Pronouns, Gender, and You!

Pronouns: the things we use to refer to people in the third person (that aren't their names). As an added bonus, they act as linguistic markers of people's gender identities, so they're PRETTY FREAKING IMPORTANT.

Two rules that will generally keep you from inadvertently offending people:
1. RESPECT PEOPLE'S PRONOUNS.
2. ALWAYS ASK; DON'T ASSUME.

There's also a super quick rundown of a bunch of pre-existing pronoun options. Of course, you can always mix and match, combine them, switch between them, or use no pronouns whatsoever! There's not enough time to talk about everything, so please ask questions in the comments—they make Michael happy.

Wikipedia article on gender neutral pronouns:

Pretty comprehensive list of gender neutral pronouns throughout history (some facetious):

[stephenm]

I identify as King. My pronouns are “your majesty.”

[HiTianshi]

Why does this comment section not compare to the like-dislike ratio? It's almost like someone's deleting comments.

[MrXCodSlayer]

I’ve been pretty successful in my goal of avoiding these kinds of people my whole life. Wish me luck on the rest of it guys

[into_the_void]

Sometimes I identify as energy, my pronouns are kinetic and potential

[vinfiddler]

Well that certainly simplifies things. I was getting confused.

[slickwilly]

I identify as an Apache Attack Helicopter.My prefered pronouns are "fuck" and "kill"!

[TheSBleeder]

My pronoun is the entire text of Tolstoy's War and Peace. If you don't recite the whole book when addressing me, you are a bigot.

[Chameleon_]

Quick reminder:
YOUR PRONOUNS ARE VALID AND LET NO ONE TELL YOU OTHERWISE
I will hiss at them if they do

[ValandisValley]

I miss 10 years ago when this bullcrap wasn't a thing.

[kasogamer]

WTF has happened to our society. Humanity became bored and started getting offended by everything

[triplenz]

nah fuck that. Not going to mess an English language that took me years to be fluent at to accommodate 0.001% of world population's sentiment.

[skydriver]

What if it's a life threatening situation and the first responder says "are you a guy or a girl?".

[chongsun]

I am new to this, so I am curious why we need all the pronouns since 'they' has already been used as gender neutral pronoun since 14th century? I think the purpose of language is for the ease of communication. We only create new words when absolutely necessary.

[globeskeptic]

textbook definition of Cultural Marxism

[FenixDelta]

This is insane... How can people expect every single person to, before even talking to them, ask them all these questions about their pronoun as well as how to spell it for every single damn person... And then if someone can't remember this huge list of people and their chosen pronouns so they feel like special snowflakes. Then were called bigoted when we can't remember.. Its just craziness. You can NOT expect people to cater their entire language for you. Perhaps these people need to figure out why they are so easily offended by simple words that are not meant to hurt people and often just said automatically.

[azorthegreat]

There are so much bigger problems in life...

[MalloryJay]

You can tell who is a freaky SJW by how they exaggerate things so fakely and impersonal. "There are many, yeah...."

[into_the_void]

I identify as a lightbulb, my pronouns are on/off

[billymccall]

I‘m a non binary person, preferring they but also accepting he... I have to admit I don’t understand the use of ze, em, peh, thon, zhe etc... etc. If someone asks me to use one of those, I won’t refuse. But they’ll have to be patient because it will require me to learn and get used to the language.

[partii]

I'm okay with rule # 1. As long as they tell me what pronoun they want to be reffered as cool.

My problem is rule # 2. Don't make it sound like it's my responsibility to know your pronoun. It's your responsibility to inform me. If I used the wrong pronoun on you, THEN tell me what your pronoun is and I will refer to you as such the next time we talk.