"There's not a man I meet but doth salute me, as if I were their well-acquainted friend"
Despite the growing recognition and validation of gender-neutral pronouns, there are still many people – particularly in the writing industry – who reject singular they. These traditionalists usually complain that singular they will make the English language worse, since the meaning of “they” will be less specific.
But English itself has something to say about that. Singular they has emerged precisely because English has a more serious problem, and the language is naturally evolving to fix it. What’s more, English speakers, and we speculative fiction storytellers in particular, desperately need singular they.
Gendered Pronouns Are Too Limiting
English as traditionalists define it has a huge gaping hole: there’s no way to communicate about a sapient individual without assigning that person a traditional gender category. Using exclusively gendered pronouns for third person doesn’t sufficiently cover three important cases:
- A hypothetical person of any gender. Just on this blog, Mythcreants has countless hypothetical examples about fictional characters. Having to use a gendered pronoun every time would cause us to make weird insinuations about gender and require clarification when an example is actually gender specific.
- A person of unknown gender. Many contexts require referring to a person who is specific and real, but largely unknown. If someone has lost a possession or committed a crime, referring to them with a specific gender could not only be inaccurate but also reduce the chance of solving the problem. Gender assumptions can cause us to miss the person we’re looking for.
- A person who is of nonbinary gender. In this case, it’s a specific person and their gender is known, and that gender can’t be accurately referred to with “he” or “she.” Basic courtesy requires another option.
For the first two cases, the “traditional” alternatives* are so unnatural that no one ever uses them in spoken conversation. Using “he or she” is so awkward it’s ridiculous. Alternating between “he” and “she” is barely practical, even in a written work. What if you add a hypothetical example to the middle of your book after it’s written? Will you edit all your pronouns so they carefully alternate again?
The most that traditionalists can achieve is giving written English its own vocabulary, so that they can convince writers to expend effort on unnatural constructs that would never fly in spoken conversation. But why should writers waste their time maintaining such a poor status quo? If it’s not usable enough for spoken language, it’s not usable enough for writing either.
Since so many traditionalists object to singular they because it reduces specificity, it’s only fair to point out that using gendered pronouns does the same. So “he” either means a man or a person of any gender? Which one is it? This regularly causes confusion. I’ve read numerous books on writing that specifically explain the hypothetical gender of protagonists because the gendered pronouns they use are misleading. Take this tidbit from The Writer’s Journey, which alternates between “he” and “she” throughout.
A Hero is someone who is willing to sacrifice his own needs on behalf of others, like a shepherd who will sacrifice to protect and serve his flock. At the root the idea of Hero is connected with self-sacrifice. (Note that I use the word Hero to describe a central character or protagonist of either sex.)
With singular they, the writer wouldn’t have needed this clarification.
For our third use case regarding someone of nonbinary gender, there is no ivory-tower hack for getting around this problem. Either you find a new term that isn’t “he,” “she,” and certainly not “it,”* or you’re being incredibly rude. Some people may think they’re okay with being rude to members of a marginalized group, but what happens when they have to attend a job interview or make a business deal with a nonbinary person? There’s a difference between choosing to be rude and being rude because you can’t help it.
Humans evolved a big brain primarily to coordinate with other people. In a human language, rudeness is a fatal flaw. An implication of rudeness killed “thou” – our old singular “you.” “Thou” became impolite, and now it’s dead. Courtesy is more important to our language than specificity.
Limited Language Means Limited Imaginations
Speculative fiction is all about unusual ideas. It has changed the world by reimagining what society could be like. But our ability as writers to take people to strange worlds depends on having the language to describe those worlds. What’s more, the words we use have an impact on how we think. When we don’t even have a word for something, we have trouble wrapping our minds around it.
Going without a pronoun for ungendered sapient beings reinforces a huge gap in our cultural imagination. When our language requires us to gender everyone we know immediately, we have trouble relating to others without the trappings of gender.
Our overdependence on gendered pronouns also presents gender as an inextricable part of someone’s identity. When someone informs us they are a different gender than we thought, we freak out. Really, a person’s gender is one characteristic they have, much like their religion or career, and it’s a characteristic that can change. But many storytellers resist gender-flipping their characters when it’s called for because they don’t view a gender-flipped character as the same person.
This emphasis on gender warps our depiction of everything, from familiar to strange. Almost every time a speculative fiction character is introduced that naturally falls outside of gender categories, an immediate effort is made to define what their gender is.
We gender robots.
We gender aliens.
We gender alien robots.
We do this even when it’s unrealistic for these characters to be gendered. We do it just to make it easier to think of them as relatable, sapient beings. When we don’t assign gender to aliens, such as in the movie Arrival, it’s often because they aren’t supposed to be sympathetic. Instead they are presented as unknowable or frightening.
