Interesting. I had no idea it was as complicated as that. But I do remember reading that the “surgeons” in the Royal Navy (who were not “physicians”) discovered the effects of cleanliness and of lemon and lime juice, as well as effective ways of performing amputations. These were all looked down on by doctors of medicine as being of mere practical use, which was why an unfortunate farm hand who had an amputation following an accident was far more likely to die that his fellow who had been pressed into the RN.
Cleanliness, in fact, was a secret weapon - RN crews tended to have far more effectives than the Spanish or French who had notoriously dirty ships. The French were unable to understand why their ships, captured by the English, were so effective against them. And many, many women died as a result of childbirth owing to land physicians not grasping the same principle.
Vraiment, M’sieur? Et votre femme, elle est d’accorde? M, Mme, Mlle.
[edit - the world isn’t mostly Anglophone.]
It’s a conspiracy of English teachers to pretend like it doesn’t constantly change.
It’s a phonetic language. Here’s how that works. You speak it? You grew up speaking it? Welcome to your masterhood of the English language. As a full speaker you get to make up words or not until your heart is content. Or whatevs.
Slpel it in any mnener you leik.
Verb the shit out of it.
Use invective and nasty tones for no fucking reason Discernable. To people like you.
Authoritarians, activists, and English teachers hate the sound of laughter. Lol
as well as a disregard for proper
Do what you want Mx. Jones!
If I get what you mean, you just invented a whole new word, now way to say something… or you didn’t change anything fundamental at all… if others play along, you win. You win what you always win… communicating.
English hate this.
Why do there have to be rules? And why does it have to blow?
To learn to speak like rich people like to speak is the answer. Sentences don’t end in prepositions because rich people decided that was something up with which they would not put. Now diagram this sentence.
A thousand word essay. A picture of a troll face. You’re welcome.
But be aware of all you are communicating. And how your audience may receive it. It’s about being responsible. Language is powerful stuff.
And call the haters old. Because they are.
…
OH! Parles Vooz the Fonsayzees?
As the son of an English professor, I’m pretty aware of how much folks for whom teaching a standard model for speaking and writing English dislike it when people chuck rules in the gutter. But that’s not because they don’t acknowledge English as a constantly evolving and changing language, it’s to have a standard baseline for students to master before jumping off. I mean, as a 9th grader, James Joyce might seem like he’s just making shit up as he goes along; why not do the same? Why not discard sentence structure, spelling, and grammar entirely? Well, because once you get into the professional world, if you spel yore bizness letter’s like dis, you aren’t going to hold a job very long (or find one). Learn the basics first before walking a tightrope with language and playing around with it for fun.
As I’ve told people who wanted to argue with me about it (even while they were trying to maintain that it wasn’t because they had an issue with enby people … and in some cases this was true): If it was good enough for William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, I think it’s more than good enough for you!
Though I’ve never had occasion to personally interact with a dominatrix, I think a very small part of the world might mourn if everyone in that… er, profession? Role? … were simply called a Dominator.
I mean, I don’t mind if we end up discarding the term “actress” in favor of plain ol’ “actor,” though I do wonder if we’ll ever get around to completely desegregating the “Best Actor/Actress” categories at awards shows (if only because it would be no fun to give out half as many awards).
Still and all, I feel there’s a tidbit of charm that accompanies the quaintness. If I ever became a good enough dancer, I’d want to be called a Ballerino.
It’s a bummer that so much of our language’s granularity and curlicued filigrees can tend to otherize and discriminate between people. I like that Amelia Earhart was called an “aviatrix” during an era when being an aviatrix was considerably rarer (and more difficult and badass for a variety of reasons) than being a run-of-the-mill aviator. Maybe erasing the gendered term is an important step toward erasing the irrelevant differentiation between pilots of any gender, and should be included in the big package of desirable things like pay equity and job nondiscrimination that will serve to make the industry into the ideal form we wish for it. Personally, I don’t think the language aspect is nearly as important as the rest of it. Mine is an outdated viewpoint, no doubt, but I’m 46 and an outdated person in general.
As a kid in the '70s, I had the Fisher-Price airport playset.
The helicopter pilot dude was one of my first black dolls (I hesitate to call a turned wooden peg with a plastic head an “action figure”). In retrospect, I imagine my mom, born in 1929 St Louis as she was, might have assumed he was supposed to be a skycap. But I always assumed he was the pilot (of both the jet and the copter), and not only was he my favorite of the FP dudes, but I actually wanted to grow up to be just like him. He just seemed so cool and competent in my mind. Only in high school did I begin to realize that it might be somewhat unusual that a whitebread kid like me, growing up in a fairly redneck semirural corner of San Diego County, might long to grow up to be a black professional man. (And “professional” was optional. Another childhood hero of mine was Lamont Sanford.)
I was sheltered in many ways. It didn’t occur to me that blacks (and Hispanics, and women, and POCs and LGBTQ folks) might be grossly underrepresented in the ranks of competent, well-paid professionals. I always assumed that a female doctor would be just as competent (and maybe a bit less intimidating, because I was a kid with childish preconceived prejudices of my own) as a male one. In my mind, the differentiation between “actor” and “actress” or “director” and “directrix” didn’t offer any kind of judgment as to the quality of their work, or really any identifiable characteristic of their output as such. To my innocent mind, it just felt like a tidbit of interesting though irrelevant data. I felt the same way when I first noticed that baseball stats always made sure to differentiate between lefthanded and righthanded pitchers. I was never a ballplayer nor fan, so it took me years to realize that there’s a measurable difference in how southpaw pitchers can affect the game (it’s true of batters as well, isn’t it, since lefthanded batters are a step closer to first base? I dunno, I still don’t follow baseball), so that differentiation is at least theoretically useful, but as a kid, I thought it was just semi-interesting background info. Like if the NFL sorted defensive backs by hair color.
