• PugJesus@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
    5·
    16 hours ago

    They/them is not used exclusively to refer to neuter things, so enbies not being gender neutral is irrelevant here. ‘They’ is a useful and pre-existing catch-all.

    • rxin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      2·
      15 hours ago

      they/them is what I hope we all eventually settle on as standard for NB gender identities.

      This part is the one I’m referring to. I’m not opposed to they/them — it’s good, but I don’t think it’s fair to reduce enbies to just “they/them”.

      • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
        2·
        10 hours ago

        … why?

        Is that any more absurd than “reducing males to he/him” or “reducing females to she/her”?

        It’s language, not a campaign medal. You don’t need a separate example for every instance.

        • rxin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          1·
          50 minutes ago

          Well exactly because they/them is a catch-all and there aren’t just he/hims and she/hers

          let enbies express themselves too!

        • SomeoneSomewhere@lemmy.nzEnglish
          2·
          3 hours ago

          The whole point of pronouns, I would argue, is to not need a separate set for every instance.

          Otherwise you may as well just use Dan/Dan/Dan’s/Danself conjugated for each name.

          Pronouns:

          • Are (generally) shorter than names, because there’s less need for them to be unique and they’re used more frequently.

          • Can be used even when you don’t know specifics about a person or object, or they don’t want to give out their name.

          • Everyone knows how to conjugate them, so once you know someone is a ‘they’, you can readily extrapolate to them, their, theirs.