
Using the Singular ‘They’: Why It Is Important - alexlash
https://textly.ai/blog/using-the-singular-they-why-it-is-important/
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anthony_romeo
(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.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
"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.

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

~~~
crankylinuxuser
> "They are going to the store" should be fine.

Indeed, but the miscommunication here is implied plural. "They are ..." Who is
going (expecting 2 or more)?

I don't care that we use a gender neutral pronoun. Just using an existing word
makes understanding hard.

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anthony_romeo
To be fair, “you” used to be plural, with “thou” used for second person
singular. But the sort of “Royal We” honorifics of the past kinda muddied it’s
usage and “you” eventually became singular and plural. So there precedent for
this sort of thing

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crabl
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
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.

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

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

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alangpierce
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.

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sublupo
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?).

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defertoreptar
> 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.

~~~
luckylion
> 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.

~~~
defertoreptar
> 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.

That's not how I meant it. I was alluding to the many examples in society
where discrimination against homosexuality is not tolerated: in the workplace
and legally in other cases, but also in the community at large. That is an
observation of the society we live in and how a member of it should adhere to
the norms of that society and its laws. It does not contain information about
my own individual, personal viewpoints.

To clarify the point I was making: let's say a company needs to transport an
employee to another state. The employee is afraid of flying. That company,
being sensitive toward the employee's phobia, permits him to drive instead.
Contrast this with an employee who refused to make a sales call to someone who
is gay, because that client is gay. Would you say that that employee should
receive the same amount of tolerance and sensitivity as the one who was afraid
of flying?

~~~
wingspar
> Contrast this with an employee who refused to make a sales call to someone
> who is gay, because that client is gay. Would you say that that employee
> should receive the same amount of tolerance and sensitivity as the one who
> was afraid of flying?

To make it even more complex, what about the employee who refuses to make a
solo sales call to someone who is the opposite gender, for religious reasons?
At a dinner meeting for example.

What level of accommodation, if any, should society demand for this
salesperson?

What if the salesperson is LGBT and refused to make a sales call to an anti-
LGBT organization?

Should society demand both these salespeople to be given the same level of
accommodation?

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

~~~
iNate2000
I wonder how many web sites have analytics that measure when I switch to
"reading mode"...

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tallowen
> 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
> 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
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.

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sk5t
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.

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

Why do you think it's new?

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vehemenz
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.

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

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

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K2L8M11N2
The contrast on that page is _abysmal_! What's up with that?

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latifnanji27
Non-sequitur. How does changing language solve homophobia? That requires major
education well beyond some language change.

~~~
zozbot123
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?)

