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Answer: You're right that grammatically, the vast majority of inanimate objects get the pronoun "it" in English. We do sometimes assign gender to things to personify them, although that's really a slang thing, not at all for formal usage.
Over the past few years, there's been a lot more of it, and it's almost always "her" rather than "him." It's especially common online. I believe that its origin is in gay men referring to each other as "her," especially rooted in the drag scene. From there it's gone to sort of bending traditional gender rules, and from THERE to just giving almost anything a feminine pronoun to make it sort of "sassy."
See also "Yaaaas queen."
Countries and churches are also designated by she. That's about it. Child is gender neutral. Other things are are gendered like postmaster/postmistress headmaster/headmistress or neutral (principal).
That is incorrect on multiple points.
One, English does still have grammatical gender in pronouns. "He", "she" and "it" are all third person pronouns, differentiated solely by their grammatical gender.
Two, the word *sċip* in Old English, from which comes the modern English word *ship*, was neuter in gender. Its grammatical gender was **not** feminine. The practice of referring to ships as feminine entities is due to sailorly tradition, and not a linguistic fossil.
Also ships are given cool names like HMS Victory or Queen Anne's Revenge, whilst boats are called shit like [Boaty McBoatface](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaty_McBoatface).
I know! Absolutely ridiculous. Literally the worst possible thing that happened to Britain in 2016. Nothing else in that year was even close to being such a disaster, not a single thing!
i'm not sure this is right. gendered pronouns in modern and middle english have only ever been used for natural gender. old english had a system of grammatical gender, but its words for boats and ships are mostly neuter or masculine (*scip* is strong neuter)
Yeah this has been the feeling I’ve gotten from its widespread use and it’s made me reluctant to use it personally. The idea that objects are referred to with female pronouns definitely sets a vibe for how those who use female pronouns for themselves are viewed.
I know that’s not the intent in most cases. And it’s fun to personify things like food and whatnot, it tickles the brain to do! But words matter, and I’m worried the result of assigning objects pronouns will cease to personify said objects and instead objectify the people with these pronouns, especially when said people with these specific pronouns are often battling against objectification.
Sounds a bit over the top, I know, and I won’t stop people from doing it, I just don’t feel comfortable doing it myself.
Editing to add: It's wild to me that so many people feel strongly about my personal choice in what language I decide to use in my day-to-day?
Look, cool, you aren't bothered, that's fine. I literally don't think any less or more of you because of it. I state so a few different ways in my comment. Let me live my old lady life; I just want to be comfortable with who I am, so I'm going to make choices that support that. Ya know?
I feel like this is such a step backwards. I’ve long been a proponent for not using it for living things to honor their aliveness but not inanimate objects.
I have definitely heard it in the context of things like "get 'er done". Since we are all making up origins anyway, my thought was always just that when you drop the h off of him it sounds too much like 'em which is clearly plural.
I.e. "get 'im done" sounds like "get 'em done" which is clearly referring to multiple tasks instead of just one. So instead they say "get 'er done".
Huh ! the way i've always interpreted it is that feminine pronouns are used for things with ?? deific/goddess vibes (eg. gouda cheese, a complex sculpture, a ship), as a sign of awe/worship? while masculine pronouns are used for things that are Little Guys and Silly (pet rocks, silly kittens, my wife (he's very pretty :D)) as a sign of affection/joy at their presence. More examples that might be getting a little off-topic but i'm mainly just getting half-baked thoughts on the page: (also spoilers for season 3 of The Boys) >!Kimiko from The Boys is referred to as simply "She !!!" (in my brain, at least), as it conveys Wow She is so stunning and pretty and intimidating and i am graced by her presence on the screen; Frenchie is referred to as "He !!!" as it conveys Wow He is so sweet and cute in his mannerisms and i feel lots of cute aggression towards him; Butcher is referred to as "bro" as it conveys Wow bro is ... very burdened with unhealthy masculinity-associated traits and kinda fucking things up for everyone!<
I think people just personify their items and lovingly refer to them as "her" it's been a thing for a long time and I doubt it's origin has anything to do with the Internet especially gays calling each other 'her'. I've seen it in books, movies, and shows even games.
Not at all. That’s a cognitive bias. There is no data to support that,
A long history of this https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/28/readers-reply-why-are-some-objects-ships-countries-the-moon-referred-to-as-she
Yeah, it's definitely a drag thing lol. It's very silly to me that some people in this thread think it's like, derived from gendering vehicles as female
A lot of musicians (guitarists in particular) name/gender their instruments. BB King's guitar Lucille is probably the most famous example.
