Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am sitting here in our living room in Jerusalem with my brother. It is a surprisingly chilly evening for February, and the wind is rattling the shutters a bit, but we are cozy in here with some tea and a very dense topic to unpack.
Herman Poppleberry, at your service. And I have to say, Corn, I have been looking forward to this one. It is a topic that sits right at the intersection of linguistics, sociology, and database architecture. It is rare that we get a prompt that allows me to talk about both the evolution of the singular they and the limitations of a boolean data type in the same breath.
It is definitely a heavy one. Today's prompt comes from Daniel, and he wants us to dive into gender identity and gender politics. Specifically, he is asking about the emergence of pronoun usage as a social norm, the rationale behind it, and the technical implications of how we track this stuff in large-scale systems. It is something that has really come to a head over the last decade, and even now, on this eighteenth day of February, two thousand twenty-six, the debate feels just as intense as it did five years ago, though the front lines have shifted a bit.
It is one of those shifts that feels sudden if you were not paying attention, but when you look at the history, the breadcrumbs were there for a long time. Daniel mentioned in his note that it feels very United States centric, and I think that is a really important starting point. Why did this specific way of talking about identity take off there first, and why has it become such a global export?
I think it is partially the language itself. English is actually quite flexible compared to many other languages. We already had the singular they, even if some grammarians hated it for centuries. We use it all the time without thinking—like saying, someone left their umbrella in the hallway. But if you look at a language like Hebrew, which we hear every day here in Jerusalem, or French, or Spanish, gender is baked into almost every verb and adjective. In Hebrew, you cannot even say I am tired or I am eating without choosing a gendered form of the word. There is no neutral middle ground in the grammar.
That is a great point. In English, you can go a long time without gendered language until you hit a third-person pronoun like he or she. So, the push to include those in email signatures or social media bios was a relatively small linguistic tweak that carried a massive amount of social weight. It was a way to signal that gender is not something you can just assume based on a name or an appearance. It was a disruption of the default.
And that brings us to the rationale Daniel asked about. The core idea is that gender identity is internal, and the external expression might not match traditional expectations. For non-binary people—those who do not fit into the categories of man or woman—the traditional pronouns were not just inaccurate, they were often a source of genuine distress.
Right, and the term we use for that is gender dysphoria. When the world constantly reflects back an image of you that does not match who you are, it is exhausting. It is like being called by the wrong name every single day of your life. So, the move to specify pronouns was originally about creating a space where people could be addressed correctly. But then it evolved into this broader movement of solidarity.
Yeah, the solidarity aspect is what I think confuses a lot of people who are looking at this from the outside. You see someone who clearly identifies as a man, who has lived as a man their whole life, and they put he/him in their social media bio. To an outsider, that looks redundant. It is like putting human in your bio. But the logic is that if only trans and non-binary people share their pronouns, then sharing your pronouns becomes a neon sign that says I am different or I am trans. It marks them as the other.
Exactly. It is about normalization. If everyone does it, it becomes a standard piece of information, like a phone number or an email address. It removes the stigma. It says, I am participating in this system where we do not make assumptions about each other. It is a gesture of allyship meant to make the environment safer for those who are at higher risk of being misgendered. By the time we hit twenty-twenty-two or twenty-twenty-three, this was standard practice in almost every Fortune five hundred company in the United States.
But we have to acknowledge that this has become incredibly divisive. For some, it feels like an imposition of a specific ideology on language itself. They see it as a rejection of biological reality in favor of subjective identity. And because it started in American academic and activist circles, it carries that specific cultural baggage wherever it goes. It is often seen as a form of cultural imperialism when it is pushed in countries with very different linguistic and social structures.
Oh, for sure. The term woke is often used as a pejorative in this context, especially when this movement hits more conservative or traditional cultures. In two thousand twenty-six, we are seeing this play out globally in a very messy way. You have multinational corporations based in San Francisco or New York trying to implement these pronoun policies in their satellite offices in Warsaw, or Riyadh, or even parts of Tokyo, and the friction is palpable. It is a clash of universalist Western values versus local traditionalism.
I want to dig into the technical side of this, Herman, because that is where I think you have spent some time looking at the actual data structures. Daniel asked about the move from defined gender fields to free-form pronoun fields. From a developer's perspective, that sounds like a nightmare for anyone trying to maintain a clean database.
