S e n t e n t i o l a

pareidolalia answered your question: I try not to be reactionary about linguistic…

Yes. It is. And it’s dreadful. I’ve also seen “debate” used in both ways.

That’s… even more curious, given that it doesn’t traditionally mean either.  In fact doesn’t ‘debate X’ conventionally imply ‘consider the possibility that X may or may not be true’, which is sort of the opposite of ‘assert X’ or ’deny X’?

whatfreshhellisthis answered your question: I try not to be reactionary about linguistic…

I’m confused @_@ Could you give a working example?

Sorry!  Okay, so if someone says ‘I would argue that cygnets are teh cutes’, I would normally expect that to mean ‘I would assert (and, if necessary, try to prove) that swans are teh cutes’.  But lately I’m hearing people say ‘I would argue that cygnets are teh cutes’ meaning ‘I would deny (and, if necessary, try to disprove) that swans are teh cutes’.

I think it comes from the fact that arguing often involves disagreeing, and so ‘argue that X’ seems like it ought to mean ‘disagree with X’.  It’s understandable but it conflicts with the older sense of ‘argue’ as in ‘put forward reasons’, from which we get the traditional ‘argue that X’ meaning ‘put forward reasons in support of X’.

heroin-e answered your question: I try not to be reactionary about linguistic…

…………this is a thing?!!?!?!?!??

Yup.  I’ve heard media spokespeople and other professional sentence-makers use the ‘argue that X is false’ version quite a few times on news broadcasts and suchlike.

 anlamasanda answered your question: I try not to be reactionary about linguistic…

I’ve never seen anyone using “argue that __” to mean “argue against ___”… Without the “that”, yes, but not otherwise.

Interesting.  It would be odd if he presence or absence of the ‘that’ made a difference, since in most sentences where ‘that’ introduces a subordinate clause you can leave it out and it means the same.

Summary: responses to ‘Mx’ as gender-neutral title.

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I don’t want to revisit Attractions: gender more than fleetingly at the moment, but I do feel I need to just say this.

A bit of it got reblogged by A (who has cunningly figured out my not-very-secret surname), who linked to another post of theirs that in turn linked to this old article of Kinsey’s, which covers some of the same ground but of course in a much more sophisticated and well-considered way than I did.  And that article has some tips for writing about this sort of thing.  And reading those tips I realized just how binary my post was.

I was consciously trying not to erase non-binary people but I misconceived what I actually needed to do to achieve that.  My over-all analysis — ending up, as it did, by looking at femininity and masculinity rather than maleness and femaleness — clearly allowed room for people to exist who aren’t women or men.  I even mentioned once or twice that they exist.

But that’s an incredibly low standard for non-erasure.  What I wrote is still permeated with the assumption of binary gender as the norm.  I avoided saying ‘You don’t exist’ but ended up saying ‘You exist as a curious footnote to the book of humanity’, which is almost as rude to the people concerned and almost as unhelpful to the rest of us who are trying to get out of the trap of binary thinking.

So I’m sorry, and I’m going to try not to do that again, and thank you A for the link, and thank you Kinsey for the article, and thank you all for your patience!  :)