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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2983 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 29, 2025

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Mini-rant of the day (am I repeating myself or do I have deja vu? must be getting old): While I appreciate the intention behind occasionally using "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun in cases where the gender is unspecified, the amount of reading fatigue it generates is underrated. First let me say that my actual preference might be a somewhat stupid-sounding but actually refreshing/mildly helpful habit of simply using the opposite pronoun as a habit. For instance, in the financial column "Money Stuff" (great reading BTW) the author when talking about an imagined or generic CEO will use "she" as the pronoun. I'm not really a believer in the whole micro-aggression literature, but I can still see that subtle and low-key (non-mandatory) attempts at gently pushing back against stereotypes can be nice. Handy little reminder not to jump to assumptions. For fairness, this should be more generalized: teachers are mostly women, so use "he" as the general form. Doctors are mostly men, so use "she". College grads are mostly women, so use "he". "They" can still work in a pinch, or perhaps in official documents, but I feel like the tradeoffs involve are favorable on the whole.

But nonbinary people in fiction? That's a whole different story. Consider the following sentence ripped from a story I am reading:

Mirian and Gaius took turns instructing Jherica on soul magic. They would be the weakest of the time travelers, so it seemed best to give them some means of self-defense against the one they couldn't simply die and recover from.

This sentence is a total mess, and a nontrivial cognitive load, for no good reason. Well, not zero good reason, but here the tradeoffs fall very strongly against a generic pronoun: the loss in clarity, the mental burden, the flow disruption, the forced "backtracking" through the sentence to clarify meaning are absolutely terrible. The first "they" isn't immediately clear on the subject - is it the two people, or the nonbinary person? Okay, contextually, we figure out it's Jherica. But then we have an implied subject (who is doing the giving?), the next "them" needs context that takes a moment to process (Jherica again), and then another "they" also referring to Jherica, but needs double-checking. The wonderful thing about this sentence if Jherica were given a normal gender is that "they" clearly refers to the pair of people and not the individual. It's a useful tool in sentence mechanics that is completely ruined. "She" or "he" might induce a small amount of confusion (did the author accidentally chop up the pair and is referring to just one of them?) but partly that would be the author's fault for substandard sentence construction, and I still don't think it is quite as bad. It's far from uncommon to be referring to a group of people alongside an individual, and super useful to be able to casually and implicitly differentiate the two via pronouns.

To be clear, the story is wonderful, and there isn't any big deal or mention made about gender here at all (at least if there was I have no memory of it), and authors can make mistakes especially when self-edited (as is likely the case here). Or, in fact, I'm not even positive the author did make said character non-binary in the first place, since the author occasionally uses "he" in the next chapter, but not always. So it's not some massive culture war thing in this particular case. I think the point remains however that some progressives have tried to gaslight people (including myself) that gender-neutral pronouns are a minor inconvenience at best, and leverage already-existing rules of English. It's true that "they" already can serve this purpose (e.g. "Who's at the door and what do they want?" when it is fully unknown) but there are still some significant burdens if it becomes popularized.

It seems that it really shouldn't be a big loss to perform some nonbinary erasure here. Many forms of fiction already do things to make it easier on the reader (and I always notice when they do) such as giving main characters names that begin with different letters, or in anime they will color the hair differently not just for aesthetics but to make characters more differentiable. Sure, these semantic and visual 'collisions' happen IRL quite a lot (e.g. two Joshes on your team at work), but it seems to me the loss in realism is more than offset by the practical benefits. Note that this isn't purely an anti-woke position, in my book: I think giving characters some identifiable traits can make them more memorable. So there might be good reasons to throw in an unrealistic number of non-straight or mixed-race people into your TV show beyond deliberate representation! I don't think I'm advocating for anything too extreme.

John McWhorter suggested that we conjugate verbs differently depending on whether we're using the singular they or the plural they. They (Alice and Bob) go, they (Alice) goes. It's a good suggestion, doubt it'll catch on though.

Incidentally, yesterday I encountered the most annoying use of the singular they I've ever seen in real life. My colleague is going on maternity leave and I'm covering some work for her. On my annual review, my boss referred to this colleague as 'they'. As in 'Crowstep will cover his colleague's work, while they are on maternity leave'.

I sort of get it, in that 'colleague' is a gender neutral term. But this person has a name, which everyone reading this document knows, and she's going on maternity leave for God's sake!

"Excuse me boss, I have a question: How can I cover for Tina if I'm also on maternity leave?"

