I have a comparatively new tradition of "New Year's language challenges", wherein I try to change the way I speak or write in some way for the duration of the coming year. The challenges I've thought of for 2024 are:

  • Using he, she, and xe instead of it when referring to a definite inanimate thing.
  • Using hissen, hersen, theirsen(s), itsen, etc. as optional proximate forms of personal pronouns.

So basically, "the colorful flower, though it is fragrant" becomes "the colorful flower, though hissen is fragrant". Fun stuff!

So my question is essentially whether it's a good idea for the hissen/hersen challenge to apply to real people. Do you think it would be disrespectful to someone's preferred pronouns to add another inflection to them? I don't think so, but I want to check with others to make sure.

  • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Well, proximate as opposed to obviative, rather than proximal as opposed to distal. So basically, his sen and variants would mean "he, who is more important to the discourse,", while he alone would mean "he, who is less important to the discourse". So it's like grammatically marking the main character as different from the side characters, I guess. This is a notable feature of Algonquian languages, and is something that I'm sure every gay romance writer has wished was a thing for as long as there have been awkward roundabout ways of specifying which she is touching which her.

    • Infamousblt [any]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think mostly it's probably not fine solely because for the vast majority of English speaking people you would have to describe this to them otherwise they wouldn't know what you're talking about. Intent rarely matters; what matters is that if they don't know you're more respectfully or accurately gendering them, then it's likely they would assume you're misgendering them, which is going to cause some harm.

      In a world where everyone could assume that folks are always operating with respect and in good faith, sure, you could probably do this and it would probably be fine. We don't live in that world though. We live in a world full of people happy to maliciously misgender everyone they can for any reason at all, and in that world it's better to err on the side of trying to be as clear as possible that you understand and support someone's chosen pronouns.

      So basically you aren't wrong on paper but we don't live in a theoretical world, we live in a world where words can and do cause real harm to real people, so it's better to just ask folks what words they want you to use to describe them and then use those words and only those words.