that the youts aren't shoving neopronouns down everyone's throat hard enough.

I remember first encountering xe about two decades ago, and thought, "huh, that's kinda weird, but probably a good idea."

Then a few years ago, when trans identity and pronouns became a hot topic of discussion, I thought, "finally, it's xe's time to shine". And I waited and waited and... the discussion just seemed to center around "them". Them? That's so... sensible, but underwhelming. Where is xe? I was prepared for this!

Of course, xe is out there in use, but swimming in the same pool as a bunch of other contenders, none of which seem anywhere close to gaining critical mass. They/them seems like it was chosen to make acceptance easier, but people responded with diaper-soiling sh*t-fits about it anyway.

No half measures, Walter. I'll say they/them for anyone who states their preference as such, but my heart still burns for xe.

Amoebic wrote:
fenomas wrote:

Aside: it would be easier if everyone just agreed to speak Japanese, where pronouns are basically unnecessary.

Is that too much to ask?

Fascinating! A lot of austronesian languages are gender-neutral aside from outside influence (i.e. tagalog until spanish colonizers infiltrated the language with role-based gendered titles). Has something similar happened within the japanese language where gendered terms have made their way in via modernism, or has the language remained fairly neutral?

Linguistically, Japanese isn't particularly gender-neutral the way you mean. The big difference with pronouns is that JP just doesn't use them much, because it's grammatically okay to omit most any noun that can be inferred from context. Like you'd say "Saw Meebs today. Looked happy." and neither sentence needs a pronoun as a subject. But when you do use a pronoun in JP it's normally gendered, and if the gender isn't clear one usually falls back to "that person" or whatever.

An interesting second layer is that JP has linguistic politeness, and many polite forms are used much more by women than by men. Like anime fans will know that men tend to say "ore" and "bento" while women tend to say "watashi" and "o-bento". This interrelates a lot with gender identity - like some gay man use more polite speech - but thankfully it can't cause any pronoun-style debates since it's a matter of expressing your own identity, not labeling others.

More socially though, gender issues in JP are such a different ball of wax that it's hard to even describe - most of the things US people yell at each other about just aren't things here. Like, I could name several very well-known celebrities that are clearly non-binary in some way, but offhand I have no idea which of them are trans, gay, cross-dressers, or so on. A random person off the street wouldn't know either, or even have an opinion - the topic just doesn't come up. And I do actually have a pet theory that this could be related to pronouns - maybe EN speakers feel more need to put gendered labels on people because grammar forces them to do so every time they use a pronoun? I don't have any evidence for that, it's just something I've thought about.

fenomas wrote:

And I do actually have a pet theory that this could be related to pronouns - maybe EN speakers feel more need to put gendered labels on people because grammar forces them to do so every time they use a pronoun?

pretty much the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (more accurately called linguistic relativism), no?

Chinese of course has gendered pronouns, but he/she/it are pronounced identically ("ta", first tone), while being written differently:
他 = he
她 = she
它 = it

I have no idea how commonly non binary terms are used, but I assume they exist.

*Legion* wrote:

They/them seems like it was chosen to make acceptance easier, but people responded with diaper-soiling sh*t-fits about it anyway.

I'm not sure that's true. I think they/them has largely (but not universally) been settled on because it's the only one that has achieved critical mass, and the reason it has achieved critical mass is precisely because it's a repurposing of an old and familiar linguistic construction.

"We need a neologism!" is naturally met with disagreement over what specific neologism to use, leading to fracturing.

"We've got this existing construction that almost works, let's repurpose it!" reaches critical mass because it's coming from a shared starting point.

The goal isn't to convert those who object to the existence of the people the pronouns refer to, because their real objection isn't the grammar. The goal is just to get enough of the people who want there to be a set of pronouns for this use case on the same page to have a conversation.

hbi2k wrote:

I'm not sure that's true. I think they/them has largely (but not universally) been settled on because it's the only one that has achieved critical mass, and the reason it has achieved critical mass is precisely because it's a repurposing of an old and familiar linguistic construction.

Maybe. But I've certainly more than once seen feelings expressed like the one quoted in this article:

“Honestly, I’m not wild about [they/them pronouns], but it seems to be the best we’ve got so far, and the easiest one for cis people to wrap their heads around, because it’s already a pronoun we use every day in the English language.”

In fact, SJ says, about 80 percent of their decision to use they/them pronouns was to make things easier for other people — “which is honestly kind of f*cked up, because it’s a decision that should be about what’s best for me, not other people.” It ends up being what they call “an unhappy compromise” for everyone, “because people still chafe at calling me they/them, and I’m not exactly thrilled with it either. They think they’re doing me a favor, and I think I’m doing them a favor, and we both end up resentful about it.”

If it makes things better, I'll amend my statement to be: "... seems like it was chosen in part to make acceptance easier...". But again, my thoughts here are based on fairly limited readings and personal interactions, very far from comprehensive understanding.

Ice cold take, I will call you by whatever language you would prefer because it just seems the bare minimum you can ask of me in an interaction.

Sure. I'll theorycraft all day about what might be the best thing for some nebulous "they," but if there's an actual human being in front of me who prefers things a different way, it costs me virtually nothing to shrug my shoulders and use the language they prefer.

hbi2k wrote:

The goal isn't to convert those who object to the existence of the people the pronouns refer to, because their real objection isn't the grammar. The goal is just to get enough of the people who want there to be a set of pronouns for this use case on the same page to have a conversation.

