Memo that everyone ignored or hilariously misinterpreted last time because I mumble horribly, so this time I’m posting it in advance: My preferred pronouns are gender-neutral. (Your favorite set, or Spivak pronouns, or “they” in unambiguous contexts.) I insist on them in few circumstances, which LW meetups aren’t part of. If you don’t want to bother with them (gender-neutral French is awkward), male pronouns will be happily tolerated.
Longs meetups are more fun (at least I enjoy them more), so I suggest that we should either finish late (last time lasted past 1 AM, but almost everyone left earlier) or start early.
Walking around seems to get less fun as group size increases—it encourages independent one-on-one conversations.
As far as I can tell, you don’t! The handful of genderqueer people I know accept both sets, and switch (not mid-sentence, but within the course of a single conversation) when referring to themselves.
As Wikipedia says, you can use both forms in writing (“Il/elle est étudiant(e).”), but I have no idea how you’re supposed to say it, and anyway it doesn’t solve the problem of gendered language.
The only suggestions I’ve seen for real gender-neutrality are:
Use “y” as a gender-neutral pronoun, from (somewhat archaic) corruptions of other pronouns (“Je lui ai dit” (I told him/her) becomes “J’y ai dit”).
End words that end in “é” (masculine) and “ée” (feminine) in “ey” for gender-neutrality. This covers a lot of adjectives, but not all.
I’ll be there.
Memo that everyone ignored or hilariously misinterpreted last time because I mumble horribly, so this time I’m posting it in advance: My preferred pronouns are gender-neutral. (Your favorite set, or Spivak pronouns, or “they” in unambiguous contexts.) I insist on them in few circumstances, which LW meetups aren’t part of. If you don’t want to bother with them (gender-neutral French is awkward), male pronouns will be happily tolerated.
Longs meetups are more fun (at least I enjoy them more), so I suggest that we should either finish late (last time lasted past 1 AM, but almost everyone left earlier) or start early.
Walking around seems to get less fun as group size increases—it encourages independent one-on-one conversations.
Well, Wikipedia wasn’t helpful … how do you do gender-neutral pronouns, etc. (particularly the etc.) in French?
As far as I can tell, you don’t! The handful of genderqueer people I know accept both sets, and switch (not mid-sentence, but within the course of a single conversation) when referring to themselves.
As Wikipedia says, you can use both forms in writing (“Il/elle est étudiant(e).”), but I have no idea how you’re supposed to say it, and anyway it doesn’t solve the problem of gendered language.
The only suggestions I’ve seen for real gender-neutrality are:
Use “y” as a gender-neutral pronoun, from (somewhat archaic) corruptions of other pronouns (“Je lui ai dit” (I told him/her) becomes “J’y ai dit”).
End words that end in “é” (masculine) and “ée” (feminine) in “ey” for gender-neutrality. This covers a lot of adjectives, but not all.
Neither have caught on anywhere.