I have just read a tiny fraction of a huge amount of content generated by the apparent abusive dismissal of an important moderator from the Stack Exchange network.

An answer that tries to explain one of the main reasons behind all this includes this:

Cultural Background: In the United States there has been a push to use
gender-neutral language and gender pronouns when given.

This topic has created quite a storm across the network and a lot of moderators resigned or took similar actions. I am wondering if this "push" is also important in the US politics.

Question: In the United States, has there been a push to use gender-neutral language and gender pronouns when a person expresses a preference for a particular third-person pronoun to use to refer to her/him/them?

Pronouns are a thing, but they aren’t the thing for the most part. They’re about simple interpersonal communication and respect (it’s no big deal to make a mistake, it’s pretty insulting to adamantly insist on using the wrong ones), but they tend not to be a major factor in, say, the political agendas of LGBTQ communities, that I have seen.

For example, Danica Roem is a member of the Virginia state House of Representatives, and was the first transgender person to be elected to any state legislature. She tried, as much as possible, to run her campaign without even mentioning that fact—her focus was on public transportation, for the most part, as I recall (I lived in Virginia at the time, but not in the district she was campaigning for). Her opponent, on the other hand, made a point of nastily misgendering her (using “he”), trying to make the campaign about her being transgender. This backfired for him: much of the electorate considered his statements unseemly, and she got a lot of respect for handling the issue well and then returning to her core campaign concerns, about the district rather than about herself.

Another anecdote, also from Virginia: when I lived there, for a time I worked for a security contractor that was about 85% Veteran, mostly Army. One of the staff there—not, herself, a Veteran—came out as transgender and began transitioning, and asked for people to use her new name and pronouns. I worked with a lot of no-nonsense, tough, and conservative guys there—but nobody refused, nobody made an issue out of it. The most I heard was “seems weird to me, but whatever floats her boat, I guess.” This was northwestern Virginia, near DC, so a very liberal area in general; people might have felt more comfortable with objecting if they were surrounded by like-minded people. But the office itself was not particularly liberal, and there were plenty of people who didn’t care overmuch for the opinions of others (and in at least a couple of cases, I mean that quite critically—but even those still respected our co-worker’s transition enough to use the correct name and pronouns).

Some communities are more serious about pronouns than others. Tumblr, for example, as an online community, has a lot of users who include their preferred pronouns as part of their introductory blurb at the top of their blogs, and a lot of users who will make a point of asking about pronouns when interacting through that medium with someone who doesn’t include them there. That is part of that community, and as an online community, you don’t have to be transgender for your pronouns to be unclear—if you don’t happen to blog about things that make your gender explicit, there would be no way of knowing. As a place where a lot of people who are sensitive about gendering (either because they are transgender, or also because they are not transgender but also defy gender roles), a heightened emphasis on pronouns is found there, and people are a bit more careful—and, as that becomes normalized within that community, a certain amount of care becomes expected, as well.

But that’s a particular community with a particular niche that can be particularly devoted to this subject. The wider American public is less aware, less careful, and while I have no doubt that many Tumblr users would prefer that the rest of the world be more careful, as Tumblr is, the fact is that as of yet, it isn’t. The majority of people concerned with gendering care a whole lot more for people making an honest, good-faith effort to be welcoming and respectful, than they care about “getting it right” per se.

Note that I come to this discussion as a cisgendered male who has never experienced gender dysphoria in his life, and who doesn’t have a Tumblr blog. I have quite a fair number of transgender friends, but that isn’t the same thing. I would gladly defer to the experiences of an actual LGBTQ activist, but at present there doesn’t seem to be an answer from one.

Yes, but as a small part of the larger US culture wars

The push to use gender neutral pronouns, or to insist that people must use the pronouns that they are explicitly told to use or face ostracism and/or criminal penalty, is an extremely recent phenomenon. It's primarily a result of the broader LGBT movement successfully making gay marriage legal; now that the goals for the L, G, and B people is complete, there is now greater focus on the issues of transgender people among activists and people who care about these issues.

It is hard to quantify exactly how "important" this particular push is, especially because there are multiple ways to say if and how something is "important." But it is certainly gaining in importance; 5+ years ago there was very little attention paid to transgender issues outside of the people who care the most about it.

One thing that is certain though, is that support for these issues is not uniform across the entire United States. Support for these issues tends to be highest among affluent, educated white suburban and urbanites. Thus, it is part of the larger "culture war" that goes on in America between those people and their opposites on the other side of the aisle.

That "culture war" is, unfortunately, rather important, as it explains a lot of recent dysfunction in US politics. One of the most important one being the insistence that everyone must be in one political tribe or another, as well as insistence on agreeing with every aspect of that tribe's agenda.

Those are two separate issues, so my answer will try to address them in two parts.

Gender neutral language

Gender neutral language is less of an issue in English, as it's not a very gendered language in the first place.

It is an issue in a couple of cases though. For example:

• Gendered nouns: Most nouns aren't gendered ("doctor", "students", ...), but there are exceptions. E.g. "chairman" (alternative: "chairperson") or "fireman" (alternative: "firefighter").


• generic use of "he". Alternatives ("he or she", singular "they", generic use of "she").

The idea to use gender neutral languages is not new (it gained prominence in the 60s and 70s) and it is not limited to the United States. The UN for example recommends it internally, it's used in many official German documents, etc.

The "push" for it originally came from feminist movements. The idea is that biased language (e.g. defaulting to male) can impact actions and enshrine existing inequality:

During the 1970s, feminists Casey Miller and Kate Swift created a manual, The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing, on gender neutral language that was set to reform the existing sexist language that was said to exclude and dehumanize women.[17] In the 1980s, many feminist efforts were made to reform the androcentric language.[18] It has become common in some academic and governmental settings to rely on gender-neutral language to convey inclusion of all sexes or genders (gender-inclusive language).

Gender pronouns

Gender pronouns ("he" or "she") have long been used in English, so there is no new "push" to use them now.

It has also always been considered improper to use pronouns which do not align with a persons gender identity (e.g. calling a woman "he" or "it"). The existence of binary trans people doesn't change basic etiquette, and purposefully misgendering is clearly impolite and bigoted.

Gender-neutral pronouns (e.g. singular "they", "zir", or "hir" instead of "he" or "she") for non-binary people specifically are relatively new (while singular "they" in general is not), and are slowly gaining traction in society:

The practice of using pronouns in a non-binary way has not featured much in academic writing - the first paper on it was published in 2017, but has become more accepted online and on social media, with people now listing them in their Twitter bios.

In July, three Presidential candidates were praised for adding their pro-nouns to their accounts.

34% of Republicans and 66% of Democrats say that they are somewhat or very comfortable using gender-neutral pronouns.

As the ACLU notes, acceptance of gender neutral pronouns can be seen as a continuation of the fight for women's rights and LGBT acceptance:

Language has always been a part of both the LGBTQ and women’s rights movements. Some examples of the significance of language within these movements, include: the fight to use Ms. instead of Mrs. or Miss and the challenge to change the default use of the pronoun “he” to “she.” Language plays a central role in social movements and can track cultural shifts. The ongoing fight to use pronouns that correspond to a person’s gender identity and the inclusion of gender-neutral pronouns is a continuation of these struggles and builds on their legacies.