[TOMDM]

> so there's little point in trying to objectively categorize them

I think there's more than a little utility provided by the communication it enables. I'm all for non binary identities and letting people identify across them as they want, however with any change we must also recognize the utility in the previous norms so that we can preserve some useful aspects as we construct new norms.

[seba_dos1]

Can you give an example of such utility? Frankly, I don't see it - in my opinion, the best options are either not having genderized pronouns at all (and that's the option I'd actually prefer), or expressing the whole range of identities with them. Going somewhere in the middle is nothing more than just asking for dissonance to happen, which isn't useful.

[TOMDM]

Sure, the current utility is that most people do currently comfortably fit into the binary. We should introduce language to account for people that don't, and if demographics shifted such that most people didn't feel like the current binary fit them then we should adjust, but currently the majority of the population is happily self identifying within the binary and it's a great shortcut for them to communicate some assumptions about their identity. Only assumptions, not hard rules, but there's still utility in that.

[seba_dos1]

It's true that most people fit into binary, but I don't really see how that's relevant.

1) If we assume that it's essential to genderize pronouns, it doesn't really matter what the majority fits into because existence of other options does not influence that majority at all. The only case where it matters is when someone doesn't fit. The utility remains unaffected (in fact, it actually is increased because of better expressivity).

2) If we assume that it's not necessary to genderize pronouns, then it may be argued that we're losing some information that the vast majority of people was comfortably fitting into - but I don't really understand why do we actually need that information. When I refer to other people, it's extremely rare that I do it in a context that requires me to mention their gender identity (or even what do they have between their legs). In those rare cases where it's actually relevant, I wouldn't mind having to express it explicitly at all, so overall the utility seems dubious.

[guerrilla]

> It's true that most people fit into binary, but I don't really see how that's relevant.

It's relevant because it's efficient more than 99% of the time and removing it introduces ambiguity 99% of the time. The person you're responding to even said they didn't have a problem with adding more pronouns, just not making it worse by removing them.

[seba_dos1]

> and removing it introduces ambiguity 99% of the time

My whole point 2) was about how it does not (most of the time it just removes irrelevant noise), so I'd appreciate a counterexample.

[guerrilla]

Your second point is wrong. Obviously it narrows specificity by half the room on average. I don't know why you'd argue against that obvious fact. It's basic math: If you have a set C that is the union of two sets A and B where A and B have the same cardinality, referring to "a C" gives you twice the possibilities than referring to either "an A" or "a B." So it's measurably twice as efficient to do the former. Since so many unrelated languages in the world ended up with such a system (or very close), it's reasonable to think that that efficiency was worth it. Since most of those systems are not much more specific, it's reasonable to think that being more specific wasn't worth it (one can always specify further using more words.)