Icosian Reflections

…a tendency to systematize and a keen sense

that we live in a broken world.

IN  WHICH Ross Rheingans-Yoo—a sometime quantitative trader, economist, expat, EA, artist, educator, and game developer—writes on topics of int­erest.

November 21 Bucket o' Links: "Languages, Language, and Words, Words, Words" Edition
harvard, gender, language, writing, academia, yale, links

I'm going to continue calling these my Friday linkwraps, in the hopes that I'll (1) actually publish one on Friday someday, or, failing that, (2) not slip to a write-on-Saturday, publish-on-Sunday schedule if I call them my Saturday linkwraps instead.

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I'm still running an updated-almost-daily feed of readworthy links at My Faults My Own | Reading Feed. Check it out if you're a fan of these BoL's!

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For reasons which may later become clear, I've written two subtly different versions of this post, for different audiences. Poets, dreamers, and readers who don't particularly care to erect walls between fantasy and reality, click here. Readers who don't have time for my mind games and just want to read a normal Bucket o' Links, click here.

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{he,they} / {him,them} / {his,their}
gender, pronouns, language

Jeff Kaufman has an announcement on their blog, that I'd like to get behind here:

As part of the process of switching to ungendered pronouns, at some point people need to start being okay with using 'they' with named referents. I'm really optimistic about how 'they' is catching on among genderqueer people, but I'd like to help it along.

So: if you want to use singular 'they' to refer to me, feel free! I'm still happy to be referred to with standard male pronouns, but if you'd like to use 'they', that's equally fine.

Example usage:

  • [Ross] lost their hat.
  • When you see [Ross], can you give them this note?
  • [Ross]'s borrowing a car, so they can drive themself there.

Clarifications, details(, and the real content of this post, let's be honest...):

(1) This is not a thing I feel very strongly about. (Kind of like vegetarianism!) If it makes your life harder to remember to (or you're in a social setting where it would be strange to) not use gendered pronouns, by all means do the easier thing.[1] But if it's easier for you to not have to remember to gender pronouns, or which way the gender goes, or whatever, then I'm not so attached to he/him/his to insist that you need to use those instead of they/them/their. I think I'd object to being referred to with female pronouns, though, so don't do that, please. (I'd probably be confused the first time it happens, but I've come around to believing that I'd probably be 100% behind this if it started happening in settings that didn't confuse everyone in a way that made my

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