Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

He/She/They/Ze

2018; Michigan Publishing; Volume: 5; Issue: 20201214 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3998/ergo.12405314.0005.014

2330-4014

Robin Dembroff, Daniel Wodak,

In this paper, we defend two main claims.The first is a moderate claim: we have a negative duty not to use binary gender-specific pronouns (he or she) to refer to genderqueer individuals.We defend this with an argument by analogy.It was gravely wrong for Mark Latham to refer to Catherine McGregor, a transgender woman, using the pronoun he; we argue that such cases of misgendering are morally analogous to referring to Angel Haze, who identifies as genderqueer, as he or she.The second is a radical claim: we have a negative duty not to use any gender-specific pronouns to refer to anyone, regardless of their gender identity.We offer three arguments in favor of this, which appeal to concerns about inegalitarianism and risk, invasions of privacy, and reinforcing essentialist ideologies (respectively).We also defend the compatibility of the the moderate and radical claim, in the face of the seemingly damning objections to the contrary.Before concluding, we examine common concerns about incorporating either they or a neologism such as ze as a third-person singular gender-neutral pronoun.These concerns, we argue, do not provide sufficient reason to reject either the moderate or radical claim.