nanushka

Personally I think I’ll continue to trust what the Times is reporting over what a couple of opera singers are saying.

As I've written, I completely sympathize with the feelings of awkwardness — I've felt them myself. Since it sounds, from your other posts here, as if you agree that there are indeed people who are gender fluid, who identify as neither male nor female, and since those people might reasonably not wish to be referred to by either masculine or feminine pronouns, I wonder if you personally have any ideas of how they should be referred to, given your objections to using "they" in such cases. With the pronouns of the gender they were assigned at birth? (Though there are in fact cases in which gender is ambiguous at birth.) With no pronouns at all? In some other way? I'm asking respectfully, not at all with aggression or snark. (I know the written word can make tone difficult to determine, especially when one is reading quickly, online.) Since it sounds as if you're someone who's thought seriously about this issue, and since it sounds as if you're someone who's sympathetic to the experiences of people who don't fit the gender binary, I'm curious what you think the alternatives may be. (And I don't think it's a problem if you don't have an answer; just because you object to one possible solution doesn't mean it's your responsibility to come up with another.)

If by "threat" you mean a threat of physical violence, that's perhaps true — though we don't really know enough about the comparative physical capacities of Copley and the chorus member to judge, I'd say. But sexual harassment is not generally considered problematic behavior simply because it could be followed up by physical violence/rape/etc. It's problematic behavior in and of itself. And there are certainly other, non-physical ways in which a person in power could be a "threat" to a colleague in the workplace. I also don't believe that professionals working in the arts should be held to any lower of a standard than professionals in any other field. I don't see how it's any different from a case in which an attorney tells a law clerk, "I'm thinking of you in my bed with your clothes off."

Why they fired him seems a fair question, and one that might certainly be worth discussion. You suggested that the chorus member should have been fired, though, which would seem to me not at all appropriate. As for "fairly innocuous banter" — well, I'd suggest it takes two to "banter," and the other party was apparently not a willing participant in this exchange. And personally, if I were a chorus member and my director said to me, in the workplace, in front of another colleague, that he was thinking of me in his bed with my clothes off, I would certainly not feel that that was "innocuous." I'd be pretty disturbed. And I personally don't think that professionals in the workplace should be expected to tolerate that sort of treatment, especially from a person in a position of power. Again, as for whether that calls for firing may be up for debate.

What's unbelievable to me is that anyone in a prominent, powerful position in the arts who's been awake for the past 6 months would say something like that to a colleague in the workplace. Pretty unwise, among other things.

If an opera director in your employ said, in the workplace, to a chorus member, "I'm thinking of you in my bed with your clothes off," you'd have fired the chorus member? Why? (Note that Copley reportedly "did not deny the incident.")

A developing story, over the past few days, in the New York Times: Met Opera Fires Stage Director, Citing 'Inappropriate Behavior' Union Questions Met's Firing of Director for Remark to Chorister This, of course, comes in the shadow of the Met's recent suspension of James Levine.

Love the photo. What is it from?

I like McWhorter too. It's actually been quite frequently the opposite as well: usages that have been commonly accepted for decades or even centuries have at times been deemed "incorrect" by grammar mavens who invent fallacious grammar rules to outlaw them.

Would it be right to say that "gender queer" is a broader term, and that "gender fluid" is one specific way in which one might fit the designation "gender queer"? Though I've also found that "queer" is a term that some people are much more comfortable with than others. So I imagine it could well be the case that one might consider oneself "gender fluid" but not wish to call oneself "gender queer."

I don’t see anyone here taking a purely prescriptivist position, either, and I didn’t mean to suggest that I did. I certainly did not intend to admonish anyone. I've looked back over my posts carefully and I'm not sure what would have given that impression. In any case, no one here has said or done anything that I think deserving of admonishment, and I wouldn’t consider it appropriate to admonish even if they had. My interest is far more in discussion than in censure. That said, I apologize if I got carried away discussing a topic that is of great interest to me. Frankly, I find language and grammar to be fascinating. I assumed that anyone here who didn’t share that interest would simply skip over my posts. (The same goes for the links to things I've read and found particularly interesting.) As it happens, I agree with you regarding the use of masculine pronouns in reference to Johnsey.

