Argh [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

Not writing much for a bit -- dealing with power-outage-induced filesystem damage (I have nine too few UPS units). Some news on housing front, but net result is that I'm still in Limbo. Week has been up-and-down pain-wise. Some ups and downs emotionally too, and I think I managed to seriously piss off a friend a few nights ago by not cutting hir[1] enough slack when sie[2] pissed me off -- sie's been under a lot of stress lately and took part of it out on me, and I tried to account for that but had been dealing with my own stresses that day and may have been a little more stern with hir about my not liking what sie'd done than may have been conducive to effective communication on the subject.

[1] "hir" = "him or her" -- also "his or her", but in this case it's the accusative rather than the possessive. Used here because I don't feel like giving out any more information than is needed to get across the "this is how my week went" aspect of the story.

[2] "sie" = "he or she". I didn't invent these gender-neutral pronouns; they're pretty well known within various communities and subcultures, but rare enough in the English-speaking world at large that I figured I'd best footnote 'em.

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This is why English uses "they", "them", and "their" with a singular context. At Oberlin College, they always put the term "s/he" in place of "she" or "he" to recognize gender non-specificity - I believe it was a way of recognizing females since to this today the default is "he". Then they just utilize sentances that avoid requiring "his" or "her" and place everything in the s/he format. Since I come from a "hick" background, the"hir" really bothers me because it reminds me of the people I went to school with who after 5,10,15 years of spelling correction _still_ couldn't manage to remember that her is not spelled hir. The "sie" doesn't work well for me either - I learned that when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking so it comes out in my head as sie - what's that: sty, shy, sow a typo - huh? My brain stops there - as with hir - going "wait - that's not a word OK so is it a typo - don't think so - OK hold this in your head while you continue. Then my head start filling up and it's hard to read/think. So I'm a proponent of using s/he. I'm surprised I haven't seen something like hir/s or his/r. Out of those I like his/r best - it connotates his or hers to me and there is no perceived misspelling thing to debunk first. Thanks for the footnotes!

BTW - the transsexual news. In Britain, a high court ruled that a transexual female (born male) be permitted to marry a female. Apparently this is the first "genetic" female-female marriage to be recognized by a legal government. Rulings on other associations involving transexuals in Great Britain are forthcomming. Specifically, a male (born female) that wants legal paternity rights over his 4 children, obtained by artificial insemination of his female partner. Apparently the rulings and legal recognitions are going to be bound to transexual individuals who have maintained a social and personal life under their "new" gender without exception for a lengthy period of time.

Hearts and flowers,
Ru

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Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Argh

hir and sie

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January