this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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All I'm saying is according to English grammatical rules it's a perfectly valid method of referring to a singular person when gender is unknown.
Now according to societal politeness rules on the other hand, it's rude as fuck.
It's not rude, it's dehumanizing. Slightly worse, right?
Unless it identifies as another species, then it's still dehumanizing but also affirming I guess.
I read this in JarJar's voice
Don't say that word!
Lmao I was thinking that you mean they and was so fucking confused for a while thinking how rude I've been for YEARS.
I would say that, given that it’s never ok, it is part of English grammartical rules. In German they actually use two different words for when a human eats or when an animal eats, it’s not unprecedented and there’s no need to lend any credibility to the usage of the word “it”.
There is a single precedent I can think of, which is that with some regularity I see infants/newborns referred to as "it".
A mindset from the before (antibiotics) times. Babies used to die quite frequently. So much that in some cultures babies weren't named until later in their life, not during pregnancy as it's custom today. So they were kind of an out there thing, that wasn't baptized and named yet, they were an it. They were “the baby”. No different than a dog or a turtle, they might die without a name, given an unmarked burial. And off to the next pregnancy. Still a tragedy, and people did mourn and suffered the loss. But not to the same degree of modern, western medicalized, pregnancies were almost every single baby born is expected to at least survive to infancy.
"Can you tell if that's a man or a woman over there?" "It's a man."
My point was merely to show the difference between what is grammatically ok vs what is societally ok.
In time, I imagine English grammar will continue to change with the language and it will take on a definition that indicates something nonsentient.
show me ONE fucking example prior to 2000 of people using "it" for persons without it being dehumanizing
singular "they" has fulfilled this function for at least 500 years. "it" has never been a pronoun for humans, until it recently saw use as a neo-pronoun.
there is no grammar rulebook. grammar is usage. you are claiming that it's been used like that. you're wrong.
You're more than welcome to go back in time and inform my 10th grade teacher of this. Lemme know how that works out for you.
oh shit nvm didn't realize your tenth grade English teacher said otherwise mb
In all fairness, they read out the part of the textbook that went over it. This was also the same paragraph that explained they can be used as well as the difference between you singular and the royal you.
That being said I'm sure we were both sarcastic in our prior responses but I'm attempting to show that I'm not pulling this out of my ass and I'm relying on a source of truth.