Berkeley killing renews debate over gender pronouns


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Berkeley killing renews debate over gender pronouns
Associated Press | March 26, 2017

 

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Pablo Gomez Jr. was a University of California, Berkeley, senior majoring in Latino studies and a prominent campus activist when authorities say he stabbed to death a popular elementary-school teacher.
Soon, the crime that police described as "very brutal and unusual" in a city that reported just two homicides last year was sucked up into the debate over gender identity when it was reported that Gomez preferred to be called "they" rather than "he."

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/berkeley-killing-renews-debate-over-gender-pronouns-145308342.html

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From the article "Dragged Gomez kicking and screaming from the court room", I would say this person is insane, so am quite happy to ignore their choice of gender pronoun. He's a loon.

 

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It's getting a little ridiculous.  I can understand he/she and swapping those, but you shouldn't be offended if someone can't tell or doesn't know.  All the others are just ludicrous.

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Exactly how is 'they' a gender pronoun? He can prefer to be called her or she can refer him, but 'they'?  Makes no sense.

 

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While I was at university I grew my hair out, all the way down my back. The number of times I would have someone behind me say, "excuse me, miss?" I didn't give it a second thought, how were they supposed to know from the information they had? Even if someone tried to call me a girl as an insult, I'd still probably just be puzzled about why they think I would take offence to the idea.

 

If you refer to yourself as a non-standard gender so that you can feel like an individual then by all means, go for it. But if someone wants me to refer to them as wolf-kin or spaghetti-kin then I will laugh at them and want nothing more to do with them as they are surely mentally unstable. And as if to prove the point, this guy stabbed someone because they referred to him as "he" and not "they." That is not the action of a sane person, that is the action of a lunatic.

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I want to refer to myself this way - that's great and liberalists will rejoice and we will all be happy.

 

But don't expect me, someone who doesn't know you to somehow know what to call you.  That would be presumptive on my part ;)

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"they" is a pronoun that refers to both men and women. It does sound like a plural noun, but it also pertains to that. My friends had a discussion on this a few months ago.

 

But IMO, I think he is taking this out of context...

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I find "they" offensive.  It dehumanises to a level, as gender is part of the human experience.  While I recognise the right to assume a gender of a person's own alignment (I don't agree, but I respect the choice), I will not have my words dictated for me.

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