Reading an article on the ABC news site I came across the following sentence:
“They came out as non-binary in 2019 and has spoken publicly about their experiences to help improve public awareness of what it means to be genderqueer.”
I am fully supportive of people who identify as non-binary and I’m proud of the wave of gender acceptance that has swept through most Western countries, but the use of ‘they’ as a personal pronoun in these circumstances is doing my head in. It clangs dissonantly in my head like the sax solo in My Lovely Horse.
I also listen to a podcast where the host has a non-binary child, and again every mention of ‘they’ causes a stutter in my psyche as I have to mentally backtrack and deconstruct what has just been said.
What was the justification and history for using this? The problem is that ‘they’ is already an awkward word in English, carrying both singular and plural meanings; it already has grammatical baggage. Shoehorning another usage in is too much. Also, when used in the genderqueer context I find that ‘they’ carries the slight whiff of pretention, sort of like the royal ‘we’.
Of course, all of this may be my binary prejudices showing through, but if I’m the face of intolerance then we are all in trouble.
I agree that ”they” feels odd.
Those sensible Swedes have created a gender neutral pronoun to avoid this problem.
.
They for the singular has been around since the 1300s and I’m sure most of us have used as a handy way of identifying someone whose position is known but not their gender. The example given here is ‘A journalist should not reveal their sources.’
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
Current gender identification is a minefield though, so I just apply my usual rule of trying not to be insensitive and avoiding deeper debate when I’m not up to speed with individual cases.
“Trying not to be insensitive and avoiding deeper debate when not up to speed”?!?! Sir, please leave the internet!
I come across ‘they’ as a singular a lot in my day-to-day work (not in the gender-neutral sense). Example from yesterday: ‘When a child is born into the world, they become part of the fabric of nature.’
I’ve been at it so long* that my original training would have required ‘he or she’ there; these days that would be over-fussy, but it still makes me grit my teeth a little. So where I can I just quietly change the noun into a plural: ‘When children are born…’ Job done, makes an old man happy, and nobody ever notices.
But now the plural ‘they’ has now been joined by the non-binary ‘they’ I’m not sure my few remaining teeth are going to stand up to the strain. Clearly my over-sensitive grammatical radar is not the issue here, and people will, and must, define themselves as they wish. But it’s a minefield, as Gatz says.
*Not since 1300 though.
Are you a midwife?
In a sense.
I think in a sense we all are.
We is all midwifes, innt?
They isn’t!
He or she, or more commonly “He………….or she!“
When I read or hear the term ‘genderqueer’ , my first association is always Orwell’s Newspeak. Probably doubleplus age catching up with me.
As a straight white middle-aged middle-class binary cis-male I keep the hell out of the whole trans debate, because my opinion would be ignored anyway, and rightly so. But when they starts insisting on bespoke pronouns, chizzle put chizzum foot down.
If it was a bespoke pronoun I wouldn’t mind. My problem is that they hijacked an existing pronoun that already had issues.
You’re being racist about yourself there @chiz, have a care old chap.
It’s true – I am deeply prejudiced against myself, and no one can dispute this because they haven’t had the lived experienced of my self-prejudice. In fact, any attempt to persuade me my self-identified self-prejudice is not a real thing is self-prejudice-phobic anti-self-prejudice prejudice
Wait. Doesn’t ‘binary’ mean you are two things, both straight and…., not one of two things, as in straight or….?
Hey, respect my adjectives, Tiggs! I’m binary because I identify as one of the two exclusionary biological genders, rather than any or all of the sexy new ones
…..er….okay.
😟
Transgender, gender neutral, non-binary, agender, androgyne, androgynous, gender fluid, gender nonconforming, gender questioning, gender variant, genderqueer, trans-europeexpressgender, neutrois, intersex, pangender, genderqueer, two-spirit, third gender. To name but a few.
What about gender bender? Haven’t heard that for a while…
No, that’s not a real gender
Metrosexual is another. Whatever happened to them? Were they all wiped out by the Millennium Bug?
They went underground
@chiz
Well played.
