Why do some people get upset if you accidentally use the wrong pronoun to identify their child?

I’m going to bet that Grampa and the little boy’s parents have had a few tense exchanges about the kid’s hair, so you just touched a nerve already rubbed raw.

You know what my kid looks like.

For those who don’t

He can literally be wearing head-to-toe “Boy’s Section” clothing, Ninja Turtle shoes, be carrying a baseball bat and wearing a face full of mud, and people will still see the long hair and say, “She looks like she had a big day!”

He’s cute. He’s polite. He has long hair. Thus: Girl. I’m sure if he acted like a raging lunatic and threw frogs at people they’d guess correctly the first time.

Ian used to get upset when people called him a girl. So much so that right before Kindergarten started he asked to have all his hair cut off. He immediately regretted it, and hasn’t had a haircut since (I’ve trimmed the dead ends a couple of times). Now he just accepts the mistakes as a part of having the hair that he loves, and brushes it off.

Grandpa will get used to it or get over it, or die early of a stress-induced heart attack. Whatever.

I love Ian! And good for him.

When he was Ian’s age, Chris used to throw snakes and frogs at his sisters. According to them that didn’t make him a boy, it made him an asshole. And I suppose they were right.

relevant

Thumbs up, Hominid err… @DoNotKnowMuch.

Because gender policing only works if you start everyone off young.

Because they’re uptight assholes.

Why do they get upset? Because they’re ridiculous. I think it’s fine to let the person know the child is a boy not a girl or vice versa, but be upset or angry about it? I can’t understand why. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone get upset about it. It happens quite a bit. Especially with infants. I usually just ask if I’m unsure, before I just take a guess and state the wrong gender. The older a child is I guess it becomes more uncomfortable to ask.

If parents and grandparents get upset, it certainly will trickle down to the child. That doesn’t sound like a good parenting idea to me.

First and foremost, the problem lies within the words themselves. English forced the speakers to identify others with either “he” or “she,” while other languages have a single word that can be applied to refer to both gender.

Some English-speaking people are gender sensitive. I’ve seen that many try to correct others when they’ve mistakenly refer to pets as opposite gender. Like when someone said “What a cute puppy, how old is she? Good girl.. ” The owner of the pet will have urge to correct the speaker and feel to add in the reply “He’s a boy” even though the gender of the pet does not affect the speaker nor does it matter to the speaker. Adding to the fun, I’ve also seen people refer to their car and boat as “she”.

As for why he’s angry, he’s probably a traditional sexist individual who sees women are inferior to men, and by referring a boy as a girl you’ve crossed his personal standard.

@Unofficial_Member English does have gender neutral words for boy and girl. The words are baby and child.

What language doesn’t use words like he and she and what do they use instead?

@JLeslie Hmm… I hope I can explain this as eloquently as I can with my current skill in English.

I was referring to personal pronouns (he, she, it), and to an extend, possessive pronouns (his, hers, its), which are more usually used continiously in direct reference to someone or something (i.e. He took off 10 minutes ago with his aunt, now where could he has gone to?)

The pronouns of that child, baby, plumber, etc are categorized as pronouns for singular thrid-person. Imagine if we need to use them continiously in a sentence in reference to the same person/object. (That child took off 10 minutes ago with that child’s aunt, now where that child could has gone to?). That’s why I think English lack personal pronouns that could identify both male and female individuals.

Gender neutral personal pronouns for both a he and a she (that I know):
– Mandarin : Da (actually read as ‘tha’)
– Tiong hua : I (i as in ‘ill’)
– Cantonese : Khai
– Melayu : Dia.

@Unofficial_Member So Da, Khai, Dia, all are used like he, she, him, her, over and over again in sentences? It’s the same part of speech?

If someone doesn’t know the gender of a child they likely are strangers. It’s fairly easy for a stranger to say, “your baby is beautiful.” Or, “how old is your baby?” Without worrying about gender. It is more difficult linguistically the older the child is, I concede to that.

