> He's attempting to analyze systemic changes in society accurately.
s/He/She
s/He/She
Instead of: Barack Obama is the current president of the United States. He was born in 1961.
Say: Barack Obama is the current president of the United States. They were born in 1961.
Fight the madness of people getting mad over gender of pronouns with a greater degree of madness. It is the only way.
At some point, we may use "they" for everyone, even if known. But at present, it's not accepted even for cases when gender is unknown.
It's likely better to argue for its usage in unknown cases first before making a case for its usage even when gender is known. The latter is a far more radical proposition.
(I use "they" when gender is unknown".)
I was not intending to mock trans people, I was mocking extremists in that group. It's really fucking annoying when you were for gender-neutral pronouns your whole life, took shit for that because nobody wanted to use "clumsy grammar," then you get shit from some trans people who claim that you're erasing their identity:
<quote>Look, if you take gender neutral pronouns and start using them for people that aren’t gender neutral, you are appropriating my and other non-binary people’s pronouns, whatever way you cut it. You’re also erasing and devaluing both binary and non-binary trans* people, who have to fight every single day to be recognised and treated as their gender. This smacks of that whole ridiculous ’gender is irrelevant’ shit. That sentiment ‘gender is irrelevant’? Yeah, it’s trans* erasure.</quote>
I am not the pedant. These people are the pedants. But these are the people you are going to be dealing with when you talk about what pronouns you should use in writing, so you better be aware of it.
On the other hand, once she informed people about her true gender and pronoun preferences then there ought to be no use of "he" in media to refer to Manning. At most, I'd support using "nee" and a reference to her old name for the sake of continuity.
Make no mistake about it, pronoun issues may seem trivial to those not affected, but it's often a deeply distressing and systemic problem for many trans people.
Overall, I like your post. You might be interested in reading about Spivack pronouns - yes, the same Spivack that wrote the well regarded calculus text.
Yes, I got a little carried away. I was trying to say that there are cases where gender of the person is not important. I was trying to come up with a case where the person's gender was not important. In hindsight, since there have been no female POTUS I guess the gender is still relevant.
A little off topic, I respect Barack Obama (not being sarcastic at all even though I probably disagree with him on more issues than I agree with him) and can imagine where he is coming from.
In post-mortem, I'd imagine I was thinking in terms of something like an Overton window where I suggest something so outlandish hoping that we'd settle somewhere saner in between...