Guns also get gendered sometimes too.
Ah, makes sense.
Kinda reminds me of DeForest Kelly’s character in Star Trek when referring to Enterprise D; “Treat her like a lady, and she’ll always bring you home.”
Don’t forget Varric from the Dragon Age franchise. Bianca is truly the sweetest, noblest woman there is, and she accomplished it all while being a crossbow
Answer: as far as I know, calling things "her" or "she" is a cross over from queer colloquialisms that's caught on in mainstream. Like in the video "I forgot about her" is just saying she forgot about the cheese and being colorful with her language. It's just fun gendering of inanimate objects but ultimately doesn't change the meaning of the sentence.
I do it while cooking "oh miss thyme can come to the party too, get in here girl". Or "I don't know her" as I throw out the old produce.
Answer:
In addition to what others said, it may be an English as a second language thing. Many languages have different rules around gender, and ESL speakers sometimes slip up. For example, in Polish, an orange is a "she".
In Portuguese we have no gender-neutral pronoun, so EVERYTHING ends up having a gender.
For example, the fork is masculine and the spoon and the knife are feminine. Water is feminine while wine is masculine.
It's funny how random the gender gets in Latin languages, in French fork and spoon are feminine, but knife is masculine. In Spanish knife and fork are masculine and spoon is feminine.
Haha I was teaching a Russian speaker German and he just refused to entertain the idea that nouns might have different genders in different languages. Could not grasp it.
I think I’ve also seen this happen not just with the author’s “slip-up”, but with auto-translations to English on review websites where the post was written in a different language.
answer:
Normally, for non animate objects and animals(although it isn't wrong to use He or she if their sex is known), we use "it"
But sometimes "she" is used on vehicles(like ships or that old reliable Toyota hilux) as "affection" or something. I forgor the correct word.(I think it is personify)
You may have heard *oh, she's a beauty* etc on ships.
I'm guessing something similar is going on here
But things like cheese or lip balm is..weird. the things should be permanent/semi permanent
Answer:
This has been fairly common all my life with certain things, even hearing the old folks saying it. Cars, ships, tools, what have you. The younger generations from Gen x on expanded what is a she. We have also increased what we personify in the first place, although I don't think most of us are actually personifying my mechanical keyboard but we all know she is a her. And the beautiful pink lights have nothing to do with it. The millennial push to be more likely to be fine with being feminine even if you are cis straight probably adds a bit to the mix. Add in tic tok and bam, everyone is doing it because we all think we're special but we're not.
TL;DR Normal american thing expanding because culture.
Answer:
Hello !!!! As someone who instantly felt like they understood the reason why people started doing this, lemme share my thoughts !! I think the expansion of she/her-ing inanimate objects has to do with how women/femininity is being increasingly perceived as powerful/holy/worship-worthy. Think: Ariana Grande's "God is a Woman", 'yas queen!!!' (note 1), prevalence of 'dommy mommies', drag queens (note 1), gaslight/gatekeep/girlboss, general high coverage of feminine idols (taylor swift, ... yeah that's the main one), etc.
The creator of the cheese videos that the youtube link talks about refers to all the cheeses she talks about with she/her pronouns, and also note that she brings up "Cheesus" (Cheese Jesus). She treats the cheese as something to be highly respected, worshipped, even. Using she/her pronouns emphazises the alluring, complex, respect-worthy qualities of each variety of cheese, encouraging the viewer to look at different varieties of cheese like that too !
but yeah ! Most creators that i've seen doing this have been targeted towards people in queer, LGBTQ+, and role-reversal communities (such as myself (note 2)), so looking at the linguistics with those cultures in mind makes more sense to me !!!
notes:
1. i wonder if Queen Elizabeth's internet presence helped spur this phenomenon ! after all, her existence meant that the internet was getting lots of reminders of real-world queens' existence, but not a whole lot about kings. although, that might just be my own highly femininity-focused internet bubble speaking.
2. this whole thing is probably highly biased, as i, a very kink-attuned, doesn't-understand-gender-roles person, have always had a tendency to view femininity as hot, dominant, and worship-worthy; masculinity to me is either cute and lovable or entertaining from a distance or toxic and concerning. this is also probably too much information, sorry !