What does this limitation say about us as a species in a galaxy full of unknown wonders? It says our pathetic human minds can’t handle the idea of people that don’t fit the narrow confines of our own culture. It’s a good thing sapient aliens haven’t made first contact, because this is just embarrassing.
Singular They Is the Easiest Solution
You might have been wondering for this entire article why we can’t invent a new gender-neutral pronoun to eliminate these problems. I have no objection to a new pronoun; naturally, that would be fantastic. A new pronoun could also work alongside singular they. Whereas singular they is commonly used for unknown gender, a new pronoun could be used for someone who has a known gender that is not specifically masculine or feminine. The nonbinary people I know would love this. Many nonbinary people do use one of many gender-neutral pronouns that have been introduced, and it’s important to respect everyone’s pronoun choices.
But there’s a reason why English has naturally evolved to include singular they and not a brand-new pronoun. Evolution rarely jumps to an ideal state that’s far away; that’s too hard. Instead, it creates incremental improvement. For instance, predators haven’t evolved guns to shoot their prey. Guns are super effective at killing things, but how is half a gun going to help predators survive? So instead, predators have evolved longer canines. That’s a much smaller change, and every extra millimeter helps. It’s more practical.
Similarly, the transition to using singular they is a lot easier than incorporating a brand-new pronoun. Everyone already uses singular they for hypothetical people of any gender and people of unknown gender. If you listen close, you’ll also find that people often use singular they when they do know the gender of the person they are referring to, but the listener doesn’t. The leap that many people currently have to make, to using singular they for a person with a known neutral gender, is a small one.
Comparatively, incorporating a new pronoun takes a lot of effort. I’ve heard people object to singular they on the grounds that we should have a new pronoun, but none of them were actually fluent with a new pronoun.* While I’m quite used to singular they, every time I want to use a brand new pronoun, I have to stop and think about what the subject and object forms are and choose the one that’s right for that use. With singular they, my brain already knows whether to use “they,” “them,” or “their.”
That doesn’t mean learning singular they takes no effort at all. A lot of people who’ve never tried switching the pronouns they speak don’t realize that it takes time and practice. When they don’t get it right immediately, they assume they just can’t do it. But they can, and the more people who make this jump, the easier it will be for everyone else to do it. This is another reason why singular they is on a faster track to adoption than any new pronouns. It’s the most obvious solution, so the most people already use it. Then it grows more quickly, since people repeat what they hear.
When working in a written medium, people tend to blame every instance of pronoun confusion with singular they on the pronoun itself. We don’t do that with any other pronoun. When we have two men in a scene and the reader isn’t sure who “he” is, we don’t insist that “he” isn’t specific enough. All pronouns can be used in a confusing manner.
The biggest issue with singular they isn’t actually specificity; it’s that many readers haven’t adjusted to using it for named people. Contextual clues help us identity what most pronouns refer to, but for readers who aren’t used to singular they in this context, those clues must fight against cognitive dissonance. The same usage of singular they can be perfectly clear to a person who is familiar with this usage and still confusing for someone who’s adjusting. But this isn’t a problem with singular they itself; it’s a growing pain for readers adapting to changes in our language, and it will fade with time.
While traditionalists have been pushing back against singular they in writing for hundreds of years, our culture’s more egalitarian view of gender has finally made it too strong to resist. Love it or hate it, singular they is becoming the norm in writing, just as it is in conversation. As writers, we just have to decide whether to adapt to this change or become outmoded.
P.S. Our bills are paid by our wonderful patrons. Could you chip in?
Thou hast failed to outline thy argument as to why “it” is not already the singular form of “they”.
Because ‘it’ is used to refer to either objects (animals count as objects in this case) or children (and even children are often referred to as ‘he’ or ‘she’ instead). It would be rude to refert to a sentient being as ‘it.’
There was a robbery working in the shadows.
It threw a punch, snatched a purse and was gone before anyone could raise the alarm.
Is a robber really a non-sentient being?
While you’re technically correct that ‘it’ can be a non-gendered pronoun, it’s rude to use it to refer to a sentient creature because it is traditionally used for non-sentient things or non-humans. The implication of ‘it’ is that the creature referred to is not human, or not sentient. The meaning comes from the pronoun as well as the context, so in your example, it is not actually clear whether or not the robber is human because of your use of the pronoun ‘it’.
Although, this isn’t actually a difficult grammatical problem. And your playful use of ‘thou’ makes me think you don’t especially care about maintaining even a base level of human decency towards others, so I guess it’s a moot point.
Thee and thine call me; base!?!
Tis a charge that hast cut me to the quick.
Twas a yen for back issue o’ the Mighty Thor I countenance.
Editor’s Note: We’ve decided to leave this thread up because of the excellent rebuttals, but no further comments advocating the use of “it” for non-binary people will be allowed. That argument is dehumanizing, and is not something we intend to host here at Mythcreants.
