• Bizzle@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    Using “it” to refer to human beings feels super disrespectful to me. Dehumanizing much? 1992 called they want their attitudes about trans people back. Obviously if someone told me they prefer “it” pronouns I’d use them but I would feel gross about it.

    Edit to add that I have nothing against the Finnish people, and obviously there’s a huge cultural difference between being totally fine and just a part of the language versus the cruel and dehumanizing way that “it” is used in the United States. It’s clearly not the same and to assert otherwise, frankly, feels intellectually dishonest. I didn’t expect to have to make that distinction.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Don’t learn Finnish I guess.

      No gendered pronouns and we honestly use “it” (se) as a pronoun. No, I would never use it in English unless I meant to purposefully dehumanise someone, but in Finnish it’s just the normal colloquial version of a personal pronoun, whereas “hän” is a 3rd person pronoun that’s more formal, (but also non-gendered) . Pets usually get to be referred to as “hän” with the more formal personal pronoun, weirdly enough.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          And you’ll probably understand why instinctively I would say cats get that more than dogs.

          (And I’m a dog-person much more than a cat-person.)

    • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      You wouldn’t like how people in Finland speak then 😅

      (We have hän for s/he but almost everyone just uses se {it} in spoken language)

    • JesusChristLover420@lemmy.sdf.org
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      22 hours ago

      Why would you feel gross respecting a trans person’s preferred pronouns? If a trans person wants to be thought of as an object, would you genuinely think of it as an object, or would you think of it as a person but still call it by its preferred pronouns? Because the second option would cause cognitive dissonance and might be the reason you’d feel gross.

    • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      Don’t read Lois McMaster Bujolds “Vorkosigan Saga” One of the bio engineered races preferred “it” when being gendered.