this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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God I hate it when people call animals "they". Like "the dog doesn’t like their squeaky toy" - it’s a dog! Call it "it"! "The dog doesn’t like its squeaky toy"
If they say "the goose doesn't like his ball" that is misgandering.
To be fair, some languages outside of English reserve "it" (or the equivalent 3rd person neuter pronoun) for "non-living" things. For people whose native language is one of those languages, calling an animal "it" may seem a bit too harsh even while speaking English.
It don't like your comment...
"The dog likes his squeaky toy."
Like everyone is fighting over gender in human race, I would like that you finally understand that dogs/cats/cows even the squirrel in your garden... Those are sentient living beings... Stop treating them like just a fucking object !
But even in English - if you are completely gender neutral - "the human does not like its work in the office" is the same.
That is simply incorrect English, words have more referents than gender. Traditionally "it" is reserved for non-human things of all types, but definitely does not ever apply to a human, and calling someone an "it" without it first being requested by them is near-universally recognized as a dehumanizing insult.
Hummm... Maybe I don't get all the grammatical rules in English, but it's really disheartening to treat living beings as objects.
As I remember
It
is an article for objects and I would never consider my dog as an non-living object. He's way more "human" than most people that I have encountered in my life.