It really is, Corn. For decades, the standard way to store this data was a simple binary. In a database, you would have a column called gender, and it would be a boolean—true or false—or a small integer. Zero for male, one for female. It is incredibly efficient. It is easy to index, easy to query, and it takes up almost no space. It follows the I-S-O five two one eight standard, which has been the international bedrock for data exchange for a long time.
And I imagine that simplicity is baked into everything from medical records to tax software and airline booking systems.
Every single legacy system you can imagine. Now, imagine you want to be more inclusive. The first step many systems took was adding a third option, often labeled other or non-binary. But that is still a categorical system. The real shift Daniel is talking about is moving to a free-form text field for pronouns. This is where the technical debt starts to pile up like a mountain.
Why is that so much harder? Is it not just another text box?
Okay, so let's talk about data normalization. If I let you type whatever you want into a box, I am going to get he slash him, he slash him slash his, just he, or maybe something like they slash them. Some people might get creative or even use it to make a joke, which we see a lot of in the logs. If I am a data scientist trying to generate a report on how many non-binary people use our service to justify a new feature, a free-form field is a disaster. I have to write complex regular expressions and cleaning scripts just to make the data usable.
So, you lose the ability to easily aggregate the information. You cannot just hit a button and see the breakdown.
Precisely. And then there is the U-I and U-X side of it—the user interface and user experience. If you have a free-form field, how do you handle it in the interface? If the system needs to send an automated email that says, please tell him his order is ready, it has to be able to parse that free-form text to find the correct possessive or objective form. If the user just typed they, the system might fail or produce ungrammatical sentences like please tell they their order is ready. To do it right, you actually need a complex schema that tracks the subjective, objective, and possessive forms separately.
That sounds like a lot of technical debt being created in the name of social progress. It is almost like we are re-engineering the English language inside of a S-Q-L database. Is there a middle ground?
Some systems are moving toward a multi-select list of the most common pronouns—he, she, they—with an optional custom field for those who use neo-pronouns like ze or zir. That keeps the data relatively clean while still allowing for self-expression. But even then, you have the problem of historical data. If you have a database of fifty million users, migrating that column from a binary integer to a variable-length string is a massive operation. It can take hours or even days for the migration to run, during which the system might be offline or at least partially degraded. In the world of high-frequency trading or healthcare, you cannot just turn the database off for a day to change a gender field.
And that is just the private sector. Think about government bureaucracy. We are talking about passports, driver's licenses, and birth certificates. In many countries, those systems are still running on C-O-B-O-L or other ancient languages from the nineteen-seventies. Changing the fundamental way they categorize citizens is not just a policy change; it is a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure project.
It is the ultimate example of social change outpacing technical reality. And we are seeing the consequences of that here in two thousand twenty-six. There have been several high-profile cases over the last year where government databases in various countries crashed or errored out because they could not handle the new gender markers like the X marker on passports. It creates real-world problems for people who just want their I-D to reflect who they are, but the system literally cannot see them. It throws a null pointer exception and stops the process.
I wonder if part of the pushback we see is actually a subconscious reaction to this complexity. People like things to be simple and categorized. When you tell them that a fundamental category like man or woman is now a fluid, self-defined text field, it feels like the ground is shifting under their feet. It is not just about the pronouns; it is about the loss of a shared, objective framework that we have used to organize society for thousands of years.
That is a very astute observation, Corn. We are moving from a world of objective classification to a world of subjective declaration. In the old world, the system told you what you were based on physical observation. In the new world, you tell the system what you are based on internal identity. That is a massive shift in the power dynamic between the individual and the institution. It is the democratization of identity, but it comes with a high cost of coordination.
And it is not just happening in the United States. Even though Daniel noted it as a U-S-centric phenomenon, the influence of American tech and media means it is being exported everywhere. If you are a teenager in Tokyo or Berlin or even here in Jerusalem, you are seeing this discourse on your phone every single day. You are seeing the debates on social media, and you are seeing the pronoun fields on the apps you use.
Right, but the way it is received is so different depending on the local context. In Japan, for example, the language already has multiple ways to say I depending on your social status, your gender, and who you are talking to—words like watashi, boku, or ore. But those are very rigid and tied to social hierarchy. The American style of pronoun declaration does not necessarily map onto that smoothly. It can feel like a foreign cultural layer being pasted on top of a very different social structure. It creates a kind of linguistic dissonance.
