He She They Who

In response to Shelby - full post here

I am honestly not certain that this is anything that need to be changed. I think that these characters are not only real, and with gender, in their fiction universes, but they have been written into our universe as well. Having emotions isn't the only thing that makes something real. I also see no functional use in purposefully using 'it' to describe characters; if it does anything, I think it will cause confusion or will take up more time when you are talking about two people in the same sentence. Snape is a potions master, and Lily is Harry's mother. After this I could say 'he loves her,' 'it loves it,' or any combination of their names. I think that the first one is the most useful while retaining it's clearness.

I also think that using it could be a slippery way to desensitize ourselves to the feelings of certain things. Again, I do not think it is  largely important, but I find it interesting that most people refer to pets and friends with the gender pronouns, but refer to the living animals who are going to be killed for human consumption as 'it.'

I don't think it's a large deal if we choose to say it, given that Snape and Lily will not be offended if we call them 'it.' However, I think for clarity purposes, we may as well continuing to use the gender pronouns of 'he,' 'she' and 'they'