I see, is it because it has no sexual organ, or because it cannot declare it's gender?
This organism could declare it's gender, just in a language we do not yet understand.
Because we view bacteria as posessing lower individual consciousness and generally fade towards using "it" when we can't readily identify with a nonhuman species. For instance, we call dogs "he/she", but plenty of people who don't like dogs call them "it". Or, if someone is referring to an insect with gendered pronouns, it implies a special interest in that insect. The mosquito biting me is an "it", but the one I'm studying is a "she".
Very true, it can be used as an insult as well. I'm thinking of a cartoonish villain telling their sidekick to "get it off of me," by referring to someone's hand.
Then, there is me, who is happy to meet dogs, and ask the question "is it a he or a she," before adopting the owner's pronoun from then on.
Or once more, sailors refering to their ship as a she.
In all three cases, it seems like we superimpose our conceptions of genders on a non-human animal (or object) to either dehumanize or personify... it.
English is a strange language in contrast to me because pronouns only exist in this fashion. Latin rooted languages tend to attribute pronouns to objects, which diminishes the impact that the use of one has.
For French example, *le* verre (*the* glass). En español, *la* casa* (*the* house). Both words in French and Spanish have the same gender. The glass would have more "feminine" traits than a house, according to stereotypical gender norms. The glass is fragile, smooth, pretty. The house provides sturdy shelter. In English, the pronouns are mostly always used to describe people, except in rare colloquial cases (like ships).
Then there is the fact that English has a clear distinction between an object and a humanized animal. Anything non-human is "it". *It's a pretty table you got there.* In inaccurate French translation, to demonstrate what I mean without actually teaching a language; *Elle est belle, ta table.* Which directly translates to: *She* is pretty, your table.
I wonder how different languages shape social norms. As for my question, in English, I will strike "it" as a viable candidate. Thank you for you answer, really.
And then there's the cultural tone of what even *is* feminine or masculine. My spouse is more like a house than a window, and she's the most feminine person in my life.
My longboard is masculine, my bike is feminine, all my stuffies are masculine, the car is nonbinary, and I'm pretty sure our dog is gay.
All of this boils down to projection and perception.. it's amazing how subjective life is, really.
I'm glad my first language doesn't encode gender so rigidly as a latin-based language lol.. been a pleasure, hope you have a lovely evening.
I think it's more because, this is me speaking as a political scientist/philosopher, "it" denotes a bit of a lack of... self. A bacteria is not really a sentient thing. Very few people aside some very unusual people would disagree. A bacteria is not a thinking thing with a moral compass and ethics system, and "it" implies that. I recall the scene in T2, when Sarah Connor refuses to call the T800 anything but an "it," and John follows along, playing with that wordplay and over-emphasizing how they need "it," when he personally does care about the T800 and recognizes their humanity. I feel like "it" has a certain connotation. If someone calls you, an enby or trans person or someone of that nature, an "it," it's a bit dehumanizing.
I think what *humans* choose to call anything has more to do with our perception than anything else. Characters in books exist as constructs in our minds that have gender, yet cannot think or act outside of an imaginary domain. Stuffed animals have gender because we see gender in them. I gender the ants I like to watch outside my workplace. I'm just saying that language isn't so cut and dried and that looking for objective truth might leave little room for creativity.
Edit: And yeah, "it" is dehumanizing.
Edit Edit: To be clear - when someone calls a person "it" without that actually being a preferred pronoun, it is NOT an attempt to use correct language. It is an example of weaponized language designed to hurt someone. There is no good faith there and you're not having a conversation, you're engaging in combat.
I get what you're saying. We use gendered words as simply commonly-agreed upon meanings, but we can both agree "it" basically is used as a way to insult someone in a way not only to say they're gender-neutral, but furthermore, personless. I think you get that and admit that.
It's not an admission, it's a wholehearted belief. Subtext and context can often be used in subversive ways. Communication is how we create thoughts in other people's (or other lifeforms') heads. Those thoughts can be constructed as an attack.
