Mink and Pronouns

[Grey Wolf]

Disclaimer: I am aware that pronouns can be a touchy subject for some individuals. Please remember that this discussion is about a character from a webcomic, and not about the preferred pronouns of actual people.


While Amber has not used pronouns when talking about Mink, I've noticed that a number of fans do. Generally, these pronouns are gendered. I see lots of he/his/him and the occasional she/her/hers. I'm curious as to why.

Slip of the tongue (er... fingers)? Do you think of Mink as a specific gender? Habit? Because he/his/him is the default pronoun setting in many English speaking cultures? I'm not judging; I'm genuinely curious.

[mithril]

in english you don't really have any non-gendered pronouns.. the closest is "it", but applying that to a sentient being is seen as rude, because 'it' is usually used for inanimate objects.. and occasionally for animals.

there has been some efforts to invent a few non-gendered ones, but so far they have not had much traction.. in part due to the fact many people aren't comfortable with them, and in part because they usually are hard to say and remember.

in general, Male pronouns are the default for most people.. though in publishing female pronouns have started becoming a standard.

[Howl]

Has a decisively male chest, but I guess that still doesn't mean diddly. Probably best to just use "them" and "their" as a singular, even if it sounds weird.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Mostly, as mithril says, it's mental shorthand for "he or she", etc; that and the default person online has been for many years male, so defaulting to male pronouns is more or less expected in many situations.

The fact that Ambaaargh herself has deliberately kept the nomenclature for the squiggly vague and uncertain suggests that we should, also. "She seems male at times, but then, at other times, he acts female in ways." sort of thing. If only it weren't confusing as to who we were referring to... ;-]

... at least at first glance, anyway. ;-]

[Amber Williams]

Honestly you can use whichever pronoun you like.  I suspect for many folks, there is just a natural habit to default to one gender because it's easy to. And that's fine.

Usually I default to male...but because Mink's gender is sort of a mystery and I don't want anyone to go "Well on this forum post Amber referred to mink as He", I try to take extra precaution not to slip up when talking about Mink.

[seikueon]

I had a huge long debate about what to call Mink based on evidence but I decided people would think it was too aggressive.  So I guess I'm just putting my vote for "call them the pronoun they identify with".  If they identity with a genderless entity they will usually tell you what they prefer.

Since Mink doesn't really give us a specific option, I'm sure anything is fair.

[Grey Wolf]

That's pretty much what I figured  But I saw a few posts here and on FA that made me wonder.

[seikueon]

I figured it out.  Mink must be related to Yivo!  Purple tentacles...no gender?  How come we didn't put two and two together before now?

Shklee--Gender neutral equivalent of "he" and "she".
Shkler--Gender neutral equivalent of "his" or "her".
Shklim--Gender neutral equivalent of "him" or "her".

In case you're wondering what I'm going on about, it's from Futurama.

[Prroul]

The default for the english language is a male pronoun, in the event a specific gender pronoun is not available. Of course, we all know that the english language doesn't borrow from other languages, it follows them down dark alleys, clubs them over the back of their head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar. Which is likely a contributing factor to the lack of a gender neutral pronoun suitable for usage with individuals.

I'll just refer to Mink as 'he', due to this default setting in the english language, and will revise this if Mink's gender is ever actually stated for the record.

[Lying Foo]

Honestly, I never figured out why I would see Mink as female... he wears a skirt, but so does Abel sometimes (although Abel's is less frilly), and his chest and hipbone (first panel) are very male.

(I have it in my head that skirts are seen as unisex at SAIA, but I can't find anything in canon, besides Abel, to back that up - I think I may have gotten the idea from fancubi.)

And Mink doesn't seem to mind either way, so enh.

[nichdel]

Personally, I always thought of Mink as male and referred to him as such. I forget that he's supposed to be ambiguously gendered.

If anyone wants the full sociolinguistic explanation for our problems with non-gendered pronouns:

Essentially the older we are the more resistant we are to changes in our language. At the same time, all of us are more resistant to adding new function words (prepositions, determiners, helping verbs) than content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs); pronouns are kind of ambiguous, but they lean more towards function words than content words.

We also have subconscious senses about what is and is not a good English word, and these are extra critical of function words (function words are extremely important for the structure of language). Since these senses are subconscious, we can't use them to make good words.

Children in the language critical period, however, can use them to make words if there is a need. For instance, if adults from different cultures are using a crude communication system, the children of these adults will flesh the communication system out into a full language (this is what caused the languages we call 'creoles').

The main problem then, is that children generally don't have a need for more pronouns and adults are unlikely to find a set of new pronouns that everyone likes.

[Tuyu]

I started off thinking of Mink as female, but at some point I started thinking of him as male.  No particular reason why, and I'm not really sure when it happened.  Maybe because in Abel's story his behavior seemed more girlish to me, but when he's with Dan his behavior seems more boyish.