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How do you find alone time? (europe.pub)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/autism@lemmy.world
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I honestly love it

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[–] 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (9 children)

While this is of course entirely pedantic and irrelevant to the post, could you tell me why people use "they" for their partner now? I cant believe the partners are all non binary.

I suppose i don't see the point of obfuscating that. Okay, i know your partner is a wife or a husband now. I still dont know (or care) what gender you are, so how is that information to conceal? And even if i knew that, what would it matter that some online person knows another online person is in a relationship of this or that orientation?

Just feels weird from a communication perspective, usually people make an effort to leave little ambivalence in their statements when this is sort of the opposite.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 day ago*

    I use they, if no gender is given in the context. In my native language pronouns are not gendered, so gendering people, pets and sometimes things, without knowledge of their gender/sex just feels stupid. Adding gender without reason, just distracts from the actual subject. So at least sometimes, it is a cultural difference. What would anyone do, with the information of my partner's gender, except make assumptions about me, and altering their interactions based on that.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 day ago (5 children)

    "They" is completely legitimate to use. "They" isn't non-binary exclusive.

    I'm not sure why that should make you uncomfortable.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (4 children)

    Oh it doesn't make me uncomfortable, but it irks my sense of grammar somehow. Stands out when reading. I know of course that "they" is appropriate when no further information about someone is available, but that would not apply here since it's their partner 🫠.

    Perhaps you could clarify for me not that if someone could, but why they would. That doesnt seem to make sense to me.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    When gender is irrelevant to the story being told, it's normal to leave it out in just such a way. Just like they left out lots of other superfluous details that don't irk you.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (2 children)

    Fair enough, perhaps because it feels that way to me because my native language genders everything. Though i still have a hard time imagining people regularly referring to their partner as them im casual conversation, thats the bf/gf/husband/wife instinctively.

    Would you conversely say it is weird to refer to your partner as above when not strictly required?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    I still have to pay attention to my words because I use gendered language reflexively from years of learned behavior (US English here) and I don't get it right all the time, so I'll be the first to say it's not only not weird to say "my wife" or the like, it is in fact far too damn easy for the words to just fall out on their own. It's been practice for me to get used to saying spouse and partner but I think it's good overall to omit the gendered aspect when it is irrelevant simply because the result is more inclusive language that resonates with an even larger audience.

    We stopped including things like skin color and sexuality as an extraneous identifying detail in conversation a long while back (speaking in a really broad generality here, forgive me please) because people recognized it as othering. I feel like we're getting there with gendered language and like it's for the best.

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  • [–] 2 points 17 hours ago

    Interesting. Thats not really applicable to my language though, german is renowned for having specific terms for almost everything, and if it doesnt exist you can just make a new compound word for it and it will be fine. There is a reason english loans quite a few of our words to fill out the sparse vocabulary. Such a naturally descriptive language of course also affects how and what people communicate, and even think.

    For example, i could not even refer to my gf as my gender neutral partner without going out of my way to clarify that "Partner" does not mean a man but something unspecified.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago

    This is a good question! I can share why I started doing it and it’s a composition of mostly two factors.

    The first is not wanting to share more than needed, not wanting to offuscate the narrative. I wanted to share about my significant other and their reaction, our respective genders didn’t influence the story.

    The other is that discrimination (personally, I interacted with quite some misogyny online before landing here) is minimized while at the same time reminding people that LGBT+ people are a thing. A sort of double-concealing.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago

    My partner is non-binary, and still don't know my own gender.

    I can't speak for everyone, but I have previously had hate speech / misogyny when talking about certain topics from the "wrong" gender. Keeping things ambiguous tends to prevent most issues, and keeps people focusing on the topic rather than who I am.

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