I think we should also talk about the impact on free speech, which is a big part of the political debate. In some jurisdictions, using the wrong pronouns can now lead to workplace disciplinary action or even legal trouble under harassment laws. That is where the debate moves from social etiquette to state-mandated speech, and that is where a lot of the most intense friction occurs. People who might be willing to be polite in person are often very resistant to being told by a government or a corporation exactly which words they are required to use.
Yeah, the distinction between compelled speech and prohibited speech is a vital one in legal theory. Most people are fine with not being allowed to say certain slurs—that is prohibited speech. But being told you must use specific words that you might not believe are accurate is a different level of intervention. It touches on the core of how we perceive truth and how we communicate that truth to others. In two thousand twenty-six, we are seeing several court cases in the United Kingdom and the United States trying to find the line between harassment and the right to misgender based on religious or philosophical beliefs.
It is funny, because we are talking about this as two brothers who have a very traditional relationship with our own gender. I have never doubted that I am a man, and I suspect you haven't either, Herman. We have never had to fight for the right to be addressed correctly.
Guilty as charged. I am quite comfortable in my Poppleberry skin. I have never had to explain my pronouns to a confused clerk at the Ministry of the Interior.
But I think that is why it is important for people like us to try and understand the rationale. If we just dismiss it as a weird trend or a technical headache, we miss the fact that for a significant number of people, this is about basic dignity. If something as simple as changing a field in a database or adding a couple of words to an email signature can make someone feel seen and respected, is it really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things?
From a human perspective, maybe not. It is a small act of kindness. But from a technical and philosophical perspective, it is a huge deal. It represents a fundamental change in how we organize society. We are moving away from a world where we have a small set of shared, immutable categories toward a world of infinite, individualized identities. That is a much more complex world to manage. It is the difference between a library where every book is either fiction or non-fiction, and a library where every reader gets to decide what category their book belongs in.
That is a great analogy. The first library is very easy to navigate, but you are going to have a lot of books that do not quite fit. You are going to have memoirs that read like novels and historical texts that are mostly speculation. The second library is much more accurate to the content of the books, but you might never be able to find anything because the categories are constantly shifting.
Exactly. So, where do we go from here? It is two thousand twenty-six, the tech is struggling to keep up, the politics are as polarized as ever, and the global impact is uneven. Do you see a point of stabilization?
I think we are seeing the beginning of a two-tiered system. You have the global, digital culture—the world of the internet and multinational corporations—which is becoming increasingly fluid and inclusive of these new norms. In that world, pronouns are just another piece of metadata. And then you have local, physical cultures that are often digging in their heels and passing laws to restrict these changes. I think we will see more sophisticated technical solutions, like better data standards for identity that can handle this complexity without breaking the system. But the social tension? That is going to be with us for a long time.
It feels like we are in the middle of a great re-negotiation of the social contract. And language is the battlefield because it is the primary tool we use to build our shared reality. If we cannot agree on what he or she or they means, it is very hard to agree on anything else. We are essentially arguing over the source code of reality.
And for the listeners who might be feeling overwhelmed by all this, I think it is worth remembering that language has always changed. The way we talk about everything from race to disability to mental health has shifted radically in the last fifty years. This is just the latest chapter in that long story. We used to use words for people that we would never dream of using today. We adapted then, and we will adapt now.
That is a very measured take, Corn. I think it is also worth pointing out that this is not just a top-down imposition from some shadowy elite. It is a bottom-up movement. It is coming from people who have felt invisible for a long time and are finally finding the words to describe themselves. That is a powerful force, and you cannot just ignore it or program it away with a better database schema.
No, you definitely can't. Though I am sure some developers are trying to write a script to do exactly that as we speak. One thing I found interesting in my research was the emergence of neo-pronouns. Things like ze and zir or ey and em. Those seem to have peaked a few years ago and are now being eclipsed by the singular they. It seems like language is doing what it always does, which is finding the path of least resistance. They was already there in the collective consciousness, so it won the linguistic competition.
That is a classic example of linguistic evolution. Why invent a new word when you can just repurpose an old one? It is much easier for the collective consciousness to expand the definition of they than to learn an entirely new set of pronouns with their own conjugation rules. It is also easier for the databases, honestly. Adding one more existing word to a list is easier than adding an infinite number of new ones.
Is it, though? If I use they for a single person, does that not create ambiguity in the data? If I am looking at a record that says they are arriving at noon, I do not know if I am preparing for one person or a group.
