There’s definitely some additional nuance (like a pronouns in bio/username situation) but this should cover the broad needs of anyone who is approaching this with good faith.
Well my language does not have a neutral pronoun so this just does not work.
What’s your language, if it’s okay to ask?
Why would it not be ok to ask? It’s slovenian.
The phrase is more of an indication of a lack of hostility on their part. Even something neutral like “what country is that” could come across as a bit confrontational, in English. It would almost be like asking the question with an assumption that you can’t answer because it wasn’t correct when clearly it is and they would just like to find out more.
Theres a fair amount of performative politeness you have to go through to take the edges off of English. It’s not just fake-ness, as it can sometimes come across to non-native speakers. As I’m sure you know already, English is the a very information efficient amalgamation of 3 different languages. For example, some people find poetry and literature far more rich and descriptive in other languages. Due to it being particularly efficient at information exchange, it can also come across very blunt too.
Just thought you deserved a proper answer, with context, as you were kind enough to give one yourself.
I see. But I think this was a bit too polite. In my opinion the better way to take off the edge would be to ask and then add ‘if you don’t mind me asking’ or If I may ask what country that is. Adding ‘if it’s okay to ask’ seems almost like he asked me for my address or something that it’s not okay to ask people about.
Can we just start misgendering republicans?
no that is the tool of the enemy we have no need of it
If only there were gender neutral pronouns in my language 😭
In arabic we don’t even have neuter or non-gendered anythings, a table is a he or she.
Not even objects are safe 😔
In German it feels completely random.
A table is masculine. A castle is feminine. A sausage is feminine. A boy is masculine. A girl is neutral. A fire is neutral. …
Not sure if there’s any meaningful rule behind.
Actually, Mädchen (meaning “girl” in German) is a diminutive. It comes from Magd (an old word for “maid” or “young woman”) with the -chen suffix, which is a common diminutive in German.
The -chen suffix makes words grammatically neuter, which is why Mädchen takes das instead of die, even though it refers to a female person.
I’m not German but the same applies to the Dutch word for girl, and we’ve the same rule for neutral. By the way, ‘magd’ in Dutch means virgin (maagd to be precise), which sounds incredibly inappropriate to be going around calling someone; little virgin (/¯ ಠ_ಠ)/¯
There’s a lot of transphobes that use they/them to not acknowledge the pronouns of trans people, but also to skirt around anti-misgendering rules of social media. I call it “passive-aggressive misgendering”.
Definitely :( and it’s a super hurtful thing.
But! of course! that only happens when the offending person knows the pronouns and uses they/them anyway (right side of the flowchart). I see you are already getting downvotes from people who are so riled up they assumed for ya you meant both cases. Ugh.
Thanks for being normal ❤️
My solution, get rid of gendered pronouns. Make “He/Him” gender neutral and get rid of all others. Why do I need to know the gender of a coworker I have only ever talked to in email? And why, when referring to this person, do I need to let everybody else know that I know their gender by using the correct pronoun? It’s dumb and pointless.
It’s like when I was a kid and it was very important that we knew which teachers were married and which weren’t so we could use “Ms” or “Mrs”. It’s irrelevant to every conversation.
