Using the Singular ‘They’: Why It Is Important

https://textly.ai/blog/using-the-singular-they-why-it-is-important/

by alexlash • 8 years ago

15 41 8 years ago

textly.ai

fusiongyro• 8 years ago

For some reason, in my Firefox, the page renders with a massive symbol obscuring the bottom half of the page.

michaelt• 8 years ago

It happens when you have addthis.com blocked - that's a facebook logo. You can hide it with the developer tools.

emsy• 8 years ago

I'm indifferent towards the use of neutral pronouns, however, the article does not answer the question stated in the title.

beaconstudios4• 8 years ago

ignoring the political aspects, I'd suggest an answer of "because it's the closest thing to accurate that we have". Using "them" when you don't know the gender of the subject has precedent, and makes more sense than using "him" if for no other reason than it's clearer that the person's gender is unknown. It does swap in the ambiguity of whether you're talking about one or many people, but that's usually clear from the context of the surrounding sentence.

alangpierce• 8 years ago

Funny, I read through the article and didn't even notice that it barely addresses "Why It Is Important". I wonder if the author took it for granted and overlooked the real justification part. I did find it a useful little article for people who are already on-board with the idea, though, especially the discussion of "themself", which I've been uneasy with.

My take: There's no good reason for English to require you to specify gender in certain grammatical forms, and there are plenty of real-world situations where it is either awkward or nonsensical. Sometimes it's a hypothetical person who obviously doesn't have a gender, sometimes it's one of a group of people of mixed gender, sometimes you can't visually tell the gender of the person (and obviously you can never visually tell what pronoun they prefer), sometimes all you have is the person's name, which often isn't enough to know gender. For most people and in most situations, it's usually not a big deal (though it's a little extra unnecessary overhead and chance for awkwardness), but for some people, it's repeatedly disheartening when others misgender them. A singular pronoun for "that person" is a completely valid concept, and more than deserving of a word in English, and I think English would be a better language if that was the default way to refer to people.

crabl2• 8 years ago

As an aside, many languages (like Hungarian) lack grammatical gender and gendered pronouns entirely. Having learned English afterward, it took conscious effort on my part to remember to include the correct gender when talking about people in English, so I chose to use the singular "they" pronoun to avoid that unnecessary thought.

cmiller1• 8 years ago

Must be like when we as english speakers try to learn languages with gendered nouns and have to consciously try to remember if a chair or table is male or female.

crabl2• 8 years ago

Having learned French in school as well, I can confirm that it is the same feeling!

Tobani• 8 years ago

English at least applies gendered pronouns primarily to living things that have a sex. There are odd exceptions that don't matter much. Sailors will refer to their boats as female.

You look at something like german and dogs (Hund) are neuter, unless you use a female version (Hundin). Boys (Jünge) are male. Girls(Mädchen) are neuter. Fork(Gabel) is female.

szemet• 8 years ago

Same with me (hungarian too), I always fail to use the proper pronoun, but using "they" sound weird to my ears.

In speech I mostly use "he" automatically, then I recognise my fault after a few sentence, then correct. Sometimes it feels so embarassing to recognise that I have just told a story about my wife refering her as he. (of course most of the time, I only mention her to people who know her already - so usually I don't have to explain myself)

qlm• 8 years ago

What's up with the text contrast on this site? I have pretty good eyesight and I'm finding it difficult to read.

iNate2000• 8 years ago

I wonder how many web sites have analytics that measure when I switch to "reading mode"...

sk5t• 8 years ago

This article is long on words relative to any thoughtful contribution.

IMHO "he/him" remains the grammatically correct gender-unspecified singular pronoun, although the "they/them" enthusiasts seem to be gaining traction.

mcphage2• 8 years ago

although the "they/them" enthusiasts seem to be gaining traction

Why do you think it's new?

tallowen• 8 years ago

English is not a language that traditionally deals well with gender, in that the language’s pronouns can be a little clumsy.

I think it is really interesting to deconstruct this. Most European languages have gender as a more central concept in the language; as the author points out "In Spanish, if referring to a group of friends containing both genders, you would use amigos, clearly favoring the masculine form". It seems like these languages would be even more clumsy around these non gendered cases!

Perhaps not having gendered nouns causes other gendered grammatical constructs (in this case personal pronouns) to stand out more. Do speakers of other languages with gender as a key construct see changes happening in those languages to make the language more gender neutral or does the high prevalence of gendering make that too intractable?

jfim• 8 years ago

Do speakers of other languages with gender as a key construct see changes happening in those languages to make the language more gender neutral or does the high prevalence of gendering make that too intractable?

Not as far as I can tell in French.

Keep in mind that many adjectives are modified by gender (eg. la belle chaise, le beau fauteuil, where belle is used for the feminine and beau is used for the masculine form) and that there isn't a non gendered form, unlike German.

Sometimes, both forms can be used (for example, "les ouvriers et ouvrières" where both gendered nouns are used) but it gets cumbersome and clunky rather quickly, and is discouraged in certain style guides from what I recall.

When the plural masculine form is used, it's generally considered ambiguous as to whether it's a mixed gender group or a solely masculine group. In cases where the gender of the constituents of the group is actually relevant (it often isn't), typical usage will refer to both gendered nouns then will just refer to the group as "vous" (closest equivalent in English is the plural you, as in "Male and female workers of Foocorp, you have done a great job this year. Your dedication has...") to avoid having to carry both nouns throughout the text.