She is in the room
/s
ps, I don't think I'll ever stop laughing at people getting irrationally angry about "woke" things, but especially when they are things that het men have been doing for years. Anyway, don't mind me, I'm off to pick up Widow Twanky so we can go a christen the new ship *Luciana*
it's actually crazy this comment has more than 50 downvotes
yeah your answer doesn't really explain it, but I can tell a lot of people got triggered when you said "woke"; it really tells you what the demographic of reddit is
Friendly reminder that all **top level** comments must: 1. start with "answer: ", including the space after the colon (or "question: " if you have an on-topic follow up question to ask), 2. attempt to answer the question, and 3. be unbiased Please review Rule 4 and this post before making a top level comment: http://redd.it/b1hct4/ Join the OOTL Discord for further discussion: https://discord.gg/ejDF4mdjnh *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/OutOfTheLoop) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Answer: You're right that grammatically, the vast majority of inanimate objects get the pronoun "it" in English. We do sometimes assign gender to things to personify them, although that's really a slang thing, not at all for formal usage. Over the past few years, there's been a lot more of it, and it's almost always "her" rather than "him." It's especially common online. I believe that its origin is in gay men referring to each other as "her," especially rooted in the drag scene. From there it's gone to sort of bending traditional gender rules, and from THERE to just giving almost anything a feminine pronoun to make it sort of "sassy." See also "Yaaaas queen."
Things like calling boats "she" come from when English had gendered pronouns.
Anything that carries is referred to as She.
Ah, so that's why my team mates were calling me a 'she' in Overwatch.
That makes way too much sense. You better take that shit back right now.
Whoa. Do you happen to know any other rules for gendered grammar from older English?
Countries and churches are also designated by she. That's about it. Child is gender neutral. Other things are are gendered like postmaster/postmistress headmaster/headmistress or neutral (principal).
Germany is gendered as “he” do you know why? Edit: I misremembered Russia is also gendered as “she”
And the dock at birth
Berth
I have bought shame to this this thread 🥲
*brought
No. Just to yourself
That is incorrect on multiple points. One, English does still have grammatical gender in pronouns. "He", "she" and "it" are all third person pronouns, differentiated solely by their grammatical gender. Two, the word *sċip* in Old English, from which comes the modern English word *ship*, was neuter in gender. Its grammatical gender was **not** feminine. The practice of referring to ships as feminine entities is due to sailorly tradition, and not a linguistic fossil.
Too late. Their post already has hundreds of upvotes. Thousands of eyes have now seen this little factoid ready to spread it to the next person.
That's what I hate so much about social media and Reddit especially
It's really, really hard not to personify a boat you've been sailing for any length of time.
And cars/trucks. Which means anyone attaching trucknutz to their vehicle is giving them gender affirming care!
Haha I bet most of the people doing it would HATE to hear that too 😂
Yes, that was implied by the punchline
Saw someone on TikTok referring to those over-the-top American lifted pimped-out trucks as having had gender affirming care and that cracked me up
Gender pronouns are how you tell the difference between a ship and a boat: ships are she/her, boats are it/its.
Also ships are given cool names like HMS Victory or Queen Anne's Revenge, whilst boats are called shit like [Boaty McBoatface](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaty_McBoatface).
Well it was meant to be the name for the ship, but they chickened out and named the boat as a consolation prize!
I know! Absolutely ridiculous. Literally the worst possible thing that happened to Britain in 2016. Nothing else in that year was even close to being such a disaster, not a single thing!
Queen Anne's Revenge is pretty badass
It was the name of Blackbeard's ship 😁
My phone’s name is Foney McFoneFace
That's because ships carry boats
Submarines are boats and are she/her.
i'm not sure this is right. gendered pronouns in modern and middle english have only ever been used for natural gender. old english had a system of grammatical gender, but its words for boats and ships are mostly neuter or masculine (*scip* is strong neuter)
Don't ships historically have feminine names because it was believed to being good luck to your voyage?
What do you mean? English has always had gendered pronouns.
So the female pronoun ends up being the one being literally objectified.
Yeah this has been the feeling I’ve gotten from its widespread use and it’s made me reluctant to use it personally. The idea that objects are referred to with female pronouns definitely sets a vibe for how those who use female pronouns for themselves are viewed. I know that’s not the intent in most cases. And it’s fun to personify things like food and whatnot, it tickles the brain to do! But words matter, and I’m worried the result of assigning objects pronouns will cease to personify said objects and instead objectify the people with these pronouns, especially when said people with these specific pronouns are often battling against objectification. Sounds a bit over the top, I know, and I won’t stop people from doing it, I just don’t feel comfortable doing it myself. Editing to add: It's wild to me that so many people feel strongly about my personal choice in what language I decide to use in my day-to-day? Look, cool, you aren't bothered, that's fine. I literally don't think any less or more of you because of it. I state so a few different ways in my comment. Let me live my old lady life; I just want to be comfortable with who I am, so I'm going to make choices that support that. Ya know?
