Hiltz back to back women's indoor 1500m US champ

I have family members whose opinions are so disagreeable that I’ve basically ended the relationship. It happens, and I don’t feel all that bad about it.

Goucher is a pretty good commentator and I generally like her calling these races, but the fluidity and enthusiasm with which she throws out the theys and thems is so off putting. Seems akin to a prisoner being obsequious to a prison guard as the prison guard smacks the prisoner around. Just plain gross to behold.

Holy sh!t…this idiotic boomer joke wasn’t funny the first time, let alone the 1 millionth.

You could’ve just said “I have zero creativity “

So Goucher is using the pronouns that Hiltz has made very clear they prefer and you’re going to come down on Goucher for doing her job with respect to what hiltz wants? Just because you can’t say they or them doesn’t mean someone else can’t do it.

The subject of this thread, 29, is on a roll. The person won last year's title in a tactical race in 4:17.10, then came back in the summer to take the national outdoor title in 4:03.10 followed by an American record in the mile of 4:16.35. The human was in great form earlier in the indoor season, running a USA indoor best at 1000m of 2:34.09, then finishing fourth in the two-mile at the Millrose Games last Sunday.

In today's race mortal-being was content to allow others to lead. The object of this discussion came to the front before the bell, and as much as Mackay pushed in the final circuit, the earthling just could not be caught.

Congrats to Hiltz, your kick is still better than wiley’s!

She’s being respectful to the individual. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, in fact, it’s commendable.

in north korea all the men are called Kim

"Goucher is a pretty good commentator and I generally like her calling these races, but the fluidity and enthusiasm with which she throws out the theys and thems is so off putting. Seems akin to a prisoner being obsequious to a prison guard as the prison guard smacks the prisoner around. Just plain gross to behold"

I listened and I heard fluidity but no "enthusiasm" to the way Kara used the pronouns. It seemed to flow in a way any other pronouns are typically used. I was actually very impressed with how well she blended them in WITHOUT making it sound like something out of place or different.

Kara probably is motivated by a genuine desire to be respectful, but we all know the high stakes of "misgendering," whether by mistake or intentionally. American English does not have a singular, gender-neutral pronoun, and until very recently, everybody understood that pronouns were based on sex. Now, we're suddenly asked to upend this system, and there is a high risk of abuse if one does not comply. The issue is this: when people call Nikki "they" because Nikki identifies as nonbinary, they are engaging in a practice that has implications for all people, not just Nikki. Under this new interpretive framework, all pronouns are associated with identity, rather than sex. And, when young people who defy gender stereotypes identify out of their sex category, they either solidify the connection between sex and stereotypes (only the most conforming people continue identify with their sex) or narcissistically and inaccurately project gender stereotypes onto people who don't share their worldview (those who do defy gender stereotypes (spoiler alert: most of us defy stereotypes in some instances) but do not see this behavior as grounds for dis-identifying with their sex).

If I was in a race with Hiltz, I would direct the announcer to not describe the field as them or they if Hiltz is going to be described that way. I am not the same as Hiltz so that pronoun no longer describes me. Have fun talking about the field in real time and messing that up. Everyone's demands are equally important even if the demand is obnoxious.

I literally teach this at a school. Using “they” or “them” as a pronoun to refer to a singular antecedent has been the norm for decades.

If you walked into a hotel lobby and found a phone, and you brought it to the desk clerk, I bet you would say, “Someone lost their phone in the lobby.”

That wouldn’t be some kind of woke statement, it would be using a singular pronoun (their) for a singular antecedent (someone), and it would sound perfectly fine because that’s the way English speakers speak.

if you bent over backwards to follow prescriptivist grammar rules and said, “Someone left his or her phone in the lobby” you would rightfully get smacked upside the head for being a jackass.

It's been the norm when people don't know the sex of the person, or they're talking about a person in th abstract. However, if you know so much about grammar, you'd know that the rule used to be that one should refer to an abstract human as he/him. If you thought about it a bit longer, you'd understand that using they/them as singular pronouns for specific people is confusing because those words mostly commonly refer to more than one person, and there is no grammatical indicator to parse the difference.

Pointing to this colloquial use of they/them in the singular is just another "language game." It points to an innane truth and uses it to deconstruct existing categories that are otherwise logical. This is often accompanied by the motte and bailey tactic: changing the precise meaning of the term to be more or less radical depending on the stakes of the argument.

Eg. Nobody, I mean nobody, is saying that males are literally females; don't you know the difference between sex and gender...followed shortly by, how can transgender women have male advantage when they're women? Kafka traps!