Thank you!
Just doing the job of a friendly neighborhood moderator!
Because IT is also a particular kind of insult used against trans people, and other people who “don’t pass” in a binary gendered system. .
“It” is only appropriate for inanimate objects and a certain embodiment of evil that sometimes take the shape of a terrifying clown.
I’ve already come to like the singular ‘They.’ While I haven’t used it all that often in my fiction (although I use it when characters are discussing someone whose gender they don’t know – and pretty much for the reason you mentioned for mysteries: so they don’t assume a gender and limit their investigations involuntarily), I often use it for my blog posts.
My own native language would refer to a person of unknown gender as ‘she,’ by the way. German also genders objects and the correct pronoun for ‘person’ (which is the German word for ‘person’ – kidding you not) is ‘she,’ because the word is gendered as female.
I was hoping to find a comment by you, Cay Reet, as I already knew you were German. (I am Austrian, so German-speaking and -writing as well.) I wholeheartedly embrace the singular they and have been wondering if there were any efforts underway to introduce something similar in German. Do you know of any? If you write in German, what do you use (or do you circumvent any phrasing which would require a singular they)?
I usually write English – for the greater audience and by now out of habit. I’m not aware that there’s a viable thing going on in German, sadly. We’re still very much hung up on our attached -in or our er/sie.
I like calling ships “she”.
I was talking to my brother once about a ship called Goliath.
She’s a bulk concrete carrier that services the concrete works next to the fish markets, so the ANZAC bridge (although it was called the New Glebe Island bridge at the time) was made high enough that Goliath could get under at high tide.
It might be a very masculine name but Goliath is still a she.
Ships, especially warships, have traditionally been referred to as ‘she’ – at least in English. Nothing new there, but it doesn’t deny the need for a neutral gendered pronoun to use for humans.
In french everything has a gendered pronoun.
So you get, he knife and she folk.
Or he chair and she table.
There’s a difference between the grammatical gender of objects and gender indicators like pronouns.
David Peterson has an episode on it in his series “Art of Language Invention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmJGpnC9qXk
As does Edgar at Artifexian has a video that breaks it down in the context of other noun classification: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR2f92cAFKY&t=534s
I’ve grown up with gendered pronouns, I’m German. No need to tell me that you can have a female potato or a male bus.
The thing with “they” is that it seems to fit English quite easily. Pronouns like “you” and prepositions like “the” are already used for both singular and plural and are gender-neutral. And many nouns and adjectives are invariant and gender neutral too. As a native Portuguese speaker, I find that English is already gender neutral regarding almost anything except those 2 dumb pronouns and a handful of words. (This makes translating a pain, as titles like “The Last Jedi” can’t be written in some other languages without spoiling whether there is more than one Jedi and their gender). The main complaint I can think about singular they, that it is less “clear” to use the same word for both singular and plural… well, English already does that nearly all the time.
Of course this is completely logical, but English is everything but logical, so I won’t be surprised if in a few decades the English language ends up with a dozen singular pronouns and starts using “you” for third person plural.
Yes, having a neutral pronoun in a language is nice. I’m German and in my native language, everything has a gender, too (we do have neutral, too, but only for a couple of objects, young girls, and babies). Which is why the German title of “The Last Jedi” gave a bit of the content away while the English one didn’t.
And since English already uses ‘you’ for both singular and plural, there’s no reason not to do the same with the ‘they.’
German, for instance, has two pronouns for ‘you’ – ‘du’ or ‘sie’ (with ‘sie’ being the same as female third person singular or third person plural) -, depending on how well you know someone. ‘Sie’ is used for people whom you’re not very familiar with while ‘du’ is more for friends, family, etc.
Yes, somethings being vague or ambiguous about the gender and/or number is a feature of the language and not a flaw. All the times when books written in English have a big reveal about the gender of someone, and in other languages there is no way to make it work.
Portuguese also has formal and informal “you” (with singular and plural forms for both), and informal uses third-person verb tenses. Not that anyone uses formal anyway. Spanish is exactly the same, except we swap which is the formal and which is the informal.
German has a formal and informal ‘you’ as well.
And I rather like that profession names, for instance are not gendered, so if I write someone is a doctor (or a carpenter or a baker), there’s no indication whether that person is a man or a woman. In German, there would be.
Im from Germany too… and i find it sometimes a bit annoying that german languages genders so many profession names. It feels a bit like the gendered profession reinforce a massage i dont want in my stories. English is sometimes the better alternative… but i like to sound of german it can be very clear and a bit snarky.
Yes, it’s the same for me. I like the English system where a profession’s name simply applies to all people who are in the profession, no matter their gender.