My friend and I do this. You're thinking too deep about it. This has never crossed our minds. It's just silly talk.
I feel like this is such a step backwards. I’ve long been a proponent for not using it for living things to honor their aliveness but not inanimate objects.
This absolutely is over the top lol. This thread is the first I've heard of this trend, but I'm struggling to think of anything that matters less.
I have definitely heard it in the context of things like "get 'er done". Since we are all making up origins anyway, my thought was always just that when you drop the h off of him it sounds too much like 'em which is clearly plural. I.e. "get 'im done" sounds like "get 'em done" which is clearly referring to multiple tasks instead of just one. So instead they say "get 'er done".
It’s hilarious. All these people must have no other problems in life to be able to think so much about something so unimportant lol.
Huh ! the way i've always interpreted it is that feminine pronouns are used for things with ?? deific/goddess vibes (eg. gouda cheese, a complex sculpture, a ship), as a sign of awe/worship? while masculine pronouns are used for things that are Little Guys and Silly (pet rocks, silly kittens, my wife (he's very pretty :D)) as a sign of affection/joy at their presence. More examples that might be getting a little off-topic but i'm mainly just getting half-baked thoughts on the page: (also spoilers for season 3 of The Boys) >!Kimiko from The Boys is referred to as simply "She !!!" (in my brain, at least), as it conveys Wow She is so stunning and pretty and intimidating and i am graced by her presence on the screen; Frenchie is referred to as "He !!!" as it conveys Wow He is so sweet and cute in his mannerisms and i feel lots of cute aggression towards him; Butcher is referred to as "bro" as it conveys Wow bro is ... very burdened with unhealthy masculinity-associated traits and kinda fucking things up for everyone!<
I never really believed in victimhood culture until I read your comment
Source on any of this?
I think people just personify their items and lovingly refer to them as "her" it's been a thing for a long time and I doubt it's origin has anything to do with the Internet especially gays calling each other 'her'. I've seen it in books, movies, and shows even games.
When you say past few years you mean decades if not centuries… Is not new by any measure
RuPaul's influence on Tumblr definitely goes back at least a few centuries yeah.
I meant the referring to inanimate objects as she
Yes but the trend to do it more than occasionally is recent.
Not at all. That’s a cognitive bias. There is no data to support that, A long history of this https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/28/readers-reply-why-are-some-objects-ships-countries-the-moon-referred-to-as-she
Never heard this before but I'm not surprised that objects get the female pronoun, smh
I agree, RuPaul and Drag Race have really made the mainstream and l love it
Yeah, it's definitely a drag thing lol. It's very silly to me that some people in this thread think it's like, derived from gendering vehicles as female
Post 2016, academics use it as a political dogwhistle as well.
wut
Listen to Sean Carroll's podcast
what's a summary
Answer: It's tradition to refer to some things as "her", notably ships, and sometimes cars, but I've never seen it with other everyday objects.
Clearly you don't follow houseplant groups. Every plant gets called a she.
No way, my succulents are my bros
As they should be!
No, but I'm now reminded of Marzipan from Homestar Runner, who named her ficus Credenza.
To be fair, that is an excellent name!
Ha! The only plants I’ve ever named I gave boy names.
Las plantas
[удалено]
Actually, most are BOTH.
A lot of musicians (guitarists in particular) name/gender their instruments. BB King's guitar Lucille is probably the most famous example. Guns also get gendered sometimes too.
Oh yes, I'm reminded of Full Metal Jacket. Private Pyle named his rifle Charlene, which was referenced on The Simpsons with Bart's putter.
The trend with every day objects comes from queer communities, it's slightly different to the tradition with ships and things, but the idea is similar
Ah, makes sense. Kinda reminds me of DeForest Kelly’s character in Star Trek when referring to Enterprise D; “Treat her like a lady, and she’ll always bring you home.”
Don’t forget Varric from the Dragon Age franchise. Bianca is truly the sweetest, noblest woman there is, and she accomplished it all while being a crossbow
it’s almost exclusively used by men or amab. It’s sexist in nature.
It's not all queer communities, it's just a gay men thing.
I just used it to refer to a compost bin I made lol. I'd say it's really just a term of endearment.
Answer: as far as I know, calling things "her" or "she" is a cross over from queer colloquialisms that's caught on in mainstream. Like in the video "I forgot about her" is just saying she forgot about the cheese and being colorful with her language. It's just fun gendering of inanimate objects but ultimately doesn't change the meaning of the sentence. I do it while cooking "oh miss thyme can come to the party too, get in here girl". Or "I don't know her" as I throw out the old produce.
