so this week's subject of discourse on my side of twitter is pronouns and i'd like to ask your thoughts on them? personally i think "pronouns aren't tied to gender" is bs. pronouns only exist to replace one's name not to make conversation repetitive so of course they SHOULD specify the gender. so we know who we're talking about!! which makes the "she/they" "he/they" "all pronouns" thing ridiculous to me. like how am i supposed to know we're talking about one (1) person and not multiple? it defeats the point of pronouns...

btw i also find the "they" for nb ppl frustrating bc in spanish our "they" is gendered. like we have él/ellos (masculine he/they), ella/ellas (femenine she/they) AND in what we call "inclusive language" we've created a new non-gendered pronoun in both singular and plural (elle/elles) which i love. ik some languages don't even use pronouns but coming from a language that does, it irks me that in english it's like halfway there yk? like english language if you're gonna have pronouns do it well lol

ahh, the infamous pronoun debate!

in short: yes. pronouns are inherently gendered.

it makes no sense to use a pronoun that doesn't tie to your gender identity, and you shouldn't be using conflicting pronouns (ie he/him lesbian or she/her gay man) bc the whole point of pronouns is to make communications easier. i also have a very hard time with mixed pronouns, bc if you switch between pronouns, it makes it absolutely incoherent of who you're speaking about. and that's not even touching on the subject of neurodivergent brains that find it hard to follow a conversation in normal circumstances.

as for the they/them issue, while i still find it incredibly difficult to use it as someone who is 1) neurodivergent and 2) been paying attention to how english works since 4th grade when i decided i wanted to eventually publish a book, i would rather have they/them for nb's and gender neutral issues than any set of neopronouns (or even the old ones like thon or whatever). but that's also from a native english speaker, where that's what i'm used to, and so it just makes the most sense for me. plus, to me, allowing neopronouns in for any reason is too much of a slippery slope into like, emoji neopronouns n shit that we've got going on online already.

on a bit more of a selfish note, i also hate mixed pronouns bc you use pronouns when you're talking about someone, not to someone. so mixed pronouns--especially the people that demand that you constantly flip between them--are asking others to view them as so special as to make the world harder for neurodivergent people, both the one talking and the one listening, with that person gone. it's frustrating and it's annoying and it's extremely confusing.

again, as a native english speaker that doesn't speak spanish, i think it's pretty cool that y'all have a non-gendered they/them (if i'm understanding what you're saying right!! if not i v much apologize)!! that's awesome for you guys and i hope that's going well :)

but yeah, pronouns are inherently gendered, so i agree that he/they, she/they, he/her, and she/he/they are generally pretty terrible for a multitude of reasons. i'll cling to my they/them just for sanity's sake (and bc yuck to neopronouns) but i can definitely understand why you would be frustrated with english not having an equivalent to spanish.