On the first point, I'm not sure what you mean by "an arbitrary or spurious rule." It's not a rule of any sort but a common use of language, one that many English-language speakers already employ when the gender of a single individual is unknown. In fact, as the historical examples I've pointed to suggest, it's something that many English-language speakers have been doing for centuries. (See the resources I linked to above for plenty of examples — or just listen out for it in your everyday conversations.) English supposedly does not have a gender-neutral singular personal pronoun; but since it doesn't, and since we've often found that we need one, speakers have quite reasonably come to use "they" to fit that need. As in the first example given on the first page of examples I linked to: "Tell that special person you love them before they're gone." As for whether that use of language is "arbitrary or spurious" — well, it certainly doesn't seem arbitrary. And if by "spurious" you mean "illegitimate," many self-annointed "grammarians" will tell you it's "grammatically incorrect," but it's not really up to them to decide, and it never has been. That's not how language actually works, as linguists (i.e. credentialed professional researchers who study language) would explain. See, for instance, this page from Merriam-Webster, where you can scroll down to a section headed "Can THEY, THEIR, THEM and THEMSELVES be used as singular pronouns?" You'll notice that the authors of that section (who were likely either advised by linguists or included linguists, hired to sit on a usage panel) say nothing at all about grammatical rules but focus instead on commonly accepted usage. (I strongly recommend the chapter titled "Telling Right from Wrong" in Harvard linguist Steven Pinker's excellent book The Sense of Style for more on the issue of grammar and rules.) And yes, on the second point, it's something that many people have asked for, for themselves. As I said above: "You [by which I meant one] try to call people by the words they ask to be called by, because that seems the right and respectful thing to do."

Oh, sure, I didn't mean to suggest that just because singular "they/their" (and there are historical examples of both) has been a part of the language for centuries that this new shift ("they" as a pronoun referring to a named, singular antecedent) would be more of the same. It's obviously different — it feels different, and it will take some getting used to. For many of us, it's a bit awkward. (That dissipates, though, as one gets used to it, I've found.) My point in bringing up the historical precedents for singular "they/their" was to counter the common response (which I've heard from many grammar-sensitive individuals — among whom I obviously count myself!) that "I just can't accept they as singular, because that's just wrong." That response is often based on ideas about language and grammar that are rooted in prescriptivist fallacies. Many of the grammar "rules" that we all learned growing up (e.g. you can't split infinitives, you can't end a sentence with a preposition) were basically invented by self-nominated "grammarians" who took it upon themselves to tell others how they should speak, when in fact all along we've all already known how to do that pretty well, for the most part. As I was noting to a friend earlier just this evening, yes indeed, the shift to these new forms is challenging. You try to call people by the words they ask to be called by, because that seems the right and respectful thing to do. Sometimes you mess up, and you feel bad. But it's the trying that matters to them. And it gets easier, and begins to feel more natural. And over time you mess up less and things begin to change. (Thanks for taking the time to explain by the way!)

Hmm, sorry, maybe I'm being obtuse. But what's the problem there, could you explain? What sorts of "artificial constraints" do you have in mind? Language evolves as we need it to do new things. I'm not sure at what point that becomes "artificial." (It's a human capacity, after all.) Again, I'm not sure I follow. (Sorry!) How would the capacity to more easily incorporate a new language form reflect a type of inflexibility, or an intolerance of inconsistency?

Certainly one key thing that none of those older historical examples of the singular "they" have is a specific, named referent. For example: "George said that they [i.e. George] would come to the party." That's something pretty recent, since there has come to be a new understanding that George — who was presumably born biologically male and was identified as male in gender at birth — is a person who may have come to realize that they (George) do not in fact personally identify as male. That wasn't really a thing (or at least not an understood and socially recognized thing) in the time of Shakespeare, or of Austen. On one of your previous points, Quiggin, one could rightly say that that sentence — "George said that they would come to the party" — is ambiguous. But then, so is the alternative sentence: "George said that he would come to the party." Did George say that he himself, George, would come to the party? Or did George say that Peter ("he") would come to the party? Context is what helps us work out those ambiguities. Whether or not we begin to more broadly accept that George can be called a "they," without context there's always going to be some ambiguity in our language. And once we really accept the fact that George can be a "they," it becomes clear that neither of those sentences is structurally any more ambiguous than the other. We're just not used to it yet, so when we see, without context, "George said that they would come to the party," we automatically think, "Who would come?" Whereas when we see, without context, "George said that he would come to the party," we think we know who "he" refers to. (But since we don't know the context, we could well be wrong.) Yup, and also language changes. (Another reason why the "rules" of grammar aren't really rules in the strict sense. They are conventions defined by language use in a particular time and place.) So the language your daughter and her friends were absorbing in their early years (when one's internalized grammar gets formed) was already a bit different from the language you and I were absorbing in ours. That's why "they" with a named, singular referent may well be "decisively ungrammatical according to [linguist Geoffrey Pullum's] internalized grammar" (as I quoted him writing in an earlier post), but apparently is not quite so ungrammatical in the internalized grammars of your daughter and her friends.

