To think that PARTNER is an inclusive word we should use

[KajsaKavat]

Apropos the boyfriend on holiday thread I got a bit shocked how people reacted to OP describing him as partner and calling her out saying due to their ages he can only ever be a boyfriend.

I have teens myself and they all refer to the
person they’re dating as partner.
teens are all about being inclusive and using non gender specific terms, surely this is a good thing.

I’d assume the teen was using partner to sound more grown up, which is quite a normal thing for teens to want to do.

But as for this teens are all about being inclusive and using non gender specific terms, surely this is a good thing

I find ‘inclusive’ language often means less specific language which not only makes communication more ambiguous and often less helpful, but also disadvantages those groups who benefited from language being specific to them in relevant situations.

Bf gf isn't gendered anyway its sexed. So fireman to firefighter yes because women can be firemen. I actually think it's silly to change really as we say human so fireman is short for fire human really not sexed.
Bf or gf are a boy or girl no matter their presentation of gender, how short their hair is etc.
As for running the stall instead of manning, again I take this as the use of human or mankind not as male. We don't say huwoman. Man doesn't always mean male sometimes it means mankind. Manning a stall is not gendered come on now.

Call them what you want. I couldn't care less. You will never be able to 'make' others use your preferred term until this becomes the ubiquitous norm, so the question is moot.

What I do object to is the persistent policing of other people's language in the name of 'inclusivity'. An odd misnomer, too, given the assumed inclusiveness amounts to more of a restrictive form of newspeak.

No, thank you.

"Man" is not short for "human". Don't be silly.

To me the word 'partner' implies live in status - a shared life. I don't believe a 16 year old living at home, financially supported by her parents can be described as having a partner. She has a boyfriend

If a man I’d been seeing for anything less than a year referred to me as his partner, I would run a mile.

I didn't say gender diverse people didn't exist, not sure where you got that from. I have plenty of life experience thanks, I also am not someone who jumps on someone's post and makes ridiculous assumptions. Being gender diverse does not mean excluding people, unfortunately teens today don't actually understand gender diversity, it's a fair representation of all genders, not pretending males or females don't exist!

I totally agree, who actually cares what people call their other half/bf/gf.

I don't understand why people think gender inclusively or diversity means excluding referring to people's gender/sex.

I wonder what my 90 year old Grandmother should call her... friend(?) of 18 years. They don't live together, Never will. Boyfriend sounds really stupid at that age. But according to some posters here they aren't partners anyway.

my aunt is in a similar relationship - he is her companion!

they don’t live together - both widowed - I’m not even sure if it’s romantic - but they holiday together and go out to dinner etc.

I’d use companion if not living together I think. My mums age group in their late 70s/80s say friend.
I think partner infers he’s one to share medical info and decisions with and will deal with estate.
Whereas my mum’s peers with ‘friends’ still want daughter as next of kin and involved in life decisions, the man is someone they go to garden centre and on holiday with. Happy as companions.
So if they introduce him as partner it may lead to people assuming he’s akin to a husband and he’s not.

She probably does use companion tbh. It's been so long since she met him that I can't remember what she introduced him as. And now we just call him Bob.

Gender diverse people existing 40+ years ago, just as they do today.

And IMO the gender bending/androgyny of those days was done in a thoroughly healthy way. Plenty of people and movements were thoroughly subversive of the regressive gender stereotypes such as the punk, Goths, new wave and new romantics movement: cf. Bowie, Annie Lennox, Robert Smith, Boy George, et al. And yes, some of them pissed off the establishment and offended their admirably staunch commitment to small-c conservatism. All to the good.

There are key differences. They all knew they were either male or female. They were still able to break conformity with stereotypical 'gendered' constaints, and could do so without neatly repacking themselves into society in the form of new little 'subject positions', as the major voice of GI Foucault might have put it. For the 80s androgynes to rebel did not mean the rest of society had to conform to the stereotypes they claimed to be rejecting, or to repackage their own 'identities' (I so baulk at that term) in order to accommodate other people's.

A more significant difference is that they didn't attempt a full-scale, organized, carefully orchestrated land-grab of other people's rights. Or frequently quell any form of dissent with rape threats, death threats, attempts at cancellation or trying to deprive others (mainly women) of their livelihoods.

Let people describe their relationships as they want to. This controlling people's speech stuff has to stop.

I believe this is ending in the opposite effect to the one the policers intended. People are getting pissed off with it, and are now digging their heels hard in the sand.

Before, I would use any pronoun I was 'instructed' to use out of courtesy. Indeed, my workplace could discipline me for not doing so. It's now compelled. And as a result - having actual friends whose livelihoods have been destroyed by this insidious movement - I will engage in any degree of linguistic contortionism to avoid she/he/they pronouns altogether.

My actions can be policed to a certain degree, the captured sector I work in have made sure of that. But I will not tolerate being told how to think, nor will I accept their labels being forced onto me.

Calling me 'cis' will be swiftly corrected, and requests for pronouns met with a curt 'that's not a practice I follow'. EVERY time.

I'm not clear - who do I need to 'include' when I talk about my husband?

Partner, by definitive means someone you share with. So a boyfriend who you don't live with isn't a partner.

That's just not remotely true though. You've just made up that definition.

I like partner. It doesn't give too much away to people who really don't need to know if you've been together 10 days or 10 years, whether you're married or civil partnered, whether the other person is the Same sex/gender or the other. It's a neutral word.

A little Googling has revealed that, among others, Milton, Smollett and Shakespeare used "partner" to mean "life partner." cf OED. blog.shakespearesworld.org/2018/05/08/a-huge-find-for-the-oed-a-startling-antedating-for-partner-meaning-spouse/

I don't think in general most people have any objection to using the word partner partner, its quote normal for unmarried adults to describe their bf/gf in that way and like you say covers all kinds of relationships, it's got FA to do with gender diversity etc though, if you want to use it to keep your private life private then great but no one should be forced to use it for 'inclusivity' reasons.

I met someone who referred to his partner this week and he fell over himself to explain "business" partner.

I don't know about other languages but English is full of words where the precise meaning depends on the context.

A little Googling has revealed that, among others, Milton, Smollett and Shakespeare used "partner" to mean "life partner." cf OED.

That doesn't mean that it was universally only used that way, even then.besides, the language we use to talk about relationships (and indeed about everything) has changed somewhat since Shakespeare's time.

Partner sounds more serious than boyfriend or girlfriend, it sounds like a long term relationship to me and that they are likely living together.

And even being inclusive, won't either boyfriend or girlfriend apply?

@AllProperTeaIsTheft "That doesn't mean that it was universally only used that way, even then."

No. But it does mean that it's not "meaningless" or intended to be "inclusive" or any of the other bonkers things people are saying on here!

Exactly. Describe yourself and your relationship any way you want, but try to force YOUR words into MY mouth and it'll end badly. I'm so sick of being g told what I can say, or even think nowadays.

The word "inclusive " is being stolen from those who genuinely needed their particular needs considered - wheelchair users, those with ND, blind and deaf people, etc etc. It's theft of resources from those that truly need them to operate in a world that forgets about them.