Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-2162194-20130713192557/@comment-5918438-20160116035128

Bah, I'm so distractible.

Okay, Oracle. Hmm. Hmm. I suppose we don't want to get into philosophical debates about personhood. I would assume that "it" is used 100% of the time in its story, so it's perfectly acceptable for technology to be called "it", sentient or not, if that is what's actually used.

Not sure, more specifically, though, about individual robots. Certainly we would never use "it" for an android, and many sentient robots use "he", so are they not too persons? I guess that's a hard position to hold, though, because non-sentient robots, like Gadget, certainly should have "it" used. Blah. Robots are complicated. So obviously, use whatever is used if it's 100% consistent. That way we're never imposing judgment. If there is a discrepancy between stories—or indeed within a story—for any sentient character, we should default to "they".

Let's not make the mistake Donna did: "but its face". In the words of the Tenth Doctor, "It's a he, not an it." Let's not disrespect any sentients by alienating the aliens.

I'm really interested to hear what non-technological beings should actually be called "it". I've argued against its use for Alpha Centauri, and I've argued against "she" for Sentris. Furthermore, the General, the Master and the Corsair are all Time Lords who have had both genders at different points, so when discussing them in general, I think they/them pronouns must be used. "The Corsair had the symbol of the Ouroboros tattooed on each of their incarnations."

Thus, the sentence "Throughout his lives, the Master would adopt many disguises and aliases, often to pursue his goals"—currently found at the Master—is in fact wrong, whether or not that sentence yet applies to their female incarnation. When a statement is about a specific incarnation, or the actions of a specific incarnation, either he or she should be used.


 * Also, since it's been brought up, Hebrew and French don't really have any non-gendered pronoun options. Can't speak for any other languages, but even plural pronouns are gendered as well. And yeah, grammar in both those languages dictates that if you're discussing a group of both males and females, male pronouns are correct, and female plural is only right when a group is all-female. It's all very sexist, but I suppose there are no alternatives in the current set-up of those languages.


 * Thankfully, in English, we do have some gender-neutral options, and this wiki is in English. "They" has been in use for centuries, and "he" hasn't been widely used at all as a non-gendered option since the rise of feminism. It's just plain wrong, really, and is not at all applicable in the 21st century. "It" most certainly is not accepted as a personal pronoun, because it's really just downright demeaning, like saying somebody's not a person.