That remains to be seen. See first two posts at the top of this page.

The linked article actually doesn't make it clear that Johnsey plans to transition. I think the title of this discussion topic is somewhat misleading and has caused some confusion. (Moderators, is there any way it could be changed? "Chase Johnsey leaves Trocks, alleging gender discrimination and harassment," perhaps?) Again, from the opening paragraph of the article: In a YouTube video, he outlined allegations of harassment and humiliation over his celebrated 14-year tenure with the company, ranging from discrimination for appearing too feminine to being told that he could no longer perform with the company should he choose to undergo a gender transition. The real core of Johnsey's allegations seems to me to be that the company is discriminating against dancers who are perceived as insufficiently masculine — not just that they would discriminate against a dancer who would choose to transition. There's nothing in the subsequent interview that indicates to me that Johnsey is anything other than wholly "comfortable in his own body": Are you still interested in transitioning? At this point, I call myself gender queer because I am not one gender more than another. I look male during the day time, but I am most comfortable performing as a woman. Women have been my heroes, and through women, I have strength. I aspire to have the strength of women. So for now, I am happy with just being who I am, even if I do not fit any mold. The older I get, the less I feel like I have to apologize for it.

In the linked interview, Johnsey says, "At this point, I call myself gender queer because I am not one gender more than another. I look male during the day time, but I am most comfortable performing as a woman." Being gender queer, he (see below) presumably identifies as neither strictly male nor strictly female. Candice Thompson, the author of the article, also refers to him repeatedly with the masculine singular pronouns. (See, for example, the opening sentences of the article.) I would assume, given the nature of the topic, that she was careful to check that with him. Johnsey also refers to himself — or, at least, to his onstage persona — as a ballerina: "But now, I am completely lost because my career is gone as far as me dancing as a ballerina."

A very basic introduction can be found here. I find the Shakespeare example there to be especially interesting, because their so clearly has a masculine singular referent: There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend. (Comedy of Errors, IV.3) But I particularly recommend (for those who have the time and interest) a deep dive into the many postings on this topic at the excellent site Language Log, run by linguists Mark Liberman and Geoffrey Pullum. Searching their archive for singular "they" takes one to this substantial set of articles. One particularly interesting and relevant place to start might be the recent series of articles that came out of Pullum's own admission that he has difficulty "saying things that are clearly and decisively ungrammatical according to my own internalized grammar. I'll do my best, but it will be a real struggle." (Emphasis added, just to clarify that he's not saying it is inherently "ungrammatical.") Pullum's seems like a reasonable admission and an admirable resolution, but nonetheless the article caused some controversy. The relevant articles, in order, can be read here, here, here and here. I found the last of those to be especially thought-provoking, but it's best read in the context of the others. They're neither very long nor very technical. I'll keep looking and will update if I come across any other particularly useful resources.

I don't know if this still works, but it used to be the case (before I gave in and paid for a subscription, albeit with a professional discount) that if you entered the article title into Google you could then click onto the article, avoiding the paywall: Ballet Theater Choreographs a Labor Deal, and the Show Goes On.

Great point. A grammatical quibble (which is based on a "rule" that actually goes against literally centuries of common usage, both colloquial and literary) seems a weak excuse for not granting others the basic respect of calling them by the names and words they ask to be called by. (See what I just did with that dangling preposition? Oh my!) Yes, it can be hard to get used to. If basic kindness were easy, we wouldn't need Emily Post. p.s. Mrs. Skewes — love it! Straight from Dickens! p.p.s. The above post is intended only as a general comment on the issue of gendered pronoun reference, and not as a commentary on the statements or beliefs of anyone on this site. I hope such grammatical commentary is in-bounds!

Some additional details in an article from the Times. Why it features a tweet from an apparently random individual picking out Misty Copeland for special praise is rather a mystery to me. But then we've seen in the past (when they featured SAB in an article about ABT) that the Times online is a bit slipshod when it comes to images.

In other words, basically the equivalent of a firing without just cause, yes?

Who is replacing him? He's still listed (as of just now) on the link from the NYCB casting page for Saturday evening the 3rd. Is there another more current listing? Edited to add: Sorry, I see now he's apparently only replaced on Tuesday evening.

I didn't suggest that you were wrong about this. That's why I wrote, "that's not all that Johnsey is alleging." The part of your post that I was responding to was this: If what Johnsey alleges is true, it's not enough simply to be a man; in order to be a Trocks dancer (or, at least, to be a Trocks dancer who is not "harassed and humiliated"), one must also be sufficiently masculine.