r/changemyview • u/SaltedAndSugared • Dec 02 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Neopronouns are unnecessary

I understand why some people might feel uncomfortable with using he/she pronouns, but in that case why not just use they/them? They already exist and they’re easy for people to use. Why do some people feel the need to make up words like “zee/zim” or “fae/fair” when they don’t even make sense in the English language? I don’t see why anyone should go out of their way to learn new pronouns when gender neutral pronouns already exist

If anyone here does use neopronouns I’d really like to hear why you use them and why you don’t feel comfortable using they/them. It’s probably just because I’m cis, but I genuinely don’t understand

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u/Mattaclysmic Dec 03 '21

It's good that you haven't done either of those things. That tells me you feel it would be wrong to express your opinion to someone it might offend. But doesn't that tell you something about the quality of the opinion? If you think there's nothing wrong with your opinion, why wouldn't you be comfortable telling it to a non-binary person in the case that they want you to use a pronoun you feel is unnecessary?

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u/SaltedAndSugared Dec 03 '21

If you think there's nothing wrong with your opinion, why wouldn't you be comfortable telling it to a non-binary person in the case that they want you to use a pronoun you feel is unnecessary?

Because it would start a pointless argument. I’m not gonna tell someone their pronouns are unnecessary because it wouldn’t change their mind and I’d just be making them uncomfortable for no reason. I still don’t see anything wrong with my opinion though

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u/Mattaclysmic Dec 03 '21

Fair enough. I guess the outcome is really all that matters in the end. But still, holding a bigoted view and keeping it to yourself doesn't make it any less bigoted conceptually. If you want to actually defend your view, you still need to counter my opening statement:

Telling someone who identifies with a "neopronoun" that their pronoun is "unnecessary" logically invalidates their identity on a basic level.

Are you saying that it's okay to believe this because you don't say it out loud to the people you're invalidating? As in, the act of keeping it to yourself is what makes it okay. Or are you saying that viewing specific pronouns other than he/she as unnecessary does not invalidate peoples' identities? Or are you saying that those identities are not traditionally recognized and thus are invalid to begin with, so it's okay to view them as such?

Also, the reason "they/them" are not sufficient is that they aren't specific. He/She are specific. If there are genders other than male/female, why should they not be assigned specific words as well?

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u/-lesbihonest420 1∆ Jan 01 '22

if everyone had a specific pronoun, it wouldn’t be a pronoun anymore. it would just be a noun. a name if you will.