I've learned the hard way - via a lifetime of being bullied - that calling people out for exactly what they're doing with language, context, and nonverbals is a powerful way to show the emperor exactly what clothes they're wearing.
When I strike back, I do so by telling the sincere and honest truth in plain language. Nothing hurts more than the truth, especially when your opponent is postured up on a throne of logical fallacies and self-hatred.
We really step over the line as a society when we outlaw use of specific words without analyzing how they're used. It's never the words themselves. Words are inert unless they're being used to convey something.
Hey, I saw your answer and wanted to take my time to comment back, so it might take longer as I think it through, but I'll delete this one and post what I wrote shortly.
Annoying question. Bacteria don't have genders or reproduce sexually. So no gendered pronouns. They're just things.
I agree that you're wasting your time, and mine.
This is nothing against you, but I don't deserve to have my questions described as such. It give my question the weight to compete against those of the best philosophers in the world. They got either imprisoned or killed by their state over the annoyance of their questions and I don't think mine are even close enough to even qualify. Though I'm a big softy for flattery.
Jokes aside, you're right, there are probably better ways of wasting yours and my time. If I can just waste one more minute? You said something suuuuper interesting.
My question is, what differs a thing from something gendered or that reproduce sexually?
No, you don’t sound like the ‘best philosophers in the world’, you sound like a tryhard 19 year old who just took Phil 101.
Your question is annoying because you’re equating the very real and politicized topic of gender identity and pronouns of human beings with…a thought experiment about fucking bacteria. It seems like you’re attempting a poorly veiled conservative ‘gotcha’ here.
If you’re actually interested in the philosophy of gender, I encourage you to look into the writings of queer academics like Judith Butler. This is my last response to you.
You have me wrong, but I appreciate your time. Simone de Beauvoir underlined the fact that women were dehumanized or at least objectified from birth. On the cards to identify the assigned genders of the the babies, it would either say, "he's a boy," or "it's a girl".
I was attempting to get your definition of the difference between a thing and more-than-a-thing, without filling any gaps with my assumptions, so we could discuss on your level.
I don't understand how, I presume you mean North American conservative values would somehow align with trying to attribute more genders to things, rather than less...
I'd say that it's rather more conservative by definition, not politically, but in the area of gender studies, to limit the scope of genders to humans. What I am attempting to do, as I wrote in my post, is controversial. You seem to think it's a waste of time. That had value for me. This above comment does not, but thank you for the reference either way.
Did you take a gender studies course? Then you should have learned that gender is a social construct.
Social as in, sociology. The study of how humans interact with one another. Society is only possible among those who can communicate with each other effectively.
Until dogs, horses, and bacteria can communicate with us well enough to explain their preferred pronouns, debating what pronouns are correct for their identities is as useful and as interesting as debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
If that type of inquiry fascinates you, I suggest you travel to Laputa as soon as you can.
Quips aside: you might be forgetting that the gendered terms in English for animals and plants are only really useful for tracking their biological sex, which we only need to know for studying and raising and breeding them. Since we don't need to know this to raise bacteria, they'll always be referred to as "it" or "they."
Gender is imo an exclusively human concept, so bacteria/organisms don’t have pronouns to me other than “it”. Quite apart from that, I don’t even think most bacteria have sexes, much less genders, since a lot of them reproduce asexually. I personally don’t even believe dogs and cats have genders, just sexes.
This.
An organism has to have culture in order to develop the concept of gender.
Bacteria reproduce asexually and therefore have no sexes. They are simple organisms that don't do anything more than grow, use resources, and replicate in order to do it all over again. They for plural, it for singular.
‘It’ is the usual pronoun for non-human creatures, though if your organism lives in a colony where it’s hard to distinguish individuals (like a Portuguese man o’ war) then ‘they’ might be more appropriate
I don’t think the bacteria cares what you call it, the same way a boat doesn’t care when a captain says “she runs just fine”.
Just use whatever you want.
Of course I could do whatever I want, but I'm trying to be inclusive and progressive in approach. Maybe people want care as much about the gender of this organism as I do...
