Motte & Bailey
Gender Pronouns: Steven Pinker on Politically Motivated Campaigns to Change and Abandon Language
This is an excerpt from episode 14 of Tyler Cowen’s podcast Conversations with Tyler, published on the 2nd of November 2016, in which Steven Pinker takes a question from an audience member regarding the way language can be used politically, politically motivated campaigns to change language, specifically touching on the bubbling fervour over gender pronouns.
You can listen to the entire episode on the Conversations with Tyler site: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/steven-pinker-language-instinct-evolutionary-psychology-darwin-chomsky-linguistics-b792d7cd2a05#.yzpr0n3hl
You can also listen to this episode of the podcast on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/conversationswithtyler/steven-pinker-language-blank-slate-chomsky-linguistics
You can find more episodes of the podcast here: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler
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Pinker makes a lot of sense here, but I think he also downplays the importance of linguistic determinism. As Chomsky says, language is how we comport thought, so the type of language we learn is very important. Malcolm Gladwell spoke about this at length when explaining why children with Asian first languages (Cantonese, Japanese, etc.) were better in math than their Indo-European classmates: it's because linguistically the computations make more sense in the former languages as opposed to the latter. Fascinating stuff.
English speakers have been using 'they' as a 3rd person gender neutral pronoun for centuries. I've found instances of Shakespeare doing it. For real. This is not a new thing. People can complain about political correctness until the cows come home, but if they think about it for a second they'll probably realize they've been the word that way their whole lives.
I can't believe Pinker didn't take this opportunity to talk about The Blank Slate. Conservatives think liberals invented political correctness to stifle opposition discourse. This simply isn't true, and that's fairly easy to prove. A hundred years ago, Ayn Rand held the same believe that Nietzsche and Marx did that people are born without instincts or predispositions and could be trained to behave any way you cared to raise them.
A variation on this idea widely held at the beginning of the 20th century was that all our thinking comes to us through language. If you accept that, it stands to reason that you can change societal attitudes by changing the language people use. Unfortunately, it's just not that easy in practice.
Are all black people African…American?
Would most on them be Americans?
Looks like he's bowling with a brain.
Butt Pirate is a good alternative. The Butt Pirate was thirsty so it went to Starbucks for a latte. Why wouldn't they want that for a pronoun? I could imagine Pinker using that to describe transgender.
Surprise, bunch racist comments. Hey, Youtube algorithm! Stop reccomending me racist, sexist, reactionary shit!
What about xe/xer pronouns? Though I’ve found them hard to get used to, they’re perfectly fine gender neutral pronouns
This brings to light that, "There are only two genders.", is entirely semantic.
Biologically, more than two sex variations factually exist, but semantically, in English, only two exist. The binary is based on religious and Platonic origin of 'ideal man' and 'ideal woman', so since we have a population that largely believes in various traditionalist religious concepts, rejecting numerous scientific fields, they can't dare abandon their traditionalist semantic binary to accommodate the current science of biology, and social norms, more accurately. Biology, genetics, neurology, and anthropology all show the "binary" to actually be a continuum, but we still have people that believe the earth is 6000 years old, and a king fairy exists outside of space-time that poofed only "males" and "females" into existence, and everything non heteronormative is an "aberration" or "defect", implying "abnormality" means "bad". They have a 2nd grade understanding of sex and gender, and can only comprehend complexity at that level, so if its more than two options, its too complicated, and goes against their feelings of what ought to be, so they whine, bitch, and moan about "SJWs".
How the fuck do you expect them to change their language to fit the current science of sex and gender, when they don't accept the science for pretty much everything else?
…unless, of course, it agrees with their preconceived ideologies. They'll argue until they're blue in the face that science supports the binary, but they won't be able to cite a single scientific publication within the last 3-4 decades that supports the binary, and not a continuum.
This is literally what is vs what people want. The funny thing is that those perpetuating that "only two genders" exist are telling us what they want, based on feelings, not based on what factually is.
we keep talking about change and y'all keep talking about staying the same. Well thank humanity change is inevitable. Your faux intellectual resistance just shows your true, er, colors.
I use 'zee' all the time to describe 'zee USA' because it's a Nazti nation on both wingz of the bald killer raptor… Stick to your own country US Leftiez and Rightiez and other Nazis.
Can we or can we not thank Beavis and Butthead for shattering the taboo that formerly hung over the word 'sucks'?
I just listened to a 50-minute talk given by Pinker (in the UK, I think), where he used "she" for all indeterminate (animate) pronouns. I don't like "he", and have switched in my dotage to "they", so I find "she" very weird – bending over backward just to commit the same crime. Maybe he did it only in that talk to make a point, but it didn't seem so.
BTW, when I use that indeterminate third person singular, I still conjugate it in the third person. The result is:
In the convent – everyone says what she wants to say.
In the monastery – everyone says what he wants to say.
In mixed public – everyone says what they wants to say.
