- Craig
- Hey NAFTA. Does it ever bother you when people call you "it"?
-
- [NAFTA writes in it's notepad, tears out the page, and hands it to Hans.]
-
- Hans [reading the note]
- No, not at all. I mean, there's really no choice is there? I'm neither male
nor female so you can't use he or she. But I know what you're talking about.
I mean I understand the discomfort you might feel in referring to me with
"it". And the funny thing is that I didn't understand that until
just a few weeks ago. Up until then all my acquaintances were people so they
were of one or another sex. But a few weeks ago I met the McCain Feingold
Campaign Finance Reform Bill at…something, some ball or something and
I started hanging out with it and— Sorry, this is boring. I'm monopolizing.
-
- Hay-Sung
- No, it's interesting!
-
- Craig
- Yeah, go on.
-
- Hans [reading more notes from NAFTA]
- OK, well to make a long story short, I started hanging out with the McCain
Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill and people would say "So what'd
you do this weekend?" and I'd say (write) "Not much, the McCain-Feingold
Campaign Finance Reform Bill invited me to go to waterworld on Saturday but
then it's car wouldn't start so blah blah blah" and suddenly I was aware
of how awkward it is to refer to animate objects with "it."
-
- Allison
- McCain-Feingold has a licence?
-
- Hans [reading]
- Yeah. I think. That was just an example. Anyway, this isn't the best story
in the world, but it do think it's interesting that all those times I'd heard
people refering to me as "it" it seemed perfectly natural, but then
when the shoe was on the other foot it felt odd and awkward and somehow rude.
-
- Hay-Sung
- So what else could we use for you?
-
- Hans [reading]
- Oh, use "it". "It" is fine. I didn't mean to say it was rude, just
that it felt rude. And I got over that pretty quick as, I suspect, will you.
-
- Hans [not reading]
- I guess that's why robots and so forth are always clearly male or female
in science fiction— so we won't have to deal with that.
-
- Craig
- Is that true? What about things like…uh…in Star Trek what are
those—
-
- Hay-Sung
- What about the Christaline Entity?
-
- Hans
- Yeah, but that didn't really have a personality.
-
- Craig
- What about Wesley's little nanobot things?
-
- Hans
- But they were really only dealt with as a collective so you could use "they."
-
- Allison
- Let's all vow to talk about Star Trek, pronouns and nothing else for the
next six months.
-
- Everyone Else That Can Speak
- Agreed.
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