Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-1451563-20180913002703/@comment-1451563-20181005062714

Thank goodness this thread was reopened. I was just wanting to discuss the sudden closure, in fact, as I was upset about what seemed like a rash, arbitrary, and honestly somewhat personal-agenda-motivated decision. I would have loved the opportunity to respond to some of the comments, because I really don’t see it being nearly as finished as Soto seemed to have independently decided. Now, please understand that it is not at all my intention to insult anyone, and I do not wish to disrespect Soto, but this issue must be spoken of with frankness in order to progress in any way, and I believed the closure was a simple, forgivable error in judgment.

Soto, your first comment brought almost entirely already-addressed - and I would argue pretty soundly refuted - points in our discussion, yet you stated them as matters of indisputable fact without much of an attempt to counter the arguments previously established against them, which had all yet to be successfully countered.

And then you went on to bring up the question of correct English, which I appreciated, as that had not received much discussion at that point in time. But then, instead of allowing the discussion on that currently controversial topic to unfold naturally, you, seemingly in part out of a personal thing of yours that I made clear in beginning the discussion should have no part in the decision-making process for this specifically in-universe issue (because, as much as any side of that issue in the real-life cultural sphere would like it to be, it is not yet a fully decided thing upon which everyone is ready to universally and correctly agree without a lot controversy, and I believe as a source of what is supposed to be only objective information, we must not allow this Wiki’s addressing of in-universe issues to be driven by any sociopolitical agendas from the outside), made a unilateral decision for the whole of the English-speaking world and closed the discussion on the basis of that decision. As an English major, the language and its use is very important to me, and so the conclusion that the issue of singular they is not at all questionable is something I find egregiously presumptuous and overly simplified.

You mentioned historical usage and cited such sources as the Oxford Dictionary and Merriam-Webster as if they supported your conclusion when in fact they do no such thing. What Shakespeare wrote does not define how we use the language today, and Oxford Dictionary admits that there has been no such definitive conclusion of singular they’s supposedly being grammatically correct, while Merriam-Webster merely seems to advocate for its use in this “new” context more than officially declare some kind of universal consensus regarding it.

But beyond that, you also seem to sometimes conflate the issue of singular they as it has been traditionally used in common speech as a substitute for the generic he (which you went on a seemingly off-topic tangent about regarding the theory of its being rooted in sexism, which some have argued that it is no more necessarily, inherently misogynistic than the relatively tame “mankind,” by the way) with the separate issue of the use of a singular they for directly referring to specific, known individuals. “They” is used in a singular way pretty regularly throughout history by many people, true (though that fact does not in itself mean it must be considered proper grammar), but never commonly in reference to specific, known people.

Dictionary.com says it well with this explanation: “However, while use of they and its forms after singular indefinite pronouns or singular nouns of general personal reference or indefinite gender is common and generally acceptable, their use to refer to a single clearly specified, known, or named person is uncommon and likely to be noticed and criticized.” And Oxford Dictionary actually makes it clear in their entry for the definition of the word “they” that there is still a lack of common use or acceptance of many forms of a singular they, so that is definitely not a place to run to to say with such certainty that we can use “they” however we like, as you essentially were trying to do. These entries concur with what has been ruled by the style guides of MLA, Chicago, AP, and APA. Even still, they all pretty strongly discourage just about any use of singular they in formal writing and always instead suggest avoiding having to write a generic pronoun at all in the wording, and beyond that, only allow “they” to be used to refer to self-identifying genderqueer individuals solely on the basis that that is specifically what those individuals explicitly insist to be called, with Chicago admitting that, even though it is acceptable in limited cases, that “this usage is still not widespread either in speech or in writing,” and AP going so far as to say to “use the person’s name in place of a pronoun, or otherwise reword the sentence, whenever possible” but, if this use of “they” is truly essential, to “explain in the text that the person prefers a gender-neutral pronoun.”

So it really is not as simple and conclusive as it was previously made out to be, and referring to anyone whenever you happen to be slightly confused about where they might fall gender-wise as “they” is definitely not some official rule in the slightest, grammatically. Rather, the only “rule” of the sort that we do sort of have available to us - and a technical and rare one at that - is completely dependent on what the person being referred to specifically wants to be called and only applies to genderqueer individuals. And while “Ask a friend if they could help” may make perfect sense and sound pretty natural in common, informal language, that is being said in a general, ambiguous way and not in a specifically personal, individual one. Disregarding the awkward lack of flow that that other practice can sometimes entail, I understand the current social push to try to force that pronoun into that specific use and make it acceptable. But there has to be a more organic way to make that happen, as that’s not the way language works. People cannot attempt to hijack the natural process of language’s evolution in order to fit a particular agenda, and that is why “they” is still uncommon to use in that way, regardless of what any of us may want.

So, while of course Time Lords seem to be “gender fluid,” in a manner of speaking, in that their regenerations can literally make them change sex, they obviously do not exactly fit with the situation of those who believe themselves to be “non-gender-binary” in human terms. So, since none of the Time Lords we are discussing have ever identified as genderqueer in any way; since, if they hypothetically were to, it still would not automatically mean they should be referred to individually as “they,” grammatically speaking, since some genderqueer individuals prefer to be called “he,” “she,” “ze,” etc.; since the logical conclusion of doing this would require referring to every Time Lord as “they,” and potentially everyone else, too, based on reasoning I explained earlier; and, most importantly, since the show already does with specificity indicate what pronouns these specific Time Lords are to be referred to with from the mouths of Time Lords themselves (those that fit with their dominant sex, evidently, as laid out thoroughly before in special detail by Scrooge), I would like to take us back to rule #1, which Soto mentioned and which is as follows: “In general, use the pronouns given within a narrative.” Once again, that would mean, in correspondence with the fact that the whole cannot be defined by its anomalous exceptions (which has been indisputably proven to be the case with these four Time Lords) and with what most all of the in-narrative evidence we have from the show thus far (as opposed to the argument for “they” that is consistently being made from material that is not in-narrative), that the Doctor, Master, General, and Corsair are not to be referred to as “they,” but I would argue for now as “he,” “he,” “she,” and “he.”