Ye Gods, there are two different versions of “genderqueer” and what’s more, they have the same spelling?!
The world’s gone mad.
You’re right about the world.
It’s political repetitiveness gone mad
Let’s get it done.
Is that you, Laurence?
Maybe it wouldn’t be so irritating if the sentence was grammatical (let’s gloss over a Frankenstein word like “genderqueer”). I have no problem with “They came out as non-binary in 2019 and they have spoken publicly about their experiences to help improve public awareness of what it means to be genderqueer.”
Surely the sentence “They came out as non-binary in 2019 and has spoken publicly about their experiences to help improve public awareness of what it means to be genderqueer.” is confusing simply because it is grammaticaly incorrect?
The correct form should be “They came out as non-binary in 2019 and have spoken publicly about their experiences to help improve public awareness of what it means to be genderqueer.”.
Unless we are proposing to change the fundamental structural rules of the English language for some reason, the sentence is just ‘wrong’.
Just noticed Rufus’ post above – exactly my thoughts!
Great minds…!
I had assumed the grammatical garbling was part of the new use of ‘they’, but a quick trawl through a usage guide confirms that ‘have’ should have been used.
I did, however, come across these other alternative pronouns: “ze/hir/hirs” (pronounced “zee/here/heres”) or “ey/em/eir” (pronounced “ay/em/airs”).
No wonder the sub-editor was confused.
Here’s my alternative three letter pronoun: ffs.
And ffs/h, surely?
I’m assuming this has arisen because some of They want a personal pronoun of their own to differentiate Them from both Males and Females.
Fair enough and why not, but just nicking one is not appropriate behaviour.
Invent your own!
Let’s ask Laurence Fox! Just kidding.
A non-binary person has the right to ask to be called ‘they’; we have the right to ignore this. I’m not a fan of Jordan Peterson, but I understand he had an issue with some of his students on an issue similar to this. Sam Smith likes ‘they’, but he is most definitely a chap: a very sweet and likeable chap, but a chap nonetheless.
I agree that a new pronoun needs creating, as ‘they’ is just too confusing. I always feel it’s important to be kind and demonstrate empathy, and just because you don’t happen to be wildly ‘for’ something doesn’t mean you’re vehemently against it or wish the person any ill. Social media has, sadly, polarised and poisoned debate: you’re with us or against us! Sorry, some of us can just quietly say, “it’s not for me, but good luck to you.”
This is Peterson’s view – “I don’t care what people want to be called,” he answered. “But that doesn’t mean I should be compelled by law to call them that. The government has absolutely no business whatsoever ever governing the content of your voluntary speech.”
What if I politely asked him to call me ze? “We could have a conversation about that,” says Peterson, “just like I would if you asked me to use a nickname. But there’s a big difference between privately negotiated modes of address and legislatively demanded, compelled speech.”
Well they would say that, wouldn’t they?
Its all a load of bollocks.
Or ovaries.
Or neither, or both.
In my experience of teaching academic writing to non-Native-English speakers, “they” has been advancing as a neuter, third-person pronoun for some years now: The New York Times and Washington Post have been using it for some time to reduce any sexist connotations of “him/his” or “his or hers” in sentences, even though this does defy previous standards of grammar. I’m relaxed about, tbh.
Perfectly timed for this discussion comes this beauty, from the Grauniad this morning:
One furious member who has given hours of their time on the doorstep declared Momentum “a mess”.
“Why wasn’t it an open ballot?” she said…
I think I fall into the ‘facts over feelings’ camp here, and I find myself sympathising more with women who object to being referred to as ‘womb havers’ than I do with those who feel excluded by the word ‘woman’ because they have a womb but identify as men. Likewise, why did a recent BBC report on the availability of tampons fail to mention the world ‘girls’ or ‘women’ once? (Yet linked to older articles that did.) And, yes, ‘they are a kind and enthusiastic individual’ (which I read yesterday) is a ghastly mangling of the language.
Having said that, it’s not really my fight.
Completely regardless of why it’s being done, it is (or it can be) your fight if you wince at “ghastly mangling of the language”.