A bit of a strawman. Many of us respect that law and society have a long way to go toward accepting everyone for themselves and provide them the same rights and opportunities as others, but still object to adding ambiguous uses of existing pronouns when xe or anything else not associated with plurals would work better.

For the same reason, some of us make it a point to never use they or them for any singular antecedent, speaking or in writing. That means lots of “he or she” if the work doesn’t have a “masculine pronouns are being used …” foreword.

Not everyone identifies as either male or female, though, so language has to change for the sake of inclusion, no?

Keithustus wrote:

For the same reason, some of us make it a point to never use they or them for any singular antecedent, speaking or in writing.

Every time I see an argument like this I reflexively look for the same thing, and more often than not I find it:

Keithustus wrote:

Many of us respect that law and society have a long way to go toward accepting everyone for themselves and provide them the same rights...

Emphasis added - "everyone" is grammatically singular.

If you want to argue against singular-they in certain specific cases (like "the reader of this academic paper") then I think you're against common usage but there are weirder affectations. But trying to avoid it entirely is, IMO, not a thing - it's so deeply ingrained a usage that people say it even when trying not to.

Arguing about they/them the same week as JKR/HL is causing immeasurable harm and suffering to LGBTQIA+ community is, in the most charitable interpretation, tone deaf and ignorant, and in the most sobering interpretation, a direct, malicious, hateful attack on a community and group this website cares and supports deeply and fervently. Please move to a different discussion or place. This is not the time or place for this.

SG, the point you're trying to make can be made without suggesting anyone here might be making malicious hateful attacks.

----

Painfully honest hot take: my favorite thing about the GWJ community is how committed everyone is to inclusivity, but my least favorite thing is how frequently people assume the opposite. Unless I've missed something literally everyone I've encountered here 100% supports trans folks, so it kind of breaks my heart a little how every time there's a disagreement over some tertiary or quaternary issue, people tend to start parsing each other's comments for possible evidence of lurking problematic views. We're in a nice inclusive bubble here, not youtube comments, so why not assume the best about each other?

Unfortunately, I have some experience with assuming the best.

I'm a multimedia writer in education. A project at work, a video script, came back with some edits from a stakeholder--expected, but one was for the use of the Singular They. In this case, I did not use it as a person's pronoun, rather to refer to a mixed group of people whose gender was immaterial. So, I did what I always did, accepted changes that were appropriate (or even neutral, as an ego sop), and rejected those that weren't, especially that one. But, I, straight, cis, and male, assumed the best--this person was older, maybe they'd been educated differently, no reason to think otherwise, surely. Within moments, they've reverted that rejection, restating that the Singular They is not grammatically correct. My team had been assured we'd have the final say on such matters, so I reject it again, saying in this case, yes, it is grammatically correct, and will read better in the video than any alternative.

Next thing I know, I'm being contacted by one of the team leaders, because there needs to be a meeting with all of us and their leader, to discuss feedback, and obviously I know which bit of feedback will be the focus. I'm no fool, I have very strong suspicions, but I still decide to not fully assume, after all, this wasn't a person's pronouns, but a grammatical dispute, right? I've already got what surely will be the final word--policy is that the Chicago Manual of Style has the final say, and it says this use of the Singular They is fine when speaking.

The meeting instantly goes off the rails, as this stakeholder begins shouting and spewing insults--are we modeling proper grammar, do I (a professional) not understand subject/verb agreement, etc, etc, etc, it was so vehement and without reason that it was clear enough to me what the real intention was. But, again, the Chicago Manual of Style, which was all I got to say over the tantrum.

So next next thing I know, I get a call from my manager, because his manager was contacted by this stakeholder and the upper leader about this situation, and how we're disrespectful and unreasonable and what are we teaching students. So, I was told, I'd have to accept the change (though everyone was "very understanding").

I'm still torn between my impulse to say this wasn't that big a deal--I don't utilize "they/them," and those that do have had far, far, far worse experiences--while also to admit that this was traumatic: it did send me into depression, I'd been insulted and disrespected, left with no recourse, no one even higher up to turn to, made to fear for my job, worried that I'd compromised some work relationships, and strong-armed into violating ideals that I hold dearly--I strive to be inclusive, and was forced to add language that is exclusive, and it wasn't even a f*cking use-case for inclusivity. I felt sad, defeated, angry, and most of all, regretful, because I should have called this person out, even if just to say "I'm worried that this change is becoming an inclusivity issue." But, I didn't, and somehow, that stakeholder ended up on our DE&I council, and now, suspiciously, the "best practice" is to remove all pronouns for the sake of being inclusive.

So, fenomas, you'll probably say this is unfair, and it is, but I have zero reason to assume it's just tedious grammatical pedantry and not something darker. Could I be wrong? Of course. I always hope I am. But, Hot Take, when I see someone say something suspect, and then double, triple, quadruple down on it, for my own sake, I have to take my rising blood-pressure as evidence enough. And I'm afraid I'm not going to be guilted out of that.

(my post was about assuming good faith from fellow GWJ posters, not all people at all times. Bayesian priors and all that.)

My post was about why one might be disinclined to do that, because:

SpacePProtean wrote:

when I see someone say something suspect, and then double, triple, quadruple down on it, for my own sake, I have to take my rising blood-pressure as evidence enough. And I'm afraid I'm not going to be guilted out of that.

and it doesn't matter what context they are encountered in.