"Hilarious! You're fired."

What annoys me, and has become quite common lately, are people who write in to advice columns who deliberately obscure the gender of everyone mentioned in their letter. They, spouse, sibling, child, partner.

Since I was in college, I've read every advice column I've been able to get my hands on, as a way to make up for my complete social cluelessness. Dear Abby, Ann Landers, Miss Manners, Carolyn Hax, Care & Feeding, Captain Awkward.

I try to picture in my head the people involved in these situations. But I cannot picture a genderless person - my mind short-circuits and just gives me a sentient cloud of fog!

If I were writing to a public forum, asking for advice about my lurid love affair, I’d take any opsec I could get.

I should probably do more here.

Something I ran into today: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/epic-cplusplus-coding-standard-for-unreal-engine#inclusivewordchoice

Good thing I can now code Boomer Wish Fulfillment, Minority Slayer 2000 and Dubiously-Consensual Intercourse Simulator in a fully inclusive style. Thanks to whoever wrote that coding standard!

I get the idea of using inclusive language in the UI, but I'm confused by what they mean when they start talking about how to name classes and other programming constructs. Am I somehow missing hordes of developers using racial epithets in their variable names?

I mean you should keep that in mind. Getting called into a meeting with your manager because GenericUserIsRetardedError showed up in a stack trace for an end user isn't fun.

Told you you should have went with Redot ;)

"Unreal isn't woke", they said!

Did you follow Redot further, btw?

Didn't code anything in it (wait, I lied), but I'm following their Twitter. Seems pretty active.

It's not just advice columns. People do this in real life for some reason!

The speaker almost always has a common gendered relationship in mind - daughter, boyfriend, wife, etc. - but are deliberately choosing not to reveal that info when it would be harmless, and help the listener understand the situation better.

I thought it was bad in Brisbane, but then I went to Sydney. Everyone down there has a partner, everyone has a child - it felt like I was talking to aliens.

It's in the water. People do it without even knowing.

I'm remembering a 1954 movie, and it's worth a chuckle pretending that them refers to giant ants.

Especially when these people use gender neutral pronouns when the gender is already specified.

It's because of habit.

For instance, in the financial column "Money Stuff" (great reading BTW) the author when talking about an imagined or generic CEO will use "she" as the pronoun. I'm not really a believer in the whole micro-aggression literature, but I can still see that subtle and low-key (non-mandatory) attempts at gently pushing back against stereotypes can be nice.

Tbh I've arrived at the opposite conclusion. As a teen I used to like characters that go against stereotypes - and to some degree I still do, as long as they're done carefully and thoughtfully - but combined with the ubiquitousness and increasing importance of fictional stories in people's lives, it seriously distorts their worldview. Stereotype accuracy is one of the best-replicating findings of sociological research, yet many people I tell this - most of them quite smart and educated - are completely dumbfounded. Of course this is especially due to the nature of their education, but the fictional stories they surround themselves with just reinforce their biases over and over. This can get quite comical, such as women who worry something is wrong with them because they aren't as assertive nor sporty nor as interested in engineering/math/etc. as their heroines.

I've been musing an effortpost about this, but I think that law and order has been an incredibly negative influence. It completely messes with peoples sense of how common things are in society and what the problems are with the justice system.

A crime and law drama that conformed better with the realities on the ground would be a good thing.

I've considered writing something similar in the more general department of how fiction affects peoples' worldviews. I see it a lot in terms of discussions on criminal justice in particular.

My impression from the sources I've read that seem to accurately reflect the "average" case rather than cases or regions cherry-picked for some particular reason is that around 90% of all people charged with crimes in the United States are guilty as sin and busted dead to rights. Meanwhile, huge numbers of people seem to believe things like that most people are innocent or crazy serial killers are everywhere or something like that, because all their knowledge comes from fictional media optimized for drama, and documentaries that cherry-pick outrageous cases and exaggerate how outrageous they are.

I can't find the interview now I'm afraid, I think it was an extra on one of the season box sets, but this was part of the reason Vincent D'onofrio lost interest in Law and Order Criminal Intent. He tried to get Balcer and Wolf to incorporate more stories where the cops or attorneys fucked up or where it just didn't matter, justice was thwarted before they even began, but Wolf was strongly opposed. Fuck I will try and find the interview, it was fascinating. If you make an effort post on this topic please let me know.

Hard to say without the quote, but it wouldnt be surprising if Levine is just making fun of Elizabeth Holmes.

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