Majestic121• 8 years ago

In French, we do have 'écriture inclusive' which tries to make things more neutral, by mentioning both feminine and masculine. For example, instead of saying 'lycéens' (high schoolers, which uses plural and masculine to designate both genders), écriture inclusive recommends to use lycéen·nes.

There was a wave a few years ago, but it was not very successful as far as I know, since it can get pretty complicated (du·de la boulanger·ère) and is not meant to be used verbally, only in written form.

latifnanji27• 8 years ago

Non-sequitur. How does changing language solve homophobia? That requires major education well beyond some language change.

zozbot123• 8 years ago

It doesn't - it's just considered more polite. Similar to how the plural form "you" became established over the original "thou/thee/thyself" or to the way that people use the polite/'royal' "We" instead of "I" in a formal paper to point out something that the author did, or argued for, etc. Indeed, there's probably some common mechanism underlying these polite forms in English, as their similarity clearly suggests. (Perhaps an effort at purposeful simplification in the grammar, as the English language has turned into more of a widely-used standard, in Britain at first and then internationally?)

sublupo• 8 years ago

If we are already talking about redefining the language, one term that always bothered me was homophobic. As in

two thirds of the LGBTQ community have frequently or often heard homophobic comments

It sounds weird to use the suffix phobic for something other than a fear. I doubt that the comments that 2/3 of them hear was something along the lines of "don't get close to that gay person or else you'll get AIDS". I'm guessing what they were referring to was comments like "I'm going to continue to call you he even though you insist that you are she". A better word would be antihomo or homo-hating.

I assume homophobic is used to make fun or degrade those people. Similarly to how terrorists are called cowards (even though I don't know of many people with enough guts to die for what they believe in) or calling kids suffering from cancer as brave (what else should they do? Die?).

beaconstudios4• 8 years ago

I always thought it was related to older terms that linked hate with fear, like "yellow peril". Older racist beliefs like this often played into fear, and I can't help but wonder if historical hatred of LGBT+ people was also based on fear.

defertoreptar2• 8 years ago

I assume homophobic is used to make fun or degrade those people.

I think it stems from how people would react to the thought or sight of homosexual acts. The response some homophobes have to two men kissing can be compared to a child's reaction to seeing broccoli on their plate.

Of course there are still people like that, but when talking about the meaning of words, I think it's important to point out the difference. We often conflate revulsion to a sexual act with prejudice to people who identify with that sexuality. They almost always go hand in hand, but the point is that there's a case to be made for the word "homophobic."

If anything, I would say that "homophobic" is too soft a label for actual prejudiced people. We think of real phobias as something we should tolerate in people and something we should be sensitive towards. That's not the case here.

luckylion3• 8 years ago

but the point is that there's a case to be made for the word "homophobic."

Yeah, but that case is rare, while the usage isn't. Homomisiac would be more accurate, though I find that too strong for many occasions: hate is quite high on the dislike-scale, and shouldn't be the first one to go for.

We think of real phobias as something we should tolerate in people and something we should be sensitive towards. That's not the case here.

Unrelated: that sounds like you believe that people make a conscious choice regarding what they like and don't like, and to what degree they do so. I'm pretty sure you're going to have a rough awakening at some point.

WalterGR2• 8 years ago

If we are already talking about redefining the language

This happens continuously, whether we talk about it or not.

luckylion3• 8 years ago

There is a difference between artificial change of languages and natural change though, isn't there?

anthony_romeo2• 8 years ago

(Disclaimer: I acknowledge that I was raised in a pretty liberal state) I was surprised to hear that the singular “they” was controversial. I had been using “they” to refer to hypothetical individuals of unknown gender pretty much my whole life. Extending this to specific people of unknown gender doesn’t seem like a far leap.

It seems more like manufactured outrage, committed in varying degrees by both sides of the issue. Not everything in life needs to be a crisis of conscience.

crankylinuxuser2• 8 years ago

"He is going to the store."

"She is going to the store."

"They is going to the store."

That last one sounds like I don't know how to speak properly. "They" has been plural, and sounds appropriate in 'many, gender neutral' context.

"It" is the singular gender neutral... But that pronoun sounds like you're demeaning someone. Like,

"It is going to the store."

That sentence is correct but seems pretty damn dehumanizing.

I dunno.. Language is hard.

beaconstudios4• 8 years ago

"They are going to the store" should be fine. Or you can go fancy "them'st is going to the store".

vehemenz• 8 years ago

There is this assumption, that doesn't gel with actual English usage, that people throwing around 'he' and 'she's are assigning gender with their language. If we think about usage only, the vast majority of English speakers use 'he' and 'she' to report sex, not assign gender, consciously or not. That's because the sex-gender distinction is almost never operative, and when the distinction collapses, it's going to collapse closer to sex, not gender.

When one side insists that gender is the only operative concept, then they are possibly forcing a meaning (confusing sex for gender) to the other side, no matter how well-intentioned or offended they are.

That being said, I'd be okay with getting rid of the pronouns completely. Chinese seems to do okay without them.

K2L8M11N2• 8 years ago

The contrast on that page is abysmal! What's up with that?

Using the Singular ‘They’: Why It Is Important

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