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Comment by foobar33333 | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much. If you read the letters and news articles, he seems horrible but when you read the source material its much much more tame.

He is being called a transphobe because he wants English to contain a new word which is singular and non gendered because he doesn't think 'they' is appropriate since it has historically been collective. Since he uses his new invented word for this purpose, he is being called transphobic for not respecting peoples choice to use 'they'.

When you look in to the details of what rms is being grilled over, he looks like someone who is honest and well intentioned but fails to communicate in a non controversial way.

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> He is being called a transphobe because he wants English to contain a new word which is singular and non gendered because he doesn't think 'they' is appropriate since it has historically been collective. Since he uses his new invented word for this purpose, he is being called transphobic for not respecting peoples choice to use 'they'.

Am I missing something or isn't this exactly what neutral language folks do with their made-up pronouns (Xe/Xem etc)? So they singled out Stallman for doing the same?

Also, interesting to see another flagged thread that points to an article with strictly factual information from a very popular source here.

From what I can tell, the problem they see is that stallman is proposing one standard word which applies and is correct for everyone rather than allowing everyone to create their own words and respecting their choices.

Very few people care about newly invented pronouns. The main problem people have with Stallman and pronouns is he refuses to use the standard word and uses a strange and alienating word instead.

But Stallman would argue that the standard word, if we're talking about 'they', 'them' and 'their', is inappropriate. He acknowledges that these words have historically been used in the singular, but convincingly points out that this merely proves that our ancestors also faced the same paucity of choice for referring to the indefinite singular.

What Stallman didn't employ in his defence, and a fact also ignored by many proponents of 'they' who regularly cite its historical usage as proof of transphobia in anyone who refuses to engage in the practice the now, is that this historical usage was applied when the subject of the sentence was indefinite, whereas the modern call to use 'they' is in the case of a specific, known person. This usage does not have a long linguistic history, regardless of whether the existence of such would, in itself, form compelling grounds on which to continue its usage.

Stallman's arguments don't make the new words less strange and alienating in practice.

His claim about our ancestors is wrong. They made up new words all the time. Including alternatives to singular they.

Stallman uses the new pronouns for any subject not known to be male or female. Singular they was used the same way historically.

People stop perceiving good intentions when someone refuses reasonable requests.

Singular they has been widely used for over 600 years.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Older_usage

Regardless, singular use still introduces ambiguity in communication.

The basic function of a language is to communicate clearly and unambiguously.

I say the same whenever I encounter any attempt to overload an existing word.

> Regardless, singular use still introduces ambiguity in communication.

No, it doesn't much in practice, and less than using a gendered pronoun for situations of unknown gender does.

If you don't regularly run into issues with people dropping pronouns without proper or with ambiguous antecedents, who exactly are you talking to? It seems like just trying to get normal folks to unambiguously state nounwise what they are talking about tends more often than not to get hackles raised because people (wrongly) seem to assume you're being patronizing.

I just maintain more conversational context than most, and pronouns can get askew really quick. Please, I don't need yet another layer of faux pas to be added on to getting people to unambiguously communicate.

This situation is not a dialogue.

Cancel culture is a flaky allocator, leaking cultural resources, until we 'splode.

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