To those who write about #Stallman's alleged transphobia, I offer this response.
Stallman is demonstrably not transphobic. If you believe otherwise, I wonder whether you have actually read Stallman's own writings on his use of pronouns, or merely formed an opinion from what secondary sources have reported. Stallman's stance on the subject can be found at https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html
Regardless of Stallman's position on this issue, a transgender person's perceived right to be addressed using the pronouns of his or her choice does not compel another person to act in accordance with that perception. In most Western liberal democracies, most people enjoy a very real, i.e. legally protected, right to free speech; certainly to the extent that the speaker's choice of pronouns is concerned.
As such, rigid adherence to certain constructs of language can, at worst, be ascribed to self-interest, namely the assertion that the existent right to free speech trumps another's perceived right to be addressed in a particular way. That's a wholly reasonable attitude to take on principle alone, and garners more weight as one examines the pressure currently being placed on this central tenet of liberal society by regressive elements and their proclivity for cancel culture.
The suppression of free speech has far-reaching consequences for the whole of humanity; the inflexible use of pronouns affects a much smaller subset.
@miamiautumn Historically, respecting gender identity has been straightforward and easy. People's given names reveal in most cultures the gender of their bearer. I won't go into the exceptions in Anglo-Saxon culture, as we all know what they are.
The advent and rise of anonymous or pseudonymous on-line discussion have muddied the waters a lot, as one can no longer reliably infer a person's gender from a nickname or the absense of any monicker.
This already troublesome situation has been exacerbated by the rise in recent years of gender dysphoria and the notion that there are, in fact, an infinite number of plausible genders.
The idea that one should have to resort to looking up a stranger's preferred pronouns in some authoritative global directory before referring to them in the third person, seems woefully impractical to the point of being doomed, and certainly not something I would be prepared to do.
It perhaps deserves reiteration here that any direct conversation between two people doesn't involve either referring to the other in the third person, so the issue of alleged pronoun dispect doesn't occur nearly as much in practice as the present attention to the subject in the media would suggest.
Regarding the use of 'they', 'their' and 'them' in the singular, perhaps the degree to which this seems unnatural depends on where one is from.
I grew up in the south-west of England, and whilst these words were sometimes used to refer to indefinite singular subjects whose name and gender were not known (e.g. "a person and their belongings"), they were *never* used to refer to an individual whose name at least was known.
That's why the use of American social media that peddle contrived abominations such as 'William has updated their status' is anathema to me. I used to read such text and literally wonder 'What? Whose status has William updated and why?' before the penny dropped.
I am now accustomed to seeing such verbal contortion, but I find it no less jarring than I ever did.
To me, language is central to my sense of self. It's at the very core of my existence and feels more closely woven with my identity than even my body or how I appear to others.
It's for this reason that the current sociopolitical trend towards compelling members of society to engage in increasingly outlandish excesses of so-called inclusive speech meet with so much resistance. It is experienced by many as a personal attack, and for every inch one concedes, a further mile is taken.
That said, I obviously can't disagree with the entirely reasonable stance that individuals enaged in any kind of discussion should show each other courtesy and respect. And as obvious as that sentiment might seem, the practice has gone into dramatic decline in recent years, ironically due in no small part to the outbursts of many who demand that the rest of us be more tolerant.
