A professional, objective, apolitical future for The Escapist...

[the phobic]

Jesus. Take a socio 101 course. Understand that attitudes and opinions in society can have negative -and sometimes subliminal- effects. Just because Morse isn't out there literally killing people who are transsexual doesn't mean that he isn't contributing to the alienation and discrimination transsexuals face in society.

Yes, and being even more blunt and literally vilifying people you disagree with will have no effect I'm sure.

If you want to define what is acceptable in the 6-degrees of francis bacon manner (this may effect that which may effect that) there is nothing that anyone will ever be able to say about anything.

 

[Akjosch]

This is veering into linguistics. Fine!

Please explain languages without gendered pronouns then, like Hungarian or Turkish.

There are also (many, many) languages which don't have separate genders for "feminine" and "masculine", but for other aspects. Ganda is an interesting example - it has one gender (and pronoun) each for the concepts of "person", "long object", "animal", "miscellaneous object", "large object or liquid", "small object", "language", "pejorative", "infinitive" and "mass noun".

Seems to me like pronouns came into existence because people like to group things into categories to make them manageable. "Feminine" and "masculine" were just two of such categories, and they are far from universal. Making the jump from "how the genders were created" to "DNA!" - something which was only discovered many millennia after the creation of gendered pronouns - is a huge stretch.

I'm saying that if we are going to have a categorization system it should not be one that is pointless. The existence of "he" and "she" would be useful to people in knowing at all times who is a potential reproductive target. If we are to keep that system it should be used to represent something actually important that is inline with that. English societies have always used those pronouns to indicate reproductive role. Now we are officially putting the stereotypes that went along with the reproductive roles above the reproductive roles for some reason...

Genders - as far as they relate to anything really - aren't pointless, but their point is a different one from what you assume it is. They are used to categorise people. For people I don't know, it doesn't matter one bit (they certainly aren't a "potential reproductive target"), so I tend to not even bother to ask - just use their name, profession or the neutral "they". For people I know, I use what they want me to use (for both pronouns and names), as common courtesy dictates. They put themselves into a category so I don't have to.

Only some very few of those people are a "potential reproductive target", regardless of their sex or gender. They're the exception - one which can be discussed face-to-face with them without needing be rude to anyone else.

Also: You do know that English, as all Germanic languages, had gendered pronouns for inanimate things, right? Your assertion isn't really based in reality, sorry. To top it off, the gender of the things and animals had little bearing on anything, much less their (non-existent) reproductive role.

 

[the phobic]

Genders - as far as they relate to anything really - aren't pointless, but their point is a different one from what you assume it is. They are used to categorise people. For people I don't know, it doesn't matter one bit (they certainly aren't a "potential reproductive target"), so I tend to not even bother to ask - just use their name, profession or the neutral "they". For people I know, I use what they want me to use (for both pronouns and names), as common courtesy dictates. They put themselves into a category so I don't have to.

Only some very few of those people are a "potential reproductive target", regardless of their sex or gender. They're the exception - one which can be discussed face-to-face with them without needing be rude to anyone else.

Also: You do know that English, as all Germanic languages, had gendered pronouns for inanimate things, right? Your assertion isn't really based in reality, sorry. To top it off, the gender of the things and animals had little bearing on anything, much less their (non-existent) reproductive role.

Uh, yes I know. (gendered pronouns) Obviously they serve a different purpose there regardless of what we are talking about.

Common courtesy dictates our current gender pronoun because that is the dogma being forced on everyone.

As to "potential reproductive target" it depends what you define as potential.

 

[sky14kemea]

Let's not make threads directing hate at future content providers before they even get here, okay? If you don't like that person or their views, you don't have to watch their content.

 

[Archon]

Hello! I was away this weekend and am just coming back to this controversy.

Lizzy and Brandon Morse are writing articles. They are not employees or news writers. As I've said elsewhere, we've downsized on both employees and news writers and aren't staffing up right now.

Nor are they writing political work for us. Josh and I are quite serious that we don't want the Escapist to be political. That means we don't want it to be left-wing OR right-wing.

That said, everyone has political views. Some writers will hold views some of you disagree with. I certainly disagree with lots of our writers' views. If you see some content here from people that hold right-wing views more frequently than in the past, it's because more right-wing journalists are pitching us these days.

But, again, you shouldn't expect to see their political views expressed here. Defy Media has several huge sites that explicitly cover political topics - Gurl.com and The Gloss are quite progressive and feminist. EveryJoe.com is conservative-libertarian. Those sites all flourish by covering politics and any pitches we receive for political content are directed there.

I'm not one who believes that everything is or has to be political.