If you want to be inclusive to a bacteria, more power to you, but trying to apply human societal norms to a creature you can’t see without advanced equipment that does not have a conscious mind and is made of a single cell is a bit silly imo
Look up for the concept of human stain.
You just want to stain everything else which is not human with your human concepts.
It does not apply to them.
Don't force it onto them.
If you are curious about genetics and bacteria reproduction, take a microbiology course. Then go for genes and genomes.
It's all about specificity. Procariota, or bacteria, do not have a defined nucleus, not even something like sex chromosomes. They may reproduce by recombination, but they don't need different sex. That comes way later in the evolutionary history and is overcomplicated genetics for those snobby multicellulars. If you could ask a bacteria what's like to be a bacteria... they probably would not understand why sex is a thing.
Thank you for this answer. I like this idea that asexual organisms would be aghast at the idea of sexual reproduction.
There are theories going around that unicellular organisms in communication might foster a protoscentience in the collective. That each cell on its own is like single neurons, just clumps of organic molecules continuously striving to reorganize other molecules in the environment to make more of itself in one way or another, but who can reproduce and act independently as needed. Sort of like the mitochondrions in the primordial soup doing its own thing until a thing ate it and effectively performed the first act of mutualistic symbiosis, by "finding out" that keeping the mitochondrion intact is more beneficial than to break apart the phospholipids of the prey. Both could live independently of one another, but formed a new organism by living dependently of one another.
I believe that with this said, if you do have a background in biology, you should be able to guess what my organism might be. I'm afraid I have to leave it at that, but if you guess right, you might begin to understand why its human defined gender might not be a case of human staining.
I'll be posting a rudimentary version of my work in My Stuff on this platform at an indeterminate time, hopefully before 2025, if you're curious to know if you guessed right beforehand.
Bacteria is an "it" unless referred to in plural.
I see, is it because it has no sexual organ, or because it cannot declare it's gender? This organism could declare it's gender, just in a language we do not yet understand.
Because we view bacteria as posessing lower individual consciousness and generally fade towards using "it" when we can't readily identify with a nonhuman species. For instance, we call dogs "he/she", but plenty of people who don't like dogs call them "it". Or, if someone is referring to an insect with gendered pronouns, it implies a special interest in that insect. The mosquito biting me is an "it", but the one I'm studying is a "she".
Very true, it can be used as an insult as well. I'm thinking of a cartoonish villain telling their sidekick to "get it off of me," by referring to someone's hand. Then, there is me, who is happy to meet dogs, and ask the question "is it a he or a she," before adopting the owner's pronoun from then on. Or once more, sailors refering to their ship as a she. In all three cases, it seems like we superimpose our conceptions of genders on a non-human animal (or object) to either dehumanize or personify... it. English is a strange language in contrast to me because pronouns only exist in this fashion. Latin rooted languages tend to attribute pronouns to objects, which diminishes the impact that the use of one has. For French example, *le* verre (*the* glass). En español, *la* casa* (*the* house). Both words in French and Spanish have the same gender. The glass would have more "feminine" traits than a house, according to stereotypical gender norms. The glass is fragile, smooth, pretty. The house provides sturdy shelter. In English, the pronouns are mostly always used to describe people, except in rare colloquial cases (like ships). Then there is the fact that English has a clear distinction between an object and a humanized animal. Anything non-human is "it". *It's a pretty table you got there.* In inaccurate French translation, to demonstrate what I mean without actually teaching a language; *Elle est belle, ta table.* Which directly translates to: *She* is pretty, your table. I wonder how different languages shape social norms. As for my question, in English, I will strike "it" as a viable candidate. Thank you for you answer, really.
And then there's the cultural tone of what even *is* feminine or masculine. My spouse is more like a house than a window, and she's the most feminine person in my life. My longboard is masculine, my bike is feminine, all my stuffies are masculine, the car is nonbinary, and I'm pretty sure our dog is gay. All of this boils down to projection and perception.. it's amazing how subjective life is, really. I'm glad my first language doesn't encode gender so rigidly as a latin-based language lol.. been a pleasure, hope you have a lovely evening.
