queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2002-02-05 01:24 am
queerbychoice) wrote2002-02-05 01:24 am
Really Weird Question
If you were inventing your own language with its own pronoun system that didn't have to be gender-segregated, but for some reason (umm . . . an evil language tyrant ordered you!) you had to divide people into some kind of categories and assign different pronouns to each category . . . what categories would be the most important in your mind for you to distinguish between? They could be categories based on mental rather than physical attributes, or chosen rather than inborn characteristics . . . they could be categories based on anything you want.
I was contemplating writing a language parody, and trying to think of a pronoun-distinction that I could really believe in. In reality I don't really want any pronoun-distinctions, but the point would have been to show how silly all pronoun distinctions are by substituting one that theoretically should seem more meaningful than gender, yet in reality would just seem sillier because we're all so used to the gender one. But anyway, the question got me interested in how differently different people value different methods of categorizing people, and I suddenly wanted to survey all of you.
I was contemplating writing a language parody, and trying to think of a pronoun-distinction that I could really believe in. In reality I don't really want any pronoun-distinctions, but the point would have been to show how silly all pronoun distinctions are by substituting one that theoretically should seem more meaningful than gender, yet in reality would just seem sillier because we're all so used to the gender one. But anyway, the question got me interested in how differently different people value different methods of categorizing people, and I suddenly wanted to survey all of you.
no subject
no subject
I mean, if I assign a pronoun to indicate that they're unaffiliated, doesn't that sort of make them into a part of the system, and make unaffiliation into an affiliation itself?
I guess they'll have to be pronoun-free.
* went to the store today. * bought food. * took it home and ate it.
I wonder how the asterisks are pronounced. Maybe with a tongue-click are something.
But you know, even then, the unaffiliateds will soon become collectively known as "the asterisks" or "the clicks" and it will still be a statement of their beliefs which assigns them a particular role within the system. You can't ever really excape the system, no more than you can escape the universe.