It's not gonna catch on, but it's fun.
Nigger … Negro …. Coloured … Black …. Africa-American ….
Just the multitude of names for this race alone shows a deep identity crisis. When you are this confused about what you are even called, how can you begin moving forward with all the other complexities of life?
Trump was a reaction, not an action. No one is being emboldened to be more racist. That's nonsense. People have been saying the same things, its the left that has altered their reaction to it. For example; ma'am is somehow offensive now. Is that on Trump?? Are people more inclined to say things that they would not have said 2 years ago? No. They were saying it two years ago and people didn't care b/c they weren't trying (as much) to drive wedges b/t ppl, malign ppl and gain power.
Much respect for Pinker but like so many intellectuals, like Sam Harris they become a little emotional when discussing Trump and slack off. Pinker has done this quite a lot.
Lastly you want to understand Trump then you have to look across the aisle.
It's a troubled person who is what he says in public and a very good personal test to hear yourself in private speech. All social progress is the sum of individual progress. The keys to personal progress are will and understanding and for many there is a deficiency of both. Too many are stripped of their wills and cheated in their education (yes, it is a right today).
Yeah genital pronouns feminist goodbye your goldfish a bicycle
People lose their minds and start being mean because Trump won an election and they blame Trump for it… besides trying to change how language works they want to abolish the idea of personal responsibility as well.
Definition of 'it' from the OED:
1.1 Referring to an animal or child of unspecified sex.
‘she was holding the baby, cradling it and smiling into its face’
‘We are now happily married and already expecting our first child – I hope it will be a girl.’
‘When the child was a child, it had no opinion about anything.’
‘The fish is only as sick as the water it lives in.’
‘He managed to shoot the unsuspecting bird down; it squawked and fell to the ground.’
‘Cumbria Police said the sheep appeared to have panicked as the men chased it.’
Steven Pinker is a fucking idiot when it comes to politics and he should never ever talk about politics, I don't know who thought this was a good idea but whoever it was they're a fucking retard
Sex is binary, but is gender binary? Please feel free to answer.
The title of this audio is rather misleading. I was expecting to hear more specifically about "gender pronouns," and not so much about how we refer to certain ethnic groups. I have heard Steven Pinker himself use "she" to refer to an unspecified reader or student, etc. However, as a teacher myself, I'm getting pretty sick and tired of writing "he/she" on the blackboard for my students (none of whom are native-speakers of English). In short, I hope soon to work up the guts just to write "he," as was common practice until sometime in the 1990's. That's when I was a student–and it was perfectly understandable that "he" meant a person of either gender. My female colleagues can get away with only using "she," so I want to put this awkward "he/she" business to rest as soon as possible.
What if one doesn't believe in the social construct of gender?
In order to define gender, i.e. if one is born male but identifies as a woman because one feels "like a woman", you need to define what it means to feel "like a woman". In order to do this you need to create a gender stereotype.
I don't believe in gender stereotypes, such as women should wear dresses, girls should play with dollies and wear pink, boys should play with trucks and action figures etc etc. People can wear, do or say what they want so long as it doesn't infringe on my rights or bring physical harm to myself, my property or those under my protection.
If I don't believe in gender and instead choose to address someone based on what their biology is, i.e. "he" or "she" why should I be forced to call someone something that i don't believe in?
Example; I believe in God. Because i believe God exists and find it offensive when people say "Oh my God" or "Jesus Christ" as a form of exclamation, do I deserve the right to force them to not say that because it offends me?
No. And i never would. Because i understand that I have no right to police the words other people use, whether it offends me or not.
I don't believe in gender. I will not change my language to accommodate those that do, any more than an atheist should bow to my beliefs and stop using my Saviour's name in vain.
I don't care what you say. it doesn't affect me in any way.
Respect is earned, not a Right.
People living in western modern civilisations have no idea what oppression is.
Taboos are funny. Because of taboos, he talks about many words but does not say the actual words.
When changes in language reflect changes in the thinking of free individuals, we're in good shape. However, when one set of individuals attempts to regulate everyone else's language as a means to change thinking, we're in big trouble. Good ideas will always change language naturally; they need no help. It is only the bad ideas that require the policing of language to hide their weaknesses, contradictions, or malice.
We have a gender neutral pronoun: it
I miss when we used to call American whites, peckerwoods.
4:00 my problem with this question is the caveat "if you look for it". I am on twitter a lot and mostly i see reasonable people saying reasonable things, having reasonable discussion and debate. Now if I go looking for drama, I need only click on the feed for say Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump and I see hate filled garbage everywhere. Difference being, I went looking for it.
Most people are still polite and reasonable, its just that thanks to news articles always featuring tweet responses from random morons on the internet, its easy to cherry pick the 3 worst most disgusting comments and then represent them as thr consensus.
Both sides use this tactic and then we wonder why people think everyone is getting less polite and not just the minorities at either extreme of an argument.