It can create ambiguity, yes. If I have a sentence like, Sam and Alex went to the store and they bought a loaf of bread, who does they refer to? If they is Alex's singular pronoun, it is ambiguous. But we deal with ambiguity in language all the time. We use context to figure it out. Computers are getting better at that, but they are still not as good as humans at reading between the lines.
This is where the A-I side of things gets interesting. Large language models like the ones that help us out with this show have to be trained on all this stuff. They have to understand the nuances of how people use pronouns in different contexts, or they risk offending the user or producing nonsense.
And that is a huge challenge for the engineers. If the A-I is too rigid, it sounds like a robot from the nineteen-fifties. If it is too fluid, it might hallucinate gender identities where they do not exist. It has to walk a very fine line of being respectful without being performative. We are seeing a lot of work in twenty-twenty-five and twenty-twenty-six on what they call alignment—trying to make sure the A-I reflects the values of the society it is serving. But whose values? The values of a programmer in San Francisco or the values of a user in Jerusalem?
It is a fascinating look at how our social values get baked into our technology. We think of code as being neutral, but it is written by people with specific worldviews, and it is designed to solve problems that we have defined. If we decide that misgendering is a problem that needs to be solved, the code will reflect that. If we decide that data efficiency is the only goal, the code will reflect that instead.
And that is exactly what is happening. We are seeing safety layers in A-I that prevent it from making assumptions about gender. We are seeing U-I frameworks that make it easy to include pronoun fields as a default. The technology is adapting to the new social reality, even if it is doing so with a lot of grumbling from the legacy systems. It is a slow, expensive, and often painful process of modernization.
I think we should take a moment to address the global impact Daniel mentioned. In places where the political climate is more authoritarian, this whole debate is often framed as a form of Western cultural imperialism. It is used as a wedge issue to consolidate power and portray liberal values as decadent or dangerous. We see this in the rhetoric coming out of several countries right now in twenty-twenty-six.
Yeah, that is the dark side of this. The very tools meant to provide liberation in one context can be used as a pretext for repression in another. It is a reminder that no social movement exists in a vacuum. The impact of the pronoun debate in the United States ripples out and affects the safety of L-G-B-T-Q plus people in countries they have never even visited. When a U-S company mandates pronouns in its global directory, it might be putting its employees in certain countries at risk of state surveillance or persecution.
It is a heavy responsibility for the activists and the tech companies. Every design choice and every policy change has global consequences that are hard to predict. You think you are just adding a field to a profile page, but you might be changing the risk profile for thousands of people.
It really does. But at the end of the day, I keep coming back to that idea of solidarity. If we want to live in a world where everyone has the right to define themselves, we have to be willing to do the work to support that. Even if it means our databases get a little messier, our queries get a little slower, and our email signatures get a little longer. It is the price we pay for a more inclusive society.
I agree. It is about empathy. It is about trying to see the world through someone else's eyes, even if you do not fully understand their experience. If a few extra characters in a database can make someone's day a little easier or make them feel like they belong, I am all for it.
Well said, brother. And I think that is a good place to start wrapping this up. We have covered the history, the linguistic hurdles, the technical headaches, and the global politics of two thousand twenty-six. It is a lot to digest for one episode.
It really is. And to our listeners, we would love to hear your thoughts on this. Have you seen these changes in your own workplace or community? How are you navigating the technical and social shifts? Have you had to update any legacy databases lately, Herman?
Not this week, thank goodness. But I am sure there is a C-O-B-O-L programmer out there right now having a very long night.
If you want to share your stories, you can reach us at show at myweirdprompts dot com. We read every email, even the ones that use neo-pronouns we have to look up.
And if you are enjoying our deep dives into these complex topics, please do us a favor and leave a review on your podcast app or Spotify. It really does help the show reach new people and keeps the conversation going. We are a small operation, and every review counts.
Absolutely. It makes a huge difference. You can find all of our past episodes, including some where we touch on similar themes of identity and technology, at myweirdprompts dot com. We have a full archive there with an R-S-S feed for you subscribers.
And for those of you who want to get in touch or have a prompt of your own, there is a contact form on the website as well. We are on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and pretty much everywhere else you listen to your shows.
This has been My Weird Prompts. A big thanks to Daniel for today's prompt. It certainly gave us plenty to chew on. It is a reminder that even the simplest words like he or she can contain a whole world of complexity.
It certainly did. Until next time, I am Herman Poppleberry.
And I am Corn. Thanks for listening, everyone.
Goodbye!
