D&D 5E Mearls' "Firing" tweet

Despite being a Tool of the Patriarchy, I think "they" for 'single person of indeterminate gender' works fine.

I'm not sure if stat blocks pertaining to generic unnamed monsters are really relevant when surely the focus is a dealing with individuals.

I'm an old git, I struggle to adapt for various reasons, though I try - my mouth frequently starts before my brain kicks in - nothing I can do about that. But I was brought up to believe that referring to anyone by a pronoun form when speaking with them present in the conversation is rude, thus I've always tried to refer to people by their name. In practice it's probably for the best.

But as you can see above, when using online forums and gender is not obvious (or neutral/irrelevant as in my statement above), they/them/their is quite natural.

*Deleted by user*

epithet said:

There we go. I should have known--It's not about grammar at all, it's about your ideology.

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Yes, of course it is.

Are you putting a higher importance on grammar than on human rights?

Or is it maybe also about your ideology, and not about grammar at all? Hmm?

ad_hoc said:

The practice of bombarding women with geek tests before accepting them is what he is referring to.

It happens all the time including in the now closed thread about their new designer, Kate Welch.

It is refreshing to see this attitude from WotC and it has been there from the start of 5e. They don't want toxic people in their game/community.

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This..

Elfcrusher said:

Are you putting a higher importance on grammar than on human rights?

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One of these is nonsense on stilts, the other is the foundation of language itself!

epithet said:

Are you seriously suggesting that we have to dispense with the distinction between singular and plural in order to avoid "oppression and hatred and bigotry" and some kind of threat every day? You're really going to suggest that keeping that singular/plural distinction is oppressive?

If so, you've lost your damn mind.

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The way you speak in absolutes and hyperbole suggests that maybe you've already dug your heels in on this issue, and that your questions are rhetorical. (But still I persist.)

No, a puppy doesn't die every time somebody refuses to use 'they' in the singular.

I'll admit the singular use feels a little grammatically awkward to me every time I see/use it. But you know what? It doesn't actually make my life any worse, either.

And there's a whole segment of our population...you know, fellow human beings...who feel that the lack of an appropriate pronoun to describe themselves contributes to the isolation and bigotry they've suffered their whole lives. They (plural) feel strongly that it reinforces the popular misconception that gender is purely binary, that you're either completely one or the other, and that by not fitting into that false dichotomy it opens them up to vicious discrimination. Structurally it's really no different from nasty racial epithets: labeling propagates vicious discrimination.

And even if that's false, and there's no correlation/effect at all, there is absolutely no denying that our society craps on those people. If they believe that this small sacrifice will help alleviate that, then fine.

As somebody at the extreme end of privilege on just about every metric, the least* I can do is tweak my grammar a little bit to accommodate a group that doesn't have my advantages. And those who begrudge them that are a far, far bigger problem in the world than a little bit of grammatical drift in our language.

*Oh, and I can vote! And make campaign contributions! Yay!

S'mon said:

One of these is nonsense on stilts, the other is the foundation of language itself!

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Funny, I couldn't find the phrase "human rights" once in that entire pile of drivel essay. Maybe your'e confusing two different things?

Or maybe you're playing a semantic game, suggesting that the basket of protections we refer to as "human rights" are not actually "rights", let alone "natural" ones, and therefore devoid of value?

If you're seriously saying that we should feel free to treat other humans like dirt because a clever rhetorical argument undermines the idea that rights can be natural, I take pity on your soul. Human history has been defined by a deep-rooted instinct in the oldest parts of our brains to look for ways to distinguish "us" from "them" to justify killing/robbing/enslaving the thems. What makes some of us better than animals is that the newer parts of our brains (sometimes) override that instinct.

lowkey13 said:

Don't you dare.

"Y'all" is plural.

"All y'all" is, um, lots of plural.

You're welcome.

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That's actually really great example, even though said with humor. Southerners use y'all in the both singular and plural forms, and so far their civilization hasn't....uh....

Hmm, my point may not be as good as I initially thought.

Elfcrusher said:

Funny, I couldn't find the phrase "human rights" once in that entire pile of drivel essay. Maybe your'e confusing two different things?

Or maybe you're playing a semantic game, suggesting that the basket of protections we refer to as "human rights" are not actually "rights", let alone "natural" ones, and therefore devoid of value?

If you're seriously saying that we should feel free to treat other humans like dirt because a clever rhetorical argument undermines the idea that rights can be natural, I take pity on your soul. Human history has been defined by a deep-rooted instinct in the oldest parts of our brains to look for ways to distinguish "us" from "them" to justify killing/robbing/enslaving the thems. What makes some of us better than animals is that the newer parts of our brains (sometimes) override that instinct.

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I believe, although I could be wrong, that someone was making a joke.