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by fwlr
1118 days ago
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I noticed this when I was writing it and tried to use names rather than pronouns as much as possible. I actually use “their” all the time for everyone, I wasn’t aware that JT requests it in their Twitter profile. About fifteen years ago, when I first heard about gender-neutral pronouns, the objection at the time was “it’s harder to write and more confusing”. I started doing it as a challenge to see if it really was hard or not. In that fifteen years, you are in fact the first person to have ever noticed and said something (congratulations). |
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This may be because I am French and we do not "reuse" pronouns (in the sense that "their" always refers to a group). I know however that "their" use in single form has a long history in English and I therefore try to use "their" like you most of the time when it helps to generalize.
We have new constructs in French such as iel (il + elle = he + she) which is used by some and by others not (and forbidden (or very strongly discouraged, I do not remember) in national education). I do not know if this is good or bad, it has the advantage to address males and females as a group (it is otherwise "he" or "hes" (plural of "he")).