• FoundTheVegan@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Sort of off topic. But if you are putting a disclaimer that something is “gender neutral”, just use a different word. Y’all? Fam? 😂

    For those that say these are inherently gender neutral, how many bros have you slept with? Would you sleep with a man? This is all literally patriarchy. Male isn’t the “default” human experience.

    • yeather@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Bro and dude have effectively become gender neutral for referring to someone. It’s not patriarchy, it’s how a language evolves.

      • paysrenttobirds@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I agree on dude, and can see bro coming but at present in my daily life bruh is the neutral. And I do hope it wins or else it’s mankind all over again

        • yeather@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Yes, male is the default in the English language. When the gender of someone is unknown or you’re referring to someone casually you use the default gender of the language. In Welsh, the default is female. Same as Maasai and Mohawk.

      • FoundTheVegan@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Firstly, does thinking a “(gender neutral)” at the end of sentance is really weird and awkward truly make me the language police? Come on, it’s clunky at best, a weird lazy lamshapde to virtue signal at worst. Just use something else if your intent is to have something gender neutral.

        But to answer your question. If your lady friends don’t mind being called dude, then why should I?

    • Katzastrophe@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Your argument doesn’t really work, because ‘bro’ isn’t a word used to describe sex partners, in the same vein, you would never say “I’ve slept with the boys”, but you could use the sentence “I was hanging out with the boys”.

      • FoundTheVegan@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Sure, I’m not really trying to play a semantics game so much as call attention to the fact that these are inherently gendered terms. If you were to say “hanging out with the girls (gender neutral)” or say “hanging out with the boys (gender neutral)”, you are just being awkward and should just change the word.

        • Katzastrophe@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          That’s fair I suppose, to me, “bro” is an inherently gender neutral term, though “girls” is gender neutral to me in the same vein.

          Adding on the ‘gender neutral’ is kinda redundant, and I can see why it would be annoying, actually, it’s annoying me too now, because if the writer simply used “bros” and not “bros (gender neutral)”, the expression’s gender (gender/non-gendered) would not have been moved to gendered, and most people would understand it to be a gender neutral expression.

      • Makeshift@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Genuine question because that confused the heck out of my brain.

        What does gay and non-binary together mean? Are you only attracted to other non-binary people?

        • Match!!@pawb.social
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          1 year ago

          I had a straight non-binary friend once; ze was small and androgynous and ze would generally date “lumberjack witch” enbies or other people who were differently gendered from zir.