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November 26

Does English routinely offer opportunities to misgender people who are present?

I just read a Guardian article about pronoun usage in the context of gender identity ([1]), and find myself puzzled by one of the implied ideas - and not for the first time, either.

The subheading mentions "a quiet revolution happening over how we address people", and the text describes family situations with parents making efforts, and occasionally failing, to avoid misgendering children at home. One such parent, for example, "dutifully puts 20p into a 'naughty jar' every time" they slip up.

What I'm having trouble with is coming up with circumstances under which we gender (whether mis- or not) people while addressing them, or while referring to them in conversations that they are party to. It is after all only in the third person singular that English pronouns differentiate gender. Obviously, we overwhelmingly use the second person to address people. This holds even for borderline cases - the address form would be "your majesty", not "his majesty", for example. One exception that did cross my mind is "milady", which has a first-person portion. But, even if there turn out to be third-person exceptions in that vein, they would likely miss the point: The "mi-" is a reference to the one doing the addressing, not the one being addressed. I'd expect an analogous third-person reference to be to someone outside the conversation entirely. On the other hand, the other portion, "-lady", is clearly gendered and could therefore be misapplied. But that's the noun portion, not the pronoun portion - plus none of this is anywhere near "routine", surely.

As for referring to people who are present but are not currently being addressed, that does call for the third person, of course. However, it's typically considered impolite to employ pronouns in this situation, isn't it? When I'm talking to Claire, and Jamie is within earshot, I'm not supposed to say "he's excited" whether or not Jamie is male, I'm supposed to say "Jamie is excited". I believe this to derive from the, arguably questionable, idea that it's preferrable to talk about people when they aren't present. And when they are, we take pains to acknowledge the notional transgression, including foregoing the use of pronouns.

So, the above considerations, plus simple experience, lead one to expect that if misgendering is to happen face-to-face, it then very likely won't have anything to do with pronouns. Am I missing something?

- 2A02:560:5979:5700:805F:7B23:D7FC:5E22 (talk) 23:55, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it is impolite to Jamie to say in his presence to Claire, "he is excited". Here a woman is reported as saying, "Leave him alone" in the presence of the referent. This appears perfectly normal to me, more so in fact than her saying, "Leave Martin alone". --Lambiam 11:35, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, even if you say "Jamie is excited", it would be distinctly odd to continue to say "Jamie" in the sentences about him that follow. ColinFine (talk) 15:20, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly in my household it was considered disrespectful to refer to a person who is present in the third person. My Dad would bark at me if I referred to Mom as "she". He would have sharp words with me afterwards if I "she'd" the (shall we say) household staff. I learned wikt:who's 'she', the cat's mother from Cold Comfort Farm as an adult, but if Dad had known the expression he'd have used it. (Entirely American dialects upbringing here.) --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 18:20, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A common way to refer to the third party when everyone is closely related is to use "your (relative)". Like, a mother telling her daughter to "leave your little brother alone". This should probably seem more cumbersome and inefficient than it does, given that everyone is already well aware of who they are to each other, and I'm guessing pronoun avoidance is somewhat responsible. Clearly, there's more to it as well, though - "leave my son alone" wouldn't be common at all in the same situation. Neither would "leave your nephew alone" in User:Lambiam's example.

I find "leave him alone" more acceptable than "he's excited", and ditto for the possessive in, say, "help your little brother put his shoes on". This may have something to do with agent and patient roles - "leave him alone" refers to Martin, but it doesn't fully qualify as "talking about" Martin in the same sense as in the "he's excited" example.

User:ColinFine's point is well taken, too. "Help your little brother put your little brother's shoes on" is obviously awful. I'm guessing that pronoun-avoiders may subconsciously lean toward phrasings that minimize third-person references in the first place, so that we're forced into having to pick from among variously awkward choices as little as possible.

Anyway, the multitude of factors shown to be at play here does weaken my original point quite a bit.

Thanks!

- (OP) 2A02:560:5979:5700:68A2:691D:E484:512C (talk) 19:31, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is a frequent topic of conversation in my household. The specific question you ask is only rarely the cause of confusion/error. That is, you usually don't need to gender (correctly or not) the pronouns of people right in front of you. Where we sometimes messed up was in complex reportative cases "I told John not to call you; 'She's too busy!" I said." Not the kind of thing that you're going to trip over every day. What was much more likely was misgendering a person who's only directly known by one member of the conversation. Like, if Pat prefers female pronouns and we all know Pat, we're probably going to get it right most of the time. But if Billy is only directly known to our child, the missus and I may mess up when referring to them. It'd be like misremembering the hair colour of someone you've never met. Where the problem lies, and where I think the writer of the linked column was going, is that young people are both a) more likely to care about us gendering their friends correctly and b) to know a slate of people their parents aren't going to have ever met. So, it's both more likely for parents to mess up and more likely that the child will care. Matt Deres (talk) 19:34, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]