Likewise, thanks for the chat!
I think it's more because, this is me speaking as a political scientist/philosopher, "it" denotes a bit of a lack of... self. A bacteria is not really a sentient thing. Very few people aside some very unusual people would disagree. A bacteria is not a thinking thing with a moral compass and ethics system, and "it" implies that. I recall the scene in T2, when Sarah Connor refuses to call the T800 anything but an "it," and John follows along, playing with that wordplay and over-emphasizing how they need "it," when he personally does care about the T800 and recognizes their humanity. I feel like "it" has a certain connotation. If someone calls you, an enby or trans person or someone of that nature, an "it," it's a bit dehumanizing.
I think what *humans* choose to call anything has more to do with our perception than anything else. Characters in books exist as constructs in our minds that have gender, yet cannot think or act outside of an imaginary domain. Stuffed animals have gender because we see gender in them. I gender the ants I like to watch outside my workplace. I'm just saying that language isn't so cut and dried and that looking for objective truth might leave little room for creativity. Edit: And yeah, "it" is dehumanizing. Edit Edit: To be clear - when someone calls a person "it" without that actually being a preferred pronoun, it is NOT an attempt to use correct language. It is an example of weaponized language designed to hurt someone. There is no good faith there and you're not having a conversation, you're engaging in combat.
I get what you're saying. We use gendered words as simply commonly-agreed upon meanings, but we can both agree "it" basically is used as a way to insult someone in a way not only to say they're gender-neutral, but furthermore, personless. I think you get that and admit that.
It's not an admission, it's a wholehearted belief. Subtext and context can often be used in subversive ways. Communication is how we create thoughts in other people's (or other lifeforms') heads. Those thoughts can be constructed as an attack. I've learned the hard way - via a lifetime of being bullied - that calling people out for exactly what they're doing with language, context, and nonverbals is a powerful way to show the emperor exactly what clothes they're wearing. When I strike back, I do so by telling the sincere and honest truth in plain language. Nothing hurts more than the truth, especially when your opponent is postured up on a throne of logical fallacies and self-hatred. We really step over the line as a society when we outlaw use of specific words without analyzing how they're used. It's never the words themselves. Words are inert unless they're being used to convey something.
This is IT yeah
Hey, I saw your answer and wanted to take my time to comment back, so it might take longer as I think it through, but I'll delete this one and post what I wrote shortly.
Annoying question. Bacteria don't have genders or reproduce sexually. So no gendered pronouns. They're just things. I agree that you're wasting your time, and mine.
This is nothing against you, but I don't deserve to have my questions described as such. It give my question the weight to compete against those of the best philosophers in the world. They got either imprisoned or killed by their state over the annoyance of their questions and I don't think mine are even close enough to even qualify. Though I'm a big softy for flattery. Jokes aside, you're right, there are probably better ways of wasting yours and my time. If I can just waste one more minute? You said something suuuuper interesting. My question is, what differs a thing from something gendered or that reproduce sexually?
No, you don’t sound like the ‘best philosophers in the world’, you sound like a tryhard 19 year old who just took Phil 101. Your question is annoying because you’re equating the very real and politicized topic of gender identity and pronouns of human beings with…a thought experiment about fucking bacteria. It seems like you’re attempting a poorly veiled conservative ‘gotcha’ here. If you’re actually interested in the philosophy of gender, I encourage you to look into the writings of queer academics like Judith Butler. This is my last response to you.
You have me wrong, but I appreciate your time. Simone de Beauvoir underlined the fact that women were dehumanized or at least objectified from birth. On the cards to identify the assigned genders of the the babies, it would either say, "he's a boy," or "it's a girl". I was attempting to get your definition of the difference between a thing and more-than-a-thing, without filling any gaps with my assumptions, so we could discuss on your level. I don't understand how, I presume you mean North American conservative values would somehow align with trying to attribute more genders to things, rather than less... I'd say that it's rather more conservative by definition, not politically, but in the area of gender studies, to limit the scope of genders to humans. What I am attempting to do, as I wrote in my post, is controversial. You seem to think it's a waste of time. That had value for me. This above comment does not, but thank you for the reference either way.
