doing a friendly chat with hillary clinton, a war criminal who is directly responsible for countless deaths abroad and at home, while making a career as an edgy radical left video essayist is incredibly hilarious pic.twitter.com/a9Y2nh4ePe— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) September 19, 2022
Im not the person you want to ask about that. Im queer but I know very little about the nuances of pronouns in the english language. (not my mother tongue)
If you're using it universally, it isn't. If you're using it for trans people expressly using gendered pronouns, it's a common form to express you do not really view them as valid without being too openly transphobic.
他 isn't neutral anymore, but it was until the 20th century. I don't think that's the reactionary part of your post though, so much as insisting that the entire writing system is full of "nastiness, sexism and transphobia" without further clarification.
她 is "she". The 女 part of the character means "woman". It is a pictograph of a woman holding a child. As if all women can have children. It's sexist and transphobic. I could go on, but suffice it to say that the entire hanzi system of characters has this shit baked into it and none of it will ever go away without outside action. Mao tried but couldn't get it done.
You're confusing 她 with 好, which is where the whole "woman holding a child" etymology comes from. 也 isn't a child. In modern Chinese, it means "also" while in classical Chinese, it's used as an emphatic final particle like modern Japanese よ. The radical for child is 子, as you can see in the oracle bone script which looks like a pictogram of a child raising their arms.
Both versions of 他 and 她 are phono-semantic characters like the vast majority of Chinese characters, where one radical denotes phonetic meaning while another radical denotes semantic meaning. In this case, 也 is the phonetic radical. It doesn't make sense in Mandarin (you're comparing ta1 vs ye3), but in old Chinese, 他 and 也 were a lot similar in pronunciation.
女 doesn't have anything related to children going by the oracle bone script either. Neither does 母, which means mother in modern Chinese.
Mao tried but couldn’t get it done.
Because it was an absolutely terrible idea that almost no one else other than weirdos who stan the Gang of 4 too hard during the Cultural Revolution would agree with. And it's quite convenient that "reactionary" hanzi has to be discarded for the "progressive" script used by imperialists that sacked the Old Summer Palace during the Century of Humiliation.
You literally just need to replace the problematic characters with new characters. Like, you don't have to ditch the entire system. What kind of ultra nonsense is that?
And the English word "woman" comes from the social role of "wife". Should we discard that as sexist as well? How many people actually look at 女 and think "that's a mother, and cannot refer to trans women."?
In Chinese robot combat (like King of Bots and This is Fighting Robots) they are sometimes called 机器人 which is robot (machine-person) and sometimes 铁甲, or Iron Armor. I think that's pretty dope but maybe it's also problematic.
huh, that seems like personification to me to differentiate with machines that don't appear to move on their own (i think some other languages the words for self-motive things are along the lines of "x with a soul") but i don't know any of the other social or etymological context that might make it bad.
i liked those shows. not really used to chinese TV editing norms but there were some great fights in there. ha! Jonathan Pearce saying "iron armorment" would be hilarious.
The (lamentable) fact that Mao's writing system reform failed is probably evidence enough that hanzi is unlikely to be abandoned in our lifetimes.
For digital communication at least, you can convert hanzi to pinyin and back very easily, that's what I do when I don't just need ASAP machine translation...
I don't want genderless though - I'm a woman and would like to be affirmatively treated as such. assuming that degendering is appropriate on my behalf is just as much intentional misgendering.
yes, default to neutral choices when referring to unknown or unspecified people, or for those whose pronouns you do not know. but a new genderless language dropped wholecloth on the present solves literally nothing about either sexism or transphobia.
the problem isn't language - it's that people think we're women and not-women, men and not-men, at the same time! better ways to hide that fact without addressing the contradictions at the heart of society is a defense of the status quo, a way to sweep the problems of the present under the rug.
yes, I'm coming off strong about an innocuous comment but this is liberalism and Combat Liberalism.
the problem in this particular case where there was ambiguity between someone referring to breadtubers as a group they or misgendering a woman with singular-they is absolutely a language problem, and my wistful dreaming of that not being an issue is not meant to address the larger social issues.
if you know someone's pronouns, use them. they/them is only correct if someone explicitly tells you they're comfortable with them or if you're speaking about someone non-specific or a third-party who's pronouns you don't know. transphobes routinely address binary trans people with they/them in order to misgender with plausible deniability.
Is using a neutral they transphobia? Ive been using they to refer to basically anyone and everyone including cis men and women
EDIT: She clarified further about the “they” to refer to streamers as plural https://mobile.twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1572018297377558528
Im not the person you want to ask about that. Im queer but I know very little about the nuances of pronouns in the english language. (not my mother tongue)
If you're using it universally, it isn't. If you're using it for trans people expressly using gendered pronouns, it's a common form to express you do not really view them as valid without being too openly transphobic.
