Being Gendered Correctly

[Remilia_Nightfall]

That said, if you refuse to class Sylvari as truly inhuman Plant-based Sentience, then what about the Ent's from Tolkein's Lord of the Ring Trilogy?

My argument might be incorrect, but it's how things are generally perceived. I am willing to bet that the majority of players refer to them with gender-specific pronouns, rather than using "it" (and in other languages, "it" is not even an option in the first place), since appearence plays a big part in everything (and moreover, when you create a character you have to choose between male or female anyway...even if they are technically "genderless").

I don't think Ents have that same amount of physical features that make their gender (no matter if they actually have genders or not) easily discernible. But tbh, I think most people are going to use the next thing useful to determine sex: voice. Treebeard is most likely considered male, due to his voice in the movie and...well.."beard".

EDIT:

About your comment about me citing Italian, I am sorry but I am not sure I understood you - there is no "gender neutrality" in Italian - almost every word changes, yes, but it's either masculine or feminine. There is no neutral, ever, in terms of grammar, just like French. The "neutral" is the masculine, usually. I know this does not concern the language we are using now - I just wanted to point out that every language behaves differently :P You can disregard my comment about this, anyway - not really relevant.

[Tharian]

My argument might be incorrect, but it's how things are generally perceived. I am willing to bet that the majority of players refer to them with gender-specific pronouns, rather than using "it" (and in other languages, "it" is not even an option in the first place), since appearence plays a big part in everything (and moreover, when you create a character you have to choose between male or female anyway...even if they are technically "genderless").

Meh, the problem your having here is that you are failing to realize just how unimportant physical appearance is for the Sylvari in that game. Yes they refer to each other by the terms of other species. But within their own species you can have a Sylvari who appears female, but who considers herself to be masculine, or no gender at all whatsoever. It truly doesn't matter to the Sylvari what gender they appear, because that is just an appearance to them.

You could be correct about the Ent's, but I got the impression that they were all slow ponderous creatures, and thus would all probably sound like Treebeard did. Also, keep in mind plants (especially tree's) are typified by having access to both gender's sexual organs on the same plant in many cases.

Oh, I understood you. What you need to understand is that Italian is only one language. It is also a relatively young language having it's oldest written forms dating back to 960-963 Common Era. It was predated by Vulgar Latin, which itself was predated by the Celtic Dialect native to that region. Vulgar Latin should not be confused with Classical Latin. Classical Latin being the language that is used by Lawyers and Doctors for their legalese.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

Sylvari issue

Point it, it DOES matter to people who look and talk and refer to them.
They might not care if they feel "male" while having a pair of huge bazongas and cute leafy eyelashes, but other people (not sure about other Sylvari, I admit) would refer to them basing on their appearance because this is what people are used to do.
Problem is, we are hardly used to sentient, genderless (or with multiple genders) bipedal plants in our everyday life - so this is hardly something that can be solved. Everyone has its own views about things, and no one is really right or wrong I fear :P

Italian issue

I perfectly know it's only one language - as said, it was just an example. I know where my language comes from :P

[Razzle]

I perfectly know it's only one language - as said, it was just an example. I know where my language comes from :P

I speak Hebrew IRL and as far as I know there is no pararell to "it" neither. Everything is either male or female, objects too. And the correct way to refer to a few mixed genders in a group is refer to them as the gender that is the majority in that group (IE, a group of 3 female and 2 male refered as female). If you don't know which is the majority then it's acceptable to refer as male.

[Sapphic]

I don't think Ents have that same amount of physical features that make their gender (no matter if they actually have genders or not) easily discernible. But tbh, I think most people are going to use the next thing useful to determine sex: voice. Treebeard is most likely considered male, due to his voice in the movie and...well.."beard".

But we never see or read about the physical description of ent-wives, so we don't know if they are noticeably different XD