Anyway. I guess my point is that I would kinda miss that kind of differentiation. Streamlining our language by de-gendering it feels, to me, like throwing out all the crayons that I rarely use. And it bugs me because even though I can see that lots of those crayons have been used to otherize and discriminate against people, that’s not how I was ever in the habit of using them. I’m from a blue-collar hot-rodding culture, and for me, a “tranny” has always referred to a transmission. I wouldn’t use the word to refer to a person. I don’t use the word “tranny” at all anymore, which is a minor victory for somebody I guess, but it also means that I take twice as long to refer to that 4L60E gearbox I just dropped on my foot. Which is no big deal to anyone at all, but in the end… what actual useful purpose has been served? Do I need to be reminded of the sociological plight of the trans community every time I work on my car? Maybe not… but that’s the result regardless. Poor me? Hardly. I fully agree with John Scalzi and Louis C.K. that nobody has it easier in life than I do. But the English language is one of my favorite toolboxes and playgrounds… and I hate to see the rusty merry-go-round and the mercury thermometer removed from them.
I have no problem calling @pbasch “Wing Commander Pbasch.”
For many years I did programming work as a contractor. When I signed up for business mailings and the like I used the title “Munificent Dictator.” To this day, after two moves, and despite the fact that I dissolved the business over a decade ago, I still occasionally get mail addressed to the Munificent Dictator (of the Barbarian Illuminati, no less.)
On the first day of Syntax I, the professor (a top notch human being, who later became the chair of the philosophy department, so basically my hero) wrote on the board:
There’s meadows in them there mountain lions.
They asked if this was a grammatical sentence, and most of the class said no. They asked if the sentence means something, did it communicate ideas, which it does. It’s metaphorical, it’s non-standard, but it communicates. It has meaning. (ETA: Meaning it is grammatical, for the purposes of syntax.)
That class (and Syntax II with the same prof) changed my outlook on language. The point is communication, the point is human connection, language is only a tool that we use. There is no point in sticking to outdated constructs if new ones fit better with the way we live now.
Some people want to hold fast to the gender binary like their worldviews depend on it, but that ship has fucking sailed. Changing the way we speak, to honor the humanity of our fellow humans, isn’t especially easy. But it is important.
Actually mine prefers to be called “Goddess,” although they happen to be gender fluid. (This isn’t, you understand, something they expect other people to do, but it’s a title I quite enjoy using for them.)
Edit: Oops. Wrong pronoun! Apparently, even people that are used to doing it can make mistakes.
In many (possibly most) contexts, I’d agree with this. But y’know, I can’t bring myself to say there’s no point at all.
There are more efficient, clearer, and more direct ways to tell someone I love them than writing a sonnet. Is there no point in writing sonnets? Language is more than “only” a tool.
I dunno, I can’t quite resolve the plurality of the meadows with the contracted is. But if we fixed that issue, sure, nonsensical though the sentence might be, it would still be “correct” and, in fact, evocative.
I don’t argue against using better tools than the old-fashioned ones we always used before we knew better. At the same time, I’m not above using a 1/2" ratchet as a hammer when a real hammer is inconveniently out of reach. But I also want to have a real hammer in my toolbox so I don’t have to misuse my ratchet thus. I like having all the tools at my disposal, even the dangerous and outdated ones.
Fair enough, the outdated constructs mean things, also. And, sometimes a person wants to express that thing.
Well, it is a rank in the RAF, one rank above Squadron Leader, and one rank below Group Captain.
“Concave” and “Convex” would also work.
As a general thought, I don’t know why people are often so opposed to xe, hir, sie, etc.
I have colleagues and friends from all across the world and, yes it takes effort, but I pronounce their names the way they do and I have for my entire career.
As long as Reverend Ivan Stang remains relevant so too will the title Reverend.
Transgender folk are all over the map on a lot of things including Mx.
For folks who aren’t agender, bi-gender, genderqueer, or otherwise non-binary, it’s best not to use Mx. If it’s important to use a title, ask which one to use. A lot of trans women, for example, are going to prefer Ms or Mrs.
For those of us in the non-binary end, I think there’s a good deal of acceptance for Mx already (Mx isn’t that new). To me, it’s cute. And cute is good. Mostly.
Mix or Mixster.
Well, yeah, but aviatrix is cool. You can tell cuz of the X. Most other gendered titles are not.
I can parse it, though it reads like a stereotypical 49er Gold prospector (who’s had way too much whiskey) trying to warn me where I need to watch out for mountain lion attacks.
This day really needed something positive in the news! I’m happy for all my non-binary xistren 
Boing, net neutrality may be on its best legal footing yet in the USA. It’s not all gloom!
Hmm. In that case, what should be the gender-neutral appellation? Y’know, for use in all generic cases, where outside the envelope it used to be addressed to “Occupant”? Or to replace the gender-specific honorifics, if that is the goal?
