This is a good point. Suggested reword: {
The singular non-gendered pronoun is "e" in the nominative, and "em" in
the accusative. Do not use "he/him/his," or "she/her/her,” or “they/them/their”
as a singular pronoun when referring to a person of unknown gender.
}
Personally, I’m vaguely of the opinion that we should switch to they/them
instead of Spivak in general. Our use of Spivak now feels like using Betamax in
1990—sure, it was probably better, but the other one won and it’s silly to keep
doing our own thing. That being said, I know this is probably an unpopular
opinion (and I know there are some reasonable arguments in favor of Spivak,
such as support for legal persons).
Gaelan
> On Jan 27, 2020, at 8:04 PM, Tanner Swett via agora-discussion
> <agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 18:43 Jason Cobb via agora-business <
> agora-busin...@agoranomic.org> wrote:
>
>> [Informal title: "Pronouns"]
>>
>> {
>>
>> The singular non-gendered pronoun is "e" in the nominative, and "em" in
>> the accusative. Do not use "they" as a singular pronoun. Do not use
>> "he/him/his" or "she/her/her" as a singular pronoun when referring to a
>> person of unknown gender.
>>
>> }
>>
>
> I informally object. I agree that we should use e/em as the generic
> third-person singular pronoun (as we have been doing for decades), but when
> rules refer to specific individuals (which is uncommon but not all *that*
> rare), there's no reason at all to proscribe using "they" for a particular
> individual if that's the pronoun that they prefer to use in such contexts.
>
> —Warrigal
>
>>
