I wonder if we’ll start to have a “they all” to distinguish between singular and plural like we have “you” and “you all” to distinguish between a single person and the whole group. In some situations the meaning is clear, but in other situations it’s not. For example:
“I went to my first department meeting today. My office mate introduced me. They bought me a cake.”
It’s not clear who bought the cake. Was the the department or the office mate who happens to prefer the singular personal pronoun “They”? If instead it was a singular pronoun like “he/she”, it would be clear it was the office mate. For a simple example like this it doesn’t really matter, but this is the kind of confusion that can come up. Maybe we’ll start seeing something like “They all bought me a cake” when the meaning is not clear.
What about the name? This was a parent who named a child and interacted with that child for decades with a particular name. Why should es memories of the past have to be edited to insert a different name? Or even forget the “should.” Can you have some sympathy for the idea that it is upsetting to the parent to be told E must only refer to those memories using a new name?
Maybe Robardin is getting counseling. That’s not really relevant to what E is saying in this thread and is not, in my opinion, called for by es commentary here. E didn’t ask us for that kind of advice; E just tried to explain something from a personal point of view.
I thought I’d mentioned that my son changed his name. It’s very different from the name we gave him. I know a lot of people whose kids have changed their name. I think it’s much more common for parents of trans kids to find it troubling than it is for parents of children who changed just their name to find it troubling. I really don’t think the name part is the part that’s troubling.
I deliberately did NOT specify “doctor”. Nor did I imply anyone was sick.
There are events that can be difficult to adjust to. Having someone impartial with skills in helping others can help an individual deal with and adjust to major life changes that are causing distress. It has nothing to do with being “sick” or “crazy”, it’s acknowledging that sometimes getting help with something bothering you helps you resolve the issues faster and in a healthier manner than just ignoring the problem or trying to muddle through on your own. Particularly when the distress is coming from something happening to someone else that you have no control over, like a major change for a family member.
After 10 years of losing a career, having family members die, a nephew with a major brain injury, having my husband die, then being forced to move out of the home I lived in for 20 years I wasn’t sick but I sure as hell was experiencing emotional turmoil and needed some help making major adjustments in my life. I wound up seeing a social worker for a few months to help me work through all that and get my life in order. It was really helpful for me, so it’s not like I’m suggesting something I haven’t done myself.
In the end, the decision on whether or not to do that is robardin’s, not yours or mine.
I’m a parent, but my daughters show all signs so far of being cis.
Still, I’ve thought about this issue. What if one of them is nonbinary, or trans, or some other culturally-inflected identity manifestation that I haven’t even thought of yet?
Well, what I love about my kids isn’t their hair color. It isn’t their name. And it isn’t their gender. It’s them.
If one of my kids comes out as trans and wants me to know that they’ve always been male, that won’t turn my love for them into a lie. I didn’t love their gender, I loved them. If they change their name, that doesn’t turn my history with them into a sham. I didn’t love their name, I loved them.
It’d be hard, no doubt. Just having a friend who’s come out as trans and who’s kept a masculine name but uses she/they pronouns throws me for a loop, and this is someone that I’m only distant friends with. I’m certain that with one’s own child it’s magnitudes harder.
I must say that would help with some of the verbal awkwardness. (I’ve always had a bit of a raised eyebrow at the absence of a distinct first/second person plural)
I wonder if the Spivak pronouns run into a bit of a mental block among English speakers because they’re so used to the animate 3rd person singulars having an initial consonant.
I’ve not heard “they all,” but I have heard “them all” and “all of them.” I even said we could get a shortened word like “th’mall.” And then we’ll eventually have “all th’mall” like we have “all y’all” because some people use “y’all” as singular.
As for the resistance, I think it’s mostly resistance to adding a new word unnaturally. It’s hard to introduce new words for words like that–it’s like trying to introduce a new word for “the.” Heck, the only reason I think Ms. was able to catch on is that people were already pronouncing Mrs. and Miss as “miz.”
The ones I think have the best chance are “e/em/es” (or spelled “e, im, is”) which people do already use instead of “he, him, his” in rapid speech. But it’s hard for them to compete with the centuries of use of singular “they/them/their.”
Edit: come to thing of it, since I’ve heard 'em (e.g; “I talked to 'em about it”, maybe the word would be 'mall or 'emall)
“They” is plural. You didn’t got to a university where a “everyone…they” or “everybody … their” phrasing netted a letter grade off on a theme? I sure did.
Why “He/they”? Why not he/him/his? Does Page just feel plural sometimes?
Kind of off topic but I remember reading Morris’ Pax Britannica Trilogy many many years ago. They were some of the first history books I read in my post-school life.
Goodness, how many decades ago was that? Getting marked down for using indefinite singular “they” might have been a worry when I was a kolej kid back in the early 80’s, but the usage is considered far more acceptable nowadays. (And a whole letter grade penalty for one use of indefinite singular “they”? Pretty harsh grading policy, my current students would throw fits.)
While I do enjoy not feeling like the oldest and cluelessest person in the room when it comes to contemporary instances of linguistic evolution, I think you may be taking your sacrificial cluelessness a little too far here. Definite singular “they” as a non-gendered pronoun for nonbinary or gender-fluid people does not signify plural number. (It’s now in the dictionary!)
I find people’s resistance to singular they silly. It’s not “unnaturally” added, it was an organic evolution from the existing usage for unknown gender individuals. And it works wonderfully.
I’ve used generic singular “they” for a long time. What I find is that, in specific singular use, I keep wanting to say “they is” rather than “they are”; IOW it’s not the pronoun that feels wrong but the verb.
Singular “they” dates to at least 1375; if that’s too Old for you, Shakespeare used it, as did Jane Austen who was undeniably writing in Modern English. Frankly, the modern squeamishness surrounding it is innovative and ignorant, created out of nothing by the kinds of people who lack the education to know how language is used and the sense to keep their mouths shut when their heads are empty.
I skimmed that page, all examples I saw were of the generic individual kind. (Who is both one person and a potential multidude at the same time.) I didn’t see anything resembling the current use of singular they.
I think it’s more the case of someone feeling like they don’t fit into either box and don’t want to be labeled that way. Even if you fit clearly in the he or she box, I’m sure there are other scenarios where you wouldn’t want to be mis-labeled. For example, if there were only the labels like conservative/liberal, Democrat/Republican, Jew/Muslim, baby/adult, etc., not everyone fits into those binary choices and would prefer to not be labeled with those terms. I personally feel like the singular use of “they” can be clunky and confusing at times, but there’s not really a viable alternative right now for those people who don’t want to be labeled as a he or a she.
But now that “she” is a “he”, he is not gay anymore, right? In other words, when “she” had a girlfriend, she was gay but, now that “he” has a girlfriend, he is heterosexual by definition. Is that correct?
Page identifies as non-binary. As discussed above, the terminology to describe sexual orientation in the context of non-binary people is limited at the moment.
There’s also the standard for membership in a demographic, that you’re a member if you would be persecuted for being a member. In the same way that a mixed-race person in America might call themself “black” because the racists consider them black, and Israel’s Right of Return applies to people the Nazis would have considered Jewish even if they don’t meet Jewish standards of Jewishness, Page and Portner’s marriage is one that some people would refuse to sell them a wedding cake for, so they’re still “gay” in that sense.
Definite singular “they” as a non-gendered pronoun for nonbinary or gender-fluid people does not signify plural number.