I think you wildly misinterpreted them regardless
https://mobile.twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1572018297377558528
ambiguity :sadness:
but we don't really have anything better, genderless conlang when
Just use a non European language, no conlang required
Chinese "ta"s keep winning.
Removed by mod
Lmao yes we must abolish the Chinese languages.
Mao tried to abolish characters. It didn't take, unfortunately.
Mod removed my post explaining that the Chinese "ta" isn't neutral whatsoever.
"The writing system must be reformed; we must move in the direction of a globally unified phonetic spelling system."
-- People's Daily, 20th of December, 1977
他 isn't neutral anymore, but it was until the 20th century. I don't think that's the reactionary part of your post though, so much as insisting that the entire writing system is full of "nastiness, sexism and transphobia" without further clarification.
她 is "she". The 女 part of the character means "woman". It is a pictograph of a woman holding a child. As if all women can have children. It's sexist and transphobic. I could go on, but suffice it to say that the entire hanzi system of characters has this shit baked into it and none of it will ever go away without outside action. Mao tried but couldn't get it done.
You're confusing 她 with 好, which is where the whole "woman holding a child" etymology comes from. 也 isn't a child. In modern Chinese, it means "also" while in classical Chinese, it's used as an emphatic final particle like modern Japanese よ. The radical for child is 子, as you can see in the oracle bone script which looks like a pictogram of a child raising their arms.
Both versions of 他 and 她 are phono-semantic characters like the vast majority of Chinese characters, where one radical denotes phonetic meaning while another radical denotes semantic meaning. In this case, 也 is the phonetic radical. It doesn't make sense in Mandarin (you're comparing ta1 vs ye3), but in old Chinese, 他 and 也 were a lot similar in pronunciation.
女 doesn't have anything related to children going by the oracle bone script either. Neither does 母, which means mother in modern Chinese.
Because it was an absolutely terrible idea that almost no one else other than weirdos who stan the Gang of 4 too hard during the Cultural Revolution would agree with. And it's quite convenient that "reactionary" hanzi has to be discarded for the "progressive" script used by imperialists that sacked the Old Summer Palace during the Century of Humiliation.
You literally just need to replace the problematic characters with new characters. Like, you don't have to ditch the entire system. What kind of ultra nonsense is that?
Absolutely wild that white libs will propose in the guize of being “leftist”
Like eliminating an entire language is cultural genocide not inclusiveness.
The vast majority of critiques over Chinese characters is cope by Westerners who suck at memorizing and writing Chinese characters.
"Wah, my hand hurts from practicing Chinese characters, why can't they ditch hanzi for pinyin?"
what if ALL existing languages are eliminated
And the English word "woman" comes from the social role of "wife". Should we discard that as sexist as well? How many people actually look at 女 and think "that's a mother, and cannot refer to trans women."?
probably
probably some? i've seen 1-2 people unironically suggest we stop using the word "robot" because it's etymology has something to do with slavery,
In Chinese robot combat (like King of Bots and This is Fighting Robots) they are sometimes called 机器人 which is robot (machine-person) and sometimes 铁甲, or Iron Armor. I think that's pretty dope but maybe it's also problematic.
huh, that seems like personification to me to differentiate with machines that don't appear to move on their own (i think some other languages the words for self-motive things are along the lines of "x with a soul") but i don't know any of the other social or etymological context that might make it bad.
i liked those shows. not really used to chinese TV editing norms but there were some great fights in there. ha! Jonathan Pearce saying "iron armorment" would be hilarious.
The (lamentable) fact that Mao's writing system reform failed is probably evidence enough that hanzi is unlikely to be abandoned in our lifetimes.
For digital communication at least, you can convert hanzi to pinyin and back very easily, that's what I do when I don't just need ASAP machine translation...
I don't want genderless though - I'm a woman and would like to be affirmatively treated as such. assuming that degendering is appropriate on my behalf is just as much intentional misgendering.
yes, default to neutral choices when referring to unknown or unspecified people, or for those whose pronouns you do not know. but a new genderless language dropped wholecloth on the present solves literally nothing about either sexism or transphobia.
the problem isn't language - it's that people think we're women and not-women, men and not-men, at the same time! better ways to hide that fact without addressing the contradictions at the heart of society is a defense of the status quo, a way to sweep the problems of the present under the rug.
yes, I'm coming off strong about an innocuous comment but this is liberalism and Combat Liberalism.
the problem in this particular case where there was ambiguity between someone referring to breadtubers as a group they or misgendering a woman with singular-they is absolutely a language problem, and my wistful dreaming of that not being an issue is not meant to address the larger social issues.
if you know someone's pronouns, use them. they/them is only correct if someone explicitly tells you they're comfortable with them or if you're speaking about someone non-specific or a third-party who's pronouns you don't know. transphobes routinely address binary trans people with they/them in order to misgender with plausible deniability.