Alas, even if we had a gender-neutral pronoun in English, some people would still be offended. It’s hard enough using gender-neutral terms for a person’s significant other without them taking offense.

I remember being scolded at work for saying “partner” instead of assuming the person had a wife. Like it’s so uncommon for people to cohabitate without being married, or to be in a non-hetero relationship. Whatever.

Saying “the baby” or “the child” over and over is clunky in our vernacular. We like our pronouns: he, she, it, we, they. “It” is almost universally problematic: “My child is not a thing.”

@JLeslie Yes. For possessive pronouns you need to add another word to refer to possessive context (i.e. Da de, read as ‘tha’ ‘te’, will refer to his/her, instead of da, which means he/she).

I agree with that, but what if you need to refer “the baby” repetitiously in a sentence? Surely, a gender-neutral possessive pronoun for singular person would be needed.

@Unofficial_Member “Baby” can be used over and over. Child is not used that way. Referring to the baby as just that “the baby” is partly a cultural or regional thing in the US. Some people use it, some don’t. My family would not use it, they would call the baby by his or her name, or use the gender specific pronoun. But, it’s not unusual for people to call even their own baby, “the baby.” A mom might say to the dad, “can you watch the baby?” Or, “the baby is sick.” There are many examples. Although, Seek is right that over and over again even baby can get clunky. But, if someone is having that long of a conversation they might as well find out if the baby is a boy or a girl. There are all sorts of ways to do it.

@Seek So true about the partner thing. I try to use significant other or partner, especially if my gaydar is really ringing, but it’s not commonly used in the straight community so it’s not completely comfortable in conversation yet.

I hear “partner” used very often in UK media. I don’t have enough real-world experience to say it’s commonly used there, but on TV shows often a character will refer to the person-waiting-for-them-at-home as their “partner” regardless of whether that person is same sex, opposite sex, married or not.

@Seek Hopefully, that becomes more common here. At the same time, it should be no big deal for me to ask if you have a boyfriend, and the person corrects me to say they have a girlfriend. It goes right back to the original question on the Q. If gender, sexual orientation, and everything related, is completely accepted and not judged, then it’s a nonissue. If someone assumed I was a lesbian I don’t care. I’d just let them know (if it made sense) I’m married to a man. It’s a big so what to me. If my boy had ling hair and was confused for a girl sometimes, I’d just let the person know, “he’s a boy, a lot of people assume he’s a girl because of his hair.”

I have a friend whose son had really long hair when he was a toddler. She used to put clips in it to keep it out of his eyes. Her mom kept quiet about it (that I could see) to her face but to me she was saying how terrible she thought it was. We went out to a restaurant and someone went up to them and said “Oh what a beautiful little girl!” My friend was totally cool about correcting the person but to her mom, it just gave her ammunition (all of us were in the restaurant together). Eventually she cut his hair – it was still a little long but not down his back.

Reading the above about “the baby” is funny – my daughter is almost 9 and we’ll still refer to her as “the baby.” I asked a q on here once about it. My coworker had told me her brother was “the baby” until he was in his early 20’s.

@jca I say baby for older children too. I got it from my time spent with my exboyfriend’s family. Although, it’s worth saying my mom uses “Baby Firstname” to refer to my sister. I once asked why, because I am her baby too, and she responded, “you are the first born.” Like each had it’s special designation.

I suppose I could have said, “The kid’s gettin’ away!” However, I just don’t stop and think for 10 seconds about how to phrase a sentence before I breeze past a stranger with a cute kid, without even breaking my stride.

On the issue of gender neutral pronouns: singular “they” is perfectly acceptable. It has been standard English for centuries, and appears in the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, and Thackery. It’s even in the King James Bible. Anyone who tells you otherwise is succumbing to hypercorrection.

THANK YOU @SavoirFaire! Many years ago, on Wis.dm, someone corrected me, said you have to say his or her. I’ve tried to do that, but it’s so clunky and not smooth. Just in the last couple of months I said “To hell with it” and started using “they,” again. I am SO much happier!!