Posted: Oct 02, 2014 7:41 am
babel wrote:My first question, as a non native speaker, would be: what would be the purpose of this change to gender neutral pronouns. Are they inherently bad and should they be avoided as a result??
To me, they are carriers of information about the subject of the sentence. Making them neutral takes away some of that information. Now you could argue that gender is by default an unnecessary information and I would disagree. In many circumstances, it's still relevant.
I can see use for people who don't identify as any particular gender, but to abolish them in general seems silly, as the vast majority does identify as either male or female.
Note: I think the OP is talking about gender specifically, not to be confused with sex, i.e. physical characteristics.