He, She or It?

I call my dolls by their gender pronouns and the only time I ever get weird looks over it is when I'm referring to a certain doll who wears girly things as 'he'. My little brother insists on calling that particular doll an 'it'. Even if I'm talking about a doll in pieces on a table, a 'he' will still be a 'he' to me.

 

I call mine whatever gender they are, however I tend to make all mine girls because they have a lot more clothes and growing up, all dolls were girls.

 

The doll may be an inanimate object, but typically they do have a gender; it's a male or female sculpt. I say you're perfectly fine for that and many reasons. Dolls are expensive and you can highly personalize them. Anything I'm spending that much money on, I reserve the right to call it whatever I'd like. People name cars, boats, and they're deemed sane. Eh, and in addition, like some people have said, some languages assign gender to their language. If I'm not mistaken, some time ago, in English the "default" third person singular pronoun was "he" and not it. (Yeah, someone please feel free to put that better, if you have a correction.) But I don't believe your boyfriend has a point. I'm sure he's joking, but "crazy" is a little strong. JMHO.

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with referring to these dolls using gendered nouns. Honestly, I refer to my dolls as he, she, and it depending on my mood. I have a pair of SD-sized anatomically male dolls with a more childish sculpt, but I dress them in whatever looks cute, and I forget what gender they're supposed to be half the time.

 

I usually refer them as 'he/she' but I wouldn't get upset if someone referred them as 'it'.

 

I refer to my dolls by the gender that they are. They have the parts, and all three have very defined characters that I've worked hard on. I do speak about them like they are real people, but I do happen to know that they're not. I have met plenty of people who refer to their dolls as he or she or talk about them like they are alive. Most writers or artists that I know also talk about their characters like this. You are not alone and it is very normal for this hobby.

 

I always refer to my dolls by their preferred pronouns. 'She/her' for Calista, and 'He/Him' for Phinny and Anthoney.

I've never thought it was strange to do otherwise, it's completely natural for me, and my family and friends are totally fine with it. In fact, my boyfriend is very defensive of my dolls when it comes to over friends. We were hanging out with two other friends when Calista arrived, and so she hung out with us. One of our friends referred to her as 'it,' and my boyfriend actually cut in and said "she's not an 'it.'"

My friend wasn't weirded out by it or anything, just wasn't used to it. XD Anyway, using non-it pronouns is fine by me.

 

I generally refer to them by gender or sometimes by their name but then I often do that with inanimate objects & I see nothing crazy about that. I think it's just a feeling of closeness with the object. And since these dolls are gendered anyway, it would seem odd not to refer to them that way.

 

I think it's pretty normal to refer to an image of a person by their apparent gender. If you were talking about the Mona Lisa, you wouldn't say "it has an enigmatic smile", you'd say "she has an enigmatic smile". I don't spend a lot of time on character/backstory for my dolls, but I do still call them by gendered pronouns. "Ack! The cat stole her wig again!" I don't think it's weird. It doesn't bother me when people say "it", but I've noticed that most people default to "she" when they see BJDs.

 

I call my dolls by their name or, in specific cases where the person I'm talking to don't know their names, I say "the big doll" or "the small doll". It happens I say "it won't fit the doll, its body is too big", but it gets more and more rare now. At first I couldn't even call my first BJD by his name, and just kept calling him "the doll", because I wasn't used to seeing him as something that could have a name. Which was silly, since I gave my camera a name and my first car a name xD

 

I use the gender pronouns all the time. I'm also quite lucky in the sense that most people around me don't find this weird at all because of their own habits. Example: People in my concert band often had genders for their instruments, a family friend always refers to his Harley as 'his baby/girl/her'.

 

They used to call ships, 'she' and there are (or so I've heard) languages such as french (I think) where everything is a she or a he, there is no real way to say 'it' in some languages. I think that's kinda cool. People are way to sensitive about using the right word for things. I've accidently called someones cat or dog the wrong gender and people always correct me like it makes some huge difference.

 

I refer to my doll as either "she" or her name. I would feel really odd referring to a character I spent so much time creating as "it"

 

I always refer to my dolls as 'he' or 'she'. It just feels more natural to do so!

 

I always use "he" or "she". They're characters as much as they are dolls, for me, so "it" feels strange. I do the same with action figures and other dolls, too. I don't think it's the least bit odd to refer to a Barbie doll as "she" or a Starscream transformer as "he", any more than it would be odd to refer to a fictional character by their preferred pronoun.

 

I refer to them as characters and not as objects so yes, I use the pronouns he or she.

 

I always refer to them as s/he. I would actually find it odd if I had to refer to them as "it"...that sounds weird to me.

 

As for me, one could only call the doll "it" if he takes it for nothing more than a collectible item to put on his shelf and be proud of that. Not that it's something bad, but most of the dolls' owners give them characters like they are, anyhow, some kind of a person. Ofcourse it's like "she" or "he" for most of us. But indeed some languages have a different system of that thing, eg in my native language it would be really weird to call a doll of any gender(if detectible) "it". But, there's also no masculine form of the word "doll", it's all feminine... And calling him "the doll" instead of "him" would mean calling him a woman.

 

I always refer to my doll and other dolls as he or she or their name.
I know they're not alive but to me that would just feel mean or disrespectful..

 

I usually call anything with visible gender characteristics by its gender, unless it is a real person who tells me they prefer otherwise, or if it's a doll, and the doll's owner has a pronoun they prefer their character to be known by.
IE: Generally speaking, Has a penis, it's a He. Has vulva, it's a She. I apply this rule to animals, sculptures, dolls, whatever. Swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, I call it a duck, unless circumstances dictate otherwise.

Around non doll people I sometimes call a Doll "it", but that feels weird to me because the doll is usually clearly intended to be male or female. Come to think about it, Even if it was a non gendered or genderfluid representation of a person I still feel weird calling it "It" because it looks like a human and usually has been assigned an albeit imaginary personality. It's a Singular-They, not an It.... I know a doll is not a person and is not real but once you've assigned an identity to a thing it's hard for me to call it It, as if we hadn't assigned it an identity. Heck, we call ships She.

I only have one doll who is technically gender neutral but Selby is a robot and could be called It anyway without being incorrect.

It's worth nothing I sometimes refer to my Car as She: Tanya the Touareg, and my guitar as He. (His name is Sweet Baby James)