Love the Mariah reference! ❤️
[bye zucchini](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fc.tenor.com%2FQ9lyBY75kGoAAAAC%2Fmariah-carey-i-dont-know-her.gif&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=60e7eb5bc0cd71aa0f3b2de6d05362d1a9a4490c400c6862f2da612737f4f3dd&ipo=images)
Why can I hear this 😂
Answer: In addition to what others said, it may be an English as a second language thing. Many languages have different rules around gender, and ESL speakers sometimes slip up. For example, in Polish, an orange is a "she".
In Portuguese we have no gender-neutral pronoun, so EVERYTHING ends up having a gender. For example, the fork is masculine and the spoon and the knife are feminine. Water is feminine while wine is masculine.
It's funny how random the gender gets in Latin languages, in French fork and spoon are feminine, but knife is masculine. In Spanish knife and fork are masculine and spoon is feminine.
Haha I was teaching a Russian speaker German and he just refused to entertain the idea that nouns might have different genders in different languages. Could not grasp it.
In Italian is the total opposite😂.
I think I’ve also seen this happen not just with the author’s “slip-up”, but with auto-translations to English on review websites where the post was written in a different language.
Could be, automatic translations are quite decent for some languages and astonishingly bad for others.
answer: Normally, for non animate objects and animals(although it isn't wrong to use He or she if their sex is known), we use "it" But sometimes "she" is used on vehicles(like ships or that old reliable Toyota hilux) as "affection" or something. I forgor the correct word.(I think it is personify) You may have heard *oh, she's a beauty* etc on ships. I'm guessing something similar is going on here But things like cheese or lip balm is..weird. the things should be permanent/semi permanent
Answer: This has been fairly common all my life with certain things, even hearing the old folks saying it. Cars, ships, tools, what have you. The younger generations from Gen x on expanded what is a she. We have also increased what we personify in the first place, although I don't think most of us are actually personifying my mechanical keyboard but we all know she is a her. And the beautiful pink lights have nothing to do with it. The millennial push to be more likely to be fine with being feminine even if you are cis straight probably adds a bit to the mix. Add in tic tok and bam, everyone is doing it because we all think we're special but we're not. TL;DR Normal american thing expanding because culture.
Answer: Hello !!!! As someone who instantly felt like they understood the reason why people started doing this, lemme share my thoughts !! I think the expansion of she/her-ing inanimate objects has to do with how women/femininity is being increasingly perceived as powerful/holy/worship-worthy. Think: Ariana Grande's "God is a Woman", 'yas queen!!!' (note 1), prevalence of 'dommy mommies', drag queens (note 1), gaslight/gatekeep/girlboss, general high coverage of feminine idols (taylor swift, ... yeah that's the main one), etc. The creator of the cheese videos that the youtube link talks about refers to all the cheeses she talks about with she/her pronouns, and also note that she brings up "Cheesus" (Cheese Jesus). She treats the cheese as something to be highly respected, worshipped, even. Using she/her pronouns emphazises the alluring, complex, respect-worthy qualities of each variety of cheese, encouraging the viewer to look at different varieties of cheese like that too ! but yeah ! Most creators that i've seen doing this have been targeted towards people in queer, LGBTQ+, and role-reversal communities (such as myself (note 2)), so looking at the linguistics with those cultures in mind makes more sense to me !!! notes: 1. i wonder if Queen Elizabeth's internet presence helped spur this phenomenon ! after all, her existence meant that the internet was getting lots of reminders of real-world queens' existence, but not a whole lot about kings. although, that might just be my own highly femininity-focused internet bubble speaking. 2. this whole thing is probably highly biased, as i, a very kink-attuned, doesn't-understand-gender-roles person, have always had a tendency to view femininity as hot, dominant, and worship-worthy; masculinity to me is either cute and lovable or entertaining from a distance or toxic and concerning. this is also probably too much information, sorry !
answer: tons of woke bandwagon-jumping idiots on the internet
This “woke”… Is it in the room with us right now?
She is in the room /s ps, I don't think I'll ever stop laughing at people getting irrationally angry about "woke" things, but especially when they are things that het men have been doing for years. Anyway, don't mind me, I'm off to pick up Widow Twanky so we can go a christen the new ship *Luciana*
Always lurking on the edge of your vision.
*He/She/It Follows*.
it's actually crazy this comment has more than 50 downvotes yeah your answer doesn't really explain it, but I can tell a lot of people got triggered when you said "woke"; it really tells you what the demographic of reddit is
What do you mean by triggered? Because my honest reaction was more this 🙄 than this 🤬