/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19390941]

Why do textbooks always refer to a nongendered subject as “she?” If its about muh gender equality, why not “they?”

[Anonymous No.19390947]

Because the people writing the textbooks are immoral hypocrites with no values who lulled you into supporting their psychotic and vindictive power grab with sweet talks of equality and fairness.

[Anonymous No.19390962]

>>19390941
By openly enacting the hypocrisy they make their fealty to the ingroup clear.

[Anonymous No.19391963]

>>19390941
English already has "it" you guys should use it more. Hell, I've even seen people refer to pets as "they" if they don't know its gender.

[Anonymous No.19391969]

>>19391963
Those replacements don't always fit properly without making the sentence feel awkward.

[Anonymous No.19392113]

>>19390941
Compensation

[Anonymous No.19392187]

>>19390941
>s/he
Grammatically acceptable. Yes, it's because it's part of an agenda.

[Anonymous No.19392193]

Europe, the Church, some countries, chaos, nature, justice and pain are all women and should be referred to as such.

[Anonymous No.19392228]

>>19392193
>chaos
>pain
No. They are neuter and should be refered to as "it".

[Anonymous No.19392236]

>>19392228
chaos is definitely a woman

[Anonymous No.19392244]

>>19390941
Replacing the default gender from male, as in the following sentence
> “The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty." — Bertrand Russell
To female, as revised here
> “The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of [her] world of ordered beauty." — Bertrand Russell
Was something that started to get popular during the '90s from what I remember.
The basic idea behind it was that, assuming the male gender bolsters preconceived notions of what gender does this or that, it raises men to the status of "default", and it is patriarchal language (all progressive no-nos obviously); but if we assume the default gender is female, we are "radically" challenging the pre-concieved notions of our patriarchal society and encouraging woman to became, say, mathematicians, by removing the social barriers that says "this isn't what women do"; furthermore, there is no possible way you could hurt the male sex doing this because they have all the power.
Alternatively, some less radical progressive writers—who also cared about gender equility—would take extra care to write sentences like this:
> “The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of [his or her] world of ordered beauty." — Bertrand Russell
and for a time that was the perfered and happy middle ground that progressive types would take.
However, now with all the new genders, something like "his or her" is completely unacceptable because it assumes a gender binary and even "her" is considered bad in this way.
Sentences can pretty much only be written in this way now:
> “The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of [their] world of ordered beauty." — Bertrand Russell
But to answer your question, the reason "They" and it's derivatives were generally avoided was because "they" connotes plurality, and this generally sounded odd to most English speakers of a couple years ago, but the current and—for the foreseeable future—coming generations don't seem to have a problem with it.
That's how I understand it anyway, but then again I'm not a linguist so take what I said with a grain of salt.

[Anonymous No.19392398]

>>19391963
The word "it" is usually avoided because it connotes "inhumaness", as if "it" were an object and not a person; thus if "it" is used to speak of a person, its effect will be dehumanizing (obviously something to avoid if you are being polite).
For example, one might ask a woman what her baby's age is in this way
> How old is it?
And since this is a perfectly natural way of speaking about children whose gender one cannot be sure of, she might respond
> Oh, he's a month old.
But, then again, if she's snarky she might just as easily say
> "It" has a name you know—his name is Jayden.
To indicate that she would prefer the use of the male or proper pronouns, which again, are generally considered more human.
In any case, if a human is of the age where one's gender can be easily determined (i.e. without having to look at the genitals) then it is considered rude to use the pronoun "it".
Although, with all this being said, "it" can be used to speak about human individuals in general but usually "one" or "one's" is preferred in these cases.
Again, not a linguist, just giving my observations.

[Anonymous No.19392428]

>>19390941
I was using the singular they before it was cool. I even got point(s) docked on a HS english paper for using it. I tried to show the teach that singular they even had its own wikipedia page, but trying to challenge the teacher with a wikipedia article was not gonna fly, the memes about teachers and wikipedia are all true.
Fast forward, and my quantum mechanics professor stopped lecturing from his notes during class, and he explained to us that wikipedia is far more reliable than a large majority of other online resources, and will be a much more useful source of information in studying for our exam than almost everything online or any other textbook than the class-specific book and resources.
>so fuck you ms. morin
This wasn't supposed to a dig at english, anyways where was I
Oh yeah, I don't want to call troons by their pwefewed pwonouns (just don't want to), but I would be a hypocrite if I abandoned the singular they, esp. when that's actually the "correct" thing to say. I feel like I got monkey's paw'd
>FUCK YOU MS. MORIN

[Anonymous No.19392800]

>>19390941

It's their petty little way of trying to get back at centuries of "he/him" as the default. "They" wouldn't be good enough as it would be too conciliatory. Gotta create new works which actively oppose the ancient norm, which carry out the opposing tacit exclusion (of men).

[Anonymous No.19392871]

>>19390941
What kind of textbooks are you reading? I've never seen this

[Anonymous No.19392900]

>>19392871
Not a textbook, but this book I read a while ago had the same thing. The author was especially petty since even God was referred to as ‘She’ by the author. It was almost unreadable

[Anonymous No.19393224]

>>19390941
It was never about equality. It was just about complaining until women got more resources for no additional work.

[Anonymous No.19394842]

>>19392428
Your professor in retarded.

[Anonymous No.19394851]

>>19390941
>Author uses "he/him"
Feminists whine and complain and attempt to cancel
>Author uses "they/them"
Conservatives whine and complain and attempt to cancel (or they would if they weren't banned on all mainstream sites lmao)
>Author uses "she/her"
No one cares.

I'd use "she/her" too.

[Anonymous No.19394927]

>>19392244
How could "free creator" possibly be anything but male? It's incomprehensible that a person devoid of semen in their bone marrow could be considered a free creator, without even possessing a phallus.

Perhaps, you argue, women are creators. They create life after all. Hah! I scoff! Yes, women can bare a man's child, they can carry the fruit of his seed, but to do so is a negation of their freedom. A becoming-of-unfree-edness which imparts itself physiologically on her material form.

Only men can freely create. Women are re-created by the act of their creation, and therefore cannot in any sense be considered free. It's their primordial curse recognized by every ancient society.

Likewise, while "beauty" can certainly be considered a feminine aspect, the qualifier "ordered" obviously implies the masculine element. Therefore the only correct way to write this Bertrand Russell quote is
> “The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty (male)."
The only words in this above phrase that are feminine are "musician" and "Bertrand Russell".

[Anonymous No.19394951]

>>19390941
Poor zoomers are clueless.
I pity the world when we leave it for them govern.

[Anonymous No.19394956]

>>19390941
Never seen that. Is it a sociology textbook or something?

[Anonymous No.19394963]

>>19392244
'His or her' and 'they' are still perfectly acceptable. I don't know what the climate is like in higher academia, but I expect 'they' to eventually become the default, given the general tendency of the social justice movement. Radical feminism was the dominant progressive/disruptive social movement at the time 'she' became popularized, but since society moved on, there's less immediate and obvious basis for it (thus the confusion at its use).

[Anonymous No.19394980]

>>19394927
Where's this reference book of the gender of concepts you seem to using?

[Anonymous No.19394994]

>>19390941
I don't mind it OP. It makes me a bit horny imagining a woman.

[Anonymous No.19395219]

>>19392244
>trying to meme women into being as good as men at math lmao