spoon-discuss: RE: spoon-business: Proposal: Gender Recognition

["Jonathan Van Matre" <JVanMatre@xxxxxxxx>]

This is all good up to the last sentence.  While I've embraced Spivak as a matter of game custom, as far as the OED and the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style are concerned, use of the singular "they" for gender-neutral references is appropriate.  *Chaucer* used the singular "they"  In addition, most manuals of style also approve of (but generally abhor and discourage) use of s/he or he/she.

As a matter of personal usage, I tend to use the singular "they", and regular switching from one gender to the other in some cases where I'm using fictional characters to illustrate non-fictional points.  When I'm writing something, for nomic or elsewhere, Spivak is the last thing that comes naturally.  With the exception of rabid net-nomic fans, I can't imagine it comes naturally to anyone.

I'm not a fan of anything that is going to penalize players for using a grammatically-correct, gender-neutral pronoun that just happens to differ from the ones prescribed in your list, especially when habits of usage outside the game make it almost certain that every one of us will eventually make this mistake unintentionally.

Spivak should be like standard delimiters--customary, but not required.

And you had better not be requiring the gender-specific pronouns when a player's gender is known--keeping track of everyone's gender all the time would be too much work, and probably kill whatever fun we're currently getting out of having gender in the first place.

--Scoff!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Donald Whytock [mailto:dwhytock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 1:52 AM
> To: spoon-business@xxxxxxxxx
> Subject: spoon-business: Proposal: Gender Recognition
> 
> 
> Now that we officially have gender...
> 
> {{ _In the Valley of the Drones the One-Eyed Man is Queen_
> 
> Replace Rule 7 in its entirety with the following rule:
> 
> {{ _Pronouns_
> 
> The following table entries list the gender-specific pronouns 
> to be used in B Nomic.  Note that pronouns used in generic 
> cases where the gender is not known are the same as used for 
> a gender of Undeclared.
> 
>                Male      Female    Drone     Generic/Undeclared
> subject        he        she       it        e
> object         him       her       it        em
> possessive     his       her/hers  its       eir/eirs
> reflexive      himself   herself   itself    emself
> 
> }}
> 
> Add "using an inappropriate pronoun" to the LOGAS.
> 
> }}
> 
> 						Glotmorf
> 
> 
> 
>