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Contain them (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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[-] LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 70 points 6 days ago

I could be an it. A good little toy.

[-] 30p87@feddit.org 12 points 6 days ago

"A toy? A Lego set??", she asked excitedly, and wagged her tail.

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[-] burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 56 points 6 days ago

This is why everything is a little shit to me. I'm just getting all of them in one combined s/h/it word.

[-] fartographer@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago

You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?

[-] AtariDump@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

..…….No.

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[-] lbfgs@programming.dev 40 points 6 days ago

Turkish has no gender specific pronouns so this is every Turkish speaker I guess

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[-] GraniteM@lemmy.world 20 points 5 days ago
[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 27 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I have an nb friend who's Finnish. They prefer "It" as a pronoun. I had to explain that as a white native english speaker, we have shat the bed waaayyy too hard to use that one in our language.

[-] Deme@sopuli.xyz 25 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I mean, in casual spoken finnish, "it" dominates. The third person singular for people "hän" is already gender neutral, but I guess we prefer not to make assumptions about anyone's personhood :D. Or maybe it (se) just rolls off the tongue more conveniently.

[-] Haaveilija@lemmy.world 13 points 6 days ago

Also funnily enough many people use "hän" when talking about pets and other animals whilst still using "se" when talking about people. "Hän" feels a bit stiff and formal when talking about people.

[-] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

“Hän” feels like thee thou in English to me, way too old timey and formal.

It (se) is neutral and relaxed

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[-] Deme@sopuli.xyz 6 points 6 days ago

Yeah, I think it's to make sure that the animal in question is being recognized as an individual, whereas for people that's taken for granted.

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[-] Pelicanen@sopuli.xyz 7 points 6 days ago

I think it has a lot to do with how it conjugates, "sen" and "sillä" is quicker than "hänen" and "hänellä".

[-] Taleya@aussie.zone 5 points 5 days ago

Yah, i get why they prefer using it and in Finnish it's fine. In English it's....Very much not. It's a dehumaniser. Was an interesting conversation.

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[-] bystander@lemmy.ca 19 points 5 days ago

In Chinese, verbally the world for he, she, and it are all the same pronunciation. It is only differentiated in writing.

[-] stray@pawb.social 10 points 5 days ago

The written form was neutral until Western influence inspired the creation of a female version, replacing the first radical "person" with "woman".

[-] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 days ago

I think some Chinese forums use "TA" (as in the 2 English letters) to be gender neutral

[-] Rubanski@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 5 days ago

Don't forget the word 祂 for divine beings as the 4th

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[-] Jumi@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

I have friends who use it. It feels kind of weird and wrong for me as if I'm objectiving them but if that's what they want it's what they get.

[-] gerryflap@feddit.nl 7 points 5 days ago

Yeah I'd be quite uncomfortable with calling anyone "it". I'll gladly use they/them, I'd be down to learn some neopronouns, but calling someone "it" is something I'd rather avoid. Even if someone likes "it" pronouns, I'd still feel incredibly weird doing so in public. Calling people an "it" is often done here to mock androgynous people. It feels dehumanizing. If I were to do so in public, it would mean they people around me (who don't know the other person's preference) would probably assume I'm doing so to mock them.

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[-] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

I have friends who use "it". It feels kind of weird and wrong for me as if I'm objectifying it but if that's what it wants it's what it gets.

ftfy

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[-] napkin2020@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 days ago

Korean, having to know the person's age, social status, relationship and all just to call someone.

[-] python@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

Russian could have been such a woke language if Russia wasn't such a right-wing shithole. It's kind of elegant how you gender verbs when talking about yourself, because your conversation partner can just pick up on it and gender you accordingly.

[-] Nima@leminal.space 14 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I never get mad at "it" because it gives me flashbacks to Shale from Dragon Age Origins and I absolutely love her. she's amazing.

[-] kersploosh@sh.itjust.works 14 points 6 days ago

"It puts the lotion on it's skin..."

[-] Draegur@lemmy.zip 6 points 5 days ago

I use 'it' to describe ME :3

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[-] Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 5 days ago

No joke: in my native German dialect, women are grammatically neutral.

My then gf was completely shocked when visiting my birth region for the first time.
It still married me, though! :-)

[-] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 6 days ago

I've run into this a while ago but I'm not sure what to make of it. https://aria.dog/barks/on-being-a-thing/

[-] Agent641@lemmy.world 13 points 6 days ago

Holy shit... You can have domains that end in .dog?

[-] pieland@piefed.social 8 points 6 days ago

and .pizza, .gay

there are lots of fun ones

[-] borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 5 days ago

You can have domains that end in even more stuff if you switch to an alternative dns root like https://opennic.org/.

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[-] stray@pawb.social 9 points 6 days ago

"It" is personally my favorite neutral pronoun, but it has so much cultural baggage attached to it that it doesn't feel like a viable option. Why does a squirrel or a ficus or a robot get to be called "it" by default, but not a person? It isn't fair.

[-] Venat0r@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago

it's generally used to describe non-sentient things...

Also, using only it gets confusing when trying to determine what "it" refers to in a given sentence...

[-] stray@pawb.social 8 points 6 days ago

What's not sentient about a squirrel?

Can you give an example of how "it" is confusing? Like "It met its friend for coffee," sounds fine to me. "It put on a warm jacket since it was cold out," uses multiple senses of the word, but it still reads fine to me.

"They" is mildly confusing in narratives because it can be hard to distinguish whether one or multiple characters are being described, but it's not an insurmountable problem.

[-] Venat0r@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

I think it might be most confusing when someone talks about someone who uses "it/its" pronouns: my initial assumption would be that they're trying to dehumanise it unless I was already previously aware of it's pronown preference.

[-] stray@pawb.social 6 points 5 days ago

That's what I mean about the baggage, yeah. You can't just make something not be a slur anymore. It's uncomfortable for people trying to be respectful, and it's easy for bigots to exploit.

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[-] CPMSP@midwest.social 8 points 6 days ago

Oh holy fuck I'm rolling!

How have I not seen this image of Radcliffe before? He looks absolutely deranged!

[-] bear@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 6 days ago

The back story is that he was elbowed in the face on the way to the car, and probably had stage makeup on.

https://chatterbusy.removed/2013/07/daniel-radcliffe-appears-exhausted-with.html?m=1

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[-] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago
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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
599 points (95.6% liked)

Memes

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A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.

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