As the issue of gender in society has started to surface, I started to think about what the role of gender really is, and what it’s for. That remains an open question to me.
But what seems much easier is the use of gender in language, particularly pronouns.
Currently there seems to be a sometimes controversial issue regarding pronouns. More and more organizations ask people to identify their pronouns upon first introduction. And people have arguments over pronouns.
Why do we need this distinction in the English language? Why don’t we just dispense with gendered pronouns altogether? There are plenty of languages that don’t have them.
And, really, I believe I should be able to refer to a person without checking with ēm what ēs gender identity or preferred pronouns are. So, I’ve been using –
The macrons are just a visual aid to mark these as pronouns, like how we capitalize “I.” I could also go for é, ë, etc.
The plurals remain the same: they, them, their/theirs, themselves
Of course there’s always the issue of whether or not one can get neologisms adopted by the larger culture. But it does happen sometimes: Latinx has become very common and Mx is starting to make a dent.
So putting the issue of difficulty of acceptance aside, let’s discuss the basic point. Why not just dispense with gendered pronouns and adopt gender-free pronouns like these?
Actually, it seems as though the change to a universal genderless pronoun would be more of a concession to the conservatives who claim to be offended or inconvenienced by individual diversity in pronoun use, or by the linguistic normalization of forms previously considered ungrammatical, such as singular “they”.
Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be more tolerant of the linguistic shifts and diversity resulting from society’s broadening views on issues of gender and pronoun use.
Certainly I, as a liberal, feel much happier with the current system of using gender-nonspecific indefinite pronouns in general, and allowing individuals to specify their personal preferences for pronouns referring to themselves, than I would with the OP’s proposal of an artificially invented single set of gender-neutral singular pronouns to be used in all circumstances.
However, if the OP really can manage to sell the rest of the English-speaking world on his (ēs?) new system, then what the hell, sure, I’ll adopt it.
Couple slight differences there, though. “Ms.” was added to a list of other titles as a possible alternative, not a mandatory replacement for “Miss/Mrs.” Even now, I see it used very, very infrequently except in some official or impersonal settings. The other thing was that the introduction of “Ms.” was a way to bring parity between the male and femal titles, in that it still carried the information of gender, but dropped the information of marital status.
Mostly… When filling out a form for a temp agency a few years back, I was told by the nice lady behind the desk that I’d filled it out wrong; I’d ticked ‘Ms’, but my marital status was ‘Single’. Ms, I was informed, was for divorced women.
Yes, I did try and explain it, no I don’t think she believed me.
Incidentally, my elderly Northern English relatives used ‘E’ as a gender neutral generic pronoun. More because they defaulted to ‘he’ and dropped their aitches, but still…
The issue with “Ms” is becoming moot since using honorifics like “Mr”, “Miss” and “Mrs” to address people is getting to be old fashioned. It’s much more likely that I’ll refer to someone as Firstname Lastname than Mr Lastname.
We already have a genderless pronoun for English, that pronoun is “they”.
“I spoke to Chris the other day, and they said the problem was that the caliper was misaligned.”
There we go. People use this form all the time, and the only people who get upset are the people who would get even more upset at the idea of a brand new set of bespoke pronouns. Yeah, yeah, “they” is plural, and can never be singular. Well, it can be singular, because regular people use it all the time as a singular pronoun, you just don’t notice because it sounds so natural.
Yes. Modern English has already transitioned the second-person plural pronoun to replace the second-person singular pronoun. We can just as well continue the transition for the third-person pronouns in a similar manner (after all, Shakespeare used singular “they” multiple times).
I don’t have anything against neologisms like “e”, but as a practical matter, increasing the frequency of an existing usage is much easier than introducing something new. And as a matter of orthography, English does not like diacritics. I’d recommend using “E”, “em”, and “es”, following the pattern of no diacritics, but capitalizing one-letter words (like “I” and “O”).
I don’t think it sounds natural at all. Yes, it is more accepted for a generic individual like, “When a person comes to a hotel, they expect a quick check in.” In that instance, a person checking into a hotel could be male or female, so despite the objections of language purists, “they” in that situation seems to become more and more acceptable.
However, if I said, “When Dave comes to a hotel, they expect a quick check-in” that sounds horrific. Because Dave is a male (and I’ll leave a transgender debate for a different thread) then the pronoun “he” is not only appropriate, it sounds silly to say anything different.
Well, some individuals do use “they/them” as their preferred non-indefinite singular pronouns. So if Dave happens to prefer “they/them”, then you would say exactly that about their (i.e., Dave’s) expectations on checking in to a hotel.
But I agree that this unusual usage is not likely to become the default any time soon.
Mulling it over: I think there also exists what might be called a “sort-of-indefinite” form of gender-neutral singular “they”. It’s used in situations where you’re referring to a definite individual with a presumed binary gender, but the gender’s so irrelevant that you don’t bother specifying it.
As in, say, “I talked to the Verizon rep and they said there was nothing the company could do about it.” Even if you know perfectly well whether the Verizon rep you talked to was male or female, you might still use singular “they” to refer to that individual, because in this situation gender’s not relevant enough to motivate even the tiny effort of choosing to use “he” or “she”.
Also, the use of the gender-neutral singular “they” emphasizes just how little the Verizon rep’s individual identity matters in these circumstances: the rep is just the de-individualized mouthpiece of the company.
Wait, what? I understand that if Dave identifies as female, then I should say “she” in that context, but what are we talking about where a person gets to identify a pronoun and demand that others use “they” in that context? Is this a case of Dave declaring that he/she has no gender at all? I honestly am confused about this.
I think that example is clearly improper. You could say, “I talked to Verizon and they said that there was nothing the company can do about it.” (even though “it” would technically be more proper). But when the gender is known, you use the gender specific pronoun.
I simply do not see the need for reeducation of the population to cater to a small handful of individuals for whom this is an issue.
ETA: Is Sir and Ma’am now forbidden in this brave new world? What is the new honorific we should use in place of them?
I have read posts on this board where users use they when referring to their spouse which I find fascinating as I’m doubtful they are all unaware of their partner’s gender or that the partner is always non-binary.
Yup, some individuals identify as “nonbinary” (“enby”) or “agender” or something else that doesn’t fit neatly into a male/female classification scheme, and their personal pronoun preferences often reflect that. Some nonbinary people are fine with being called either “he” or “she”, and some prefer singular “they”.
I personally have a dream of a specific form of linguistic evolution that I don’t think will actually happen, but would make me happy if it did: Namely, I would like the definite gender-neutral singular “they” pronoun for a specific nonbinary individual to use singular verb forms, but the indefinite gender-neutral singular “they” pronoun for some unspecified individual to continue using plural verb forms, as currently practiced.
Thus, referring to your nonbinary friend Dave who uses they/them pronouns: “Dave’s complaining that they can’t concentrate because they was up so late last night.”
But referring to the mixed-gender group of students about to take a test in your class: “Any student complaining that they can’t concentrate because they were up so late last night will get no sympathy from me.”
Wouldn’t that be an elegant syntactical form of semantic distinction?
