In principle I endorse the use of “they” as a singular pronoun when the gender of the person to whom it refers is unknown or irrelevant: “Ask each of the students what they want for lunch,” for example. Language experts point out that serious writers have been using “they” this way since the 1300s. Emily Dickinson wrote in a letter in 1881, “Almost anyone under the circumstances would have doubted if [the letter] were theirs, or indeed if they were themself . . .”
But using “they” this way in writing still makes me squeamish, and I usually end up rewriting the sentence to avoid doing so. In yesterday’s blog post, for example, I first wrote, “A president needs to know their own limits,” but then changed it to “Presidents need to know their own limits.” (I’ll resort to writing “his or her” when I’ve backed myself into a corner, but I hate using that clumsy construction multiple times because it makes whatever I’m writing sound like a legal document.)
And now a newer use of “they” has emerged: as a pronoun for someone who identifies as neither male nor female. “This is Skyler. They work in accounting.” Given that I have trouble embracing a usage that’s been around for seven centuries, you can imagine how unsettling it feels to adopt a usage that arose in just the last few years.
There are alternatives. Some writers opt for “s/he” or “(s)he.” From what I can tell virtually no one endorses those, and they’re useless for introducing the aforementioned Sklyer from accounting. My brother-in-law sometimes uses “xe” as a gender-neutral pronoun. Other people use “e,” “per,” “ve,” “ze,” or “zie.”
Complicating matters is that LGBTQ advocates endorse using whichever pronoun the person you’re referring to prefers. Following that advice, there isn’t even the option of adopting one new “woke” convention and getting comfortable with it. I confess the entire issue makes me feel somewhat put-upon. Of course, feeling put-upon is a central life-experience of gender-fluid people, so perhaps it’s only fair.
For me, so far, these issues are academic. If I ever get to know someone who is gender-non-binary, I’ll have to figure this all out. (That would presumably be after the pandemic is over, since for now I’m not getting to know anybody.)
The pronoun question in the (superficially) binary world we grew up in was hard enough. Back then, our concern was to avoid Sexism Classic, or defaulting to masculine pronouns. That’s still an issue, but the introduction of LGBTQ variations and not knowing which pronoun a given person would prefer we use makes things much more complicated and seems to leave us in a quandary: pick a pronoun in the moment and probably give offense, or make up new conventions and new words, and abandon gendered pronouns altogether. Personally, I’m drawn to the latter, but that may only be because I read science fiction.
To each zir own, I say!
I came upon this whole issue when spending time with my granddaughter during her graduation days at Hampshire College. All the bathrooms were non-binary. Sarah made fun of a deeply masculine guy she knew who said he wanted to go to a non-binary party. She said “you’re so binary it’s ridiculous!” See, even I said “he wanted to go…..” force of habit I guess. Saw a lot of guys (can we say that?) in skirts – at this very alternative, progressive college. Which by the way like many other small lib. arts colleges these days, is in the process of going bankrupt.
So you say “if I ever get to know someone who is gender non-binary” – wondered if there’s any other kind of non-binary except gender? That I don’t know about?
My upstate NY daughter’s brother in law is experimenting with his feminine side. (Happily married 35 years.) He came to the graduation in a skirt and sported beautiful long red fingernails. The rest of his attire appeared ordinarily masculine, if I may still use that gender-specific word.
I added the “gender” qualifier to “non-binary” because the term “non-binary” can be applied to chemical compounds, numbers systems, musical compositions, and pretty much anything that isn’t comprised of two parts. To your point, though, perhaps when it’s applied to human beings, the “gender” qualifier can be assumed.