• Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      Isn’t it more of a recursion anyway?

      bool parent1() { return parent2(); }
      bool parent2() { return parent1(); }

      Or maybe livelock depending on interpretation?

  • Phantaloons@piefed.zip
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    2 days ago

    …Do parents have gender-neutral pronouns?
    aside from you know… “parent”

    Is that it? That’s all we have?

    • TrooBloo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      Sometimes my kids call me by my first name trying to get a reaction out of me, but I don’t care. That should work. I don’t think “mom” and “dad” are even pronouns, are they? Proper nouns in the direct context (“Hey Dad, how was your day?”) and regular nouns in the common context (“My mom said to tell you hi.”), so I’m not sure this is a thing.

    • TAG@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      One of my irritations is that we do not have good language to talk about non-binary people.

      For example, instead of a brother or sister, you talk about a “sibling”. It just sounds so impersonal. Instead of saying something that shows your love for a family member while acknowledging the fact that the person does not cleanly fit into either of the gender boxes, it sounds like gender erasure. Like the person is too concerned with social pressure to refer to their relative by an incorrect gender but too proud to use the correct gender. Or maybe it is similar to a gay person talking about his “partner” to leave a little bit of ambiguity about his sexuality.

      I am not saying that people should hide their gender identity, just that the English speaking community needs to find better terminology to use when talking about them.

      • RebekahWSD@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        This is why I like being a twin. Twin is personal and not common so calling my twin my twin still sounds personal but not gendered automatically. My twin is non binary as I understand it. I am binary.

        • TrooBloo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          24 hours ago

          I do use “kin” sometimes, but I don’t think I would in a parental context. Interesting, though. Maybe it’s just me that thinks of “kin” as being a gender non-conforming form of “brethren”. Usually I use the word in a collective sense, too, as in, “All my homies love and support their trans kin.”

          • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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            18 hours ago

            Probably a regional factor, but amongst my clan it’s generally used to refer to all living or now passed but once contemporaries family members both immediate and extended. The dead generally just get labeled ancestors past contemporaries not withstanding.

    • Jrockwar@feddit.uk
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      1 day ago

      What for? If it’s plural you can use “parents” just fine, and if you’re referring to one of them, you can always use “my dad” or “mom”.

      I guess it could be useful to have something equivalent to “my parent” that is gender neutral and it doesn’t sound as dry. But then again it doesn’t allow you to differentiate which one you’re talking about. I’ve seen people with gay parents use “dad” and “papa” or something along those lines, which solves that problem but isn’t gender neutral.

      Language evolves to serve a purpose or solve a problem, and I guess we haven’t had this linguistic challenge before.


      (Leaving aside that these are technically not pronouns, but I don’t think that’s the point of the conversation and we don’t gain much by debating grammar)

      • Ziglin (it/they)@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I would like to note that while rare non-binary and intersex parents do exist and might not want to be called mum/dad however there is not really a nice gender neutral alternative to my knowledge.

      • lauha@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I live in bilingual are and a lot of kids use mom or dad from different language if parents are bilingual. For example other is dad and other papa

        • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.netOP
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          1 day ago

          unrelated: that double negative is throwing me for a fucking loop, but the coffee hasn’t kicked in.

          I think “It’s unlikely that in a 4 person polycule that at least one of them isn’t nonbinary” is the better way to phrase it. I’m not trying to be pedantic here. I’m just wrestling (aloud) with the structure of the sentence.

          Related: Why would a polycule almost always have a non-binary member? I’m not up to date on this stuff, but I could see a bi polycule working, or something like that, with them all aligning with their typical (i use this word lightly, for lack of a better one) gender.