• Venat0r@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    it’s generally used to describe non-sentient things…

    Also, using only it gets confusing when trying to determine what “it” refers to in a given sentence…

    • stray@pawb.social
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      6 hours ago

      What’s not sentient about a squirrel?

      Can you give an example of how “it” is confusing? Like “It met its friend for coffee,” sounds fine to me. “It put on a warm jacket since it was cold out,” uses multiple senses of the word, but it still reads fine to me.

      “They” is mildly confusing in narratives because it can be hard to distinguish whether one or multiple characters are being described, but it’s not an insurmountable problem.

      • Venat0r@lemmy.world
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        18 minutes ago

        I think it might be most confusing when someone talks about someone who uses “it/its” pronouns: my initial assumption would be that they’re trying to dehumanise it unless I was already previously aware of it’s pronown preference.

      • Venat0r@lemmy.world
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        32 minutes ago

        that’s a good point, I think it depends on the person, but some people tend to just assume the squirrels gender in most instances rather than saying “it”.