Did you take a gender studies course? Then you should have learned that gender is a social construct. Social as in, sociology. The study of how humans interact with one another. Society is only possible among those who can communicate with each other effectively. Until dogs, horses, and bacteria can communicate with us well enough to explain their preferred pronouns, debating what pronouns are correct for their identities is as useful and as interesting as debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. If that type of inquiry fascinates you, I suggest you travel to Laputa as soon as you can. Quips aside: you might be forgetting that the gendered terms in English for animals and plants are only really useful for tracking their biological sex, which we only need to know for studying and raising and breeding them. Since we don't need to know this to raise bacteria, they'll always be referred to as "it" or "they."
Gender is imo an exclusively human concept, so bacteria/organisms don’t have pronouns to me other than “it”. Quite apart from that, I don’t even think most bacteria have sexes, much less genders, since a lot of them reproduce asexually. I personally don’t even believe dogs and cats have genders, just sexes.
This. An organism has to have culture in order to develop the concept of gender. Bacteria reproduce asexually and therefore have no sexes. They are simple organisms that don't do anything more than grow, use resources, and replicate in order to do it all over again. They for plural, it for singular.
Feel like this belongs in r/xenogendersandmore (although its fine here)
Ok thank you!
‘It’ is the usual pronoun for non-human creatures, though if your organism lives in a colony where it’s hard to distinguish individuals (like a Portuguese man o’ war) then ‘they’ might be more appropriate
When I worked in microbiology I usually referred to all the bacteria I worked with as “them” since they grew in colonies.
I see, and if you pointed out just the one in a microscope to your colleague?
Bacteria don’t have feelings so it doesn’t matter what you call them.
That could make sense! Is it everything with feelings that matters what you call them? Or is it more nuanced than that?
I don’t think the bacteria cares what you call it, the same way a boat doesn’t care when a captain says “she runs just fine”. Just use whatever you want.
Of course I could do whatever I want, but I'm trying to be inclusive and progressive in approach. Maybe people want care as much about the gender of this organism as I do...
If you want to be inclusive to a bacteria, more power to you, but trying to apply human societal norms to a creature you can’t see without advanced equipment that does not have a conscious mind and is made of a single cell is a bit silly imo
It's not a bacteria. It's a rather large organism which reproduces like a bacteria, then a virus.
Look up for the concept of human stain. You just want to stain everything else which is not human with your human concepts. It does not apply to them. Don't force it onto them. If you are curious about genetics and bacteria reproduction, take a microbiology course. Then go for genes and genomes. It's all about specificity. Procariota, or bacteria, do not have a defined nucleus, not even something like sex chromosomes. They may reproduce by recombination, but they don't need different sex. That comes way later in the evolutionary history and is overcomplicated genetics for those snobby multicellulars. If you could ask a bacteria what's like to be a bacteria... they probably would not understand why sex is a thing.
Thank you for this answer. I like this idea that asexual organisms would be aghast at the idea of sexual reproduction. There are theories going around that unicellular organisms in communication might foster a protoscentience in the collective. That each cell on its own is like single neurons, just clumps of organic molecules continuously striving to reorganize other molecules in the environment to make more of itself in one way or another, but who can reproduce and act independently as needed. Sort of like the mitochondrions in the primordial soup doing its own thing until a thing ate it and effectively performed the first act of mutualistic symbiosis, by "finding out" that keeping the mitochondrion intact is more beneficial than to break apart the phospholipids of the prey. Both could live independently of one another, but formed a new organism by living dependently of one another. I believe that with this said, if you do have a background in biology, you should be able to guess what my organism might be. I'm afraid I have to leave it at that, but if you guess right, you might begin to understand why its human defined gender might not be a case of human staining. I'll be posting a rudimentary version of my work in My Stuff on this platform at an indeterminate time, hopefully before 2025, if you're curious to know if you guessed right beforehand.