Oh geez, yeah! I once read a webcomic where a quite masculine character was revealed to be a woman and I even gasped in surprise along with other characters. Then I read the Russian translation and even our verbs are gendered, so it was revealed from the beginning and the effect wasn’t the same.
What about verbs?
They is or they are?
“Is” is just wrong, but so is “are”.
They are. Just like you are. No problem at all with that.
I use “They are” because it sounds less awkward to me. It also works better when referring to abstract persons, who may or may not be singular, which I tend to do.
A pair of shoes is plural, but you dont say:
A good pair of shoes ARE essential
English is not chiseled into stone every time we speak it. In some communities “They is” will be used by people who are not grammer nerds. My own redneck family uses this and while I don’t, it seems silly for me to lose my shit over the “improperness” of the use in casual contect. They are still accurately communicating a statement to their peers and even my snobby overeducated ass can understand what they mean. Language communicates, and when we have to abuse it to demean others for being different or less educated or concerned with “proper” speak, it just appears elitist and annoying to plenty of people.
If this is what you are really hung up on… pick one and use it, if you don’t like it, use the other.
Unless you have actual OCD or related learning issues, I might question your motives for arguing about how sensical it is to simply use a polite form of referring to people who you do not know intimately, or those who have already asked to be respectfully called by this pronoun.
TL;DR:
Does this really matter THAT MUCH, or are you just looking for a fight or a reason to hold onto your personal bias against people who don’t want to conform to your worldview/grammer? Is the thought of sounding a bit off in grammer more important to you than NOT dismissing someone’s entire identity?
Technically, the ‘is’ from the pair of shoes refers to the ‘pair’ which is singular. Three pairs of shoes are something as well. It’s something you realize more, I think, when it’s not your native language. Since I have to think more about some things in the language, I tend to see certain structures.
I’m learning Spanish right now and judging by the way things are conjugated, and the way adjectives have to match with gender (like, if you’re female and feeling sick you’re ‘enferma’ rather than ‘enfermo,’ which is the male version – this gendering applies to most adjectives), I wonder whether it’s even possible to talk about someone without assigning gender. Then again, I’m relatively new at the language, so there could be something that I don’t know about.
Some languages have it easier with that than others. Spanish or German (my native language) make it almost impossible so far.
Actually, there has been a lot of discussions these days referring to pronouns in Spanish. A group wants to replace -o/-a (which mostly assigns gender), with -e. Consequently, instead of enfermo o enferma, you could say “enferme”.
It sounds ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE and makes me wanna SCREAM and RIP MY DAMNED EARS OFF but it’s trying to be the popular version of gender neutrality.
(It beats me why they chose -e instead of -i. If you speak Spanish pretty well, you may notice that i is the prettiest of the two. Instead of “elle”, “enferme”, “alumne”, -i ending would be so much better: “elli”, “enfermi”, “alumni”. It sounds way cuter and less artificial.)
Sorry for the mini rant there but I just die inside everytime these people want to push the -e agenda. Go for -i. I is cute. I is better. I is life.
I don’t speak Spanish (although I speak some French), but I agree with you. From the look alone – and the bit I know about Spanish just by osmosis -, I’d actually tend towards -i as well. I’d say it sounds better – and perhaps also cuter. I’d have to be better at Spanish to judge that part. :)
In French, it’s really difficult as well. Right now, there’s a discussion about using both versions of the gendered words at once, using a period as separator. For instance, writing “enrhumé.e” instead of “enrhumé” or “enrhumée”. For this case it’s quite easy, since there’s only a single character that changes, but for other words like “lecteur.trice” (meaning “reader”), it’s less easy to use, and you have to do it for the nouns, adjectives, etc. I’m trying to use that on my blog, but it’s not always convenient. And a lot of people are vehemently against that, starting with l’Académie Française, which is meant to dictate the use of french language. They went as far as saying that it was a “lethal danger” for the french language…
Oh, yes, oh, yes, this is awesome! Thank you so much for this article!
I have so many characters who have no gender that it gets rather tricky at times.
I often used “they” when I was referring to my fiance. It is amazing how no one notices and inserts ‘he’ as automatic, which allowed me to be honest about my sexuality while also not drawing attention.
(sadly ‘Spouse’ is not quite as expected and draws attention, but it is important to note the ‘they’ is not ever noticed)
I will say English is fascinating, it’s rules and regulations and even syntax constantly change. at a faster rate than many other languages due to it’s hodge podge nature.
That said, language adapts to cultures, there are multiple dialects in a singular language. If you are arguing a broad acceptance in the Academic dialect, I agree, but that will likely take quite a bit of time as Academic dialects are resistant to change as they stand on the idea of being the ‘correct’ usage.
As for the usage in dialects outside of that, I think it just takes time and use. While non-binary people are not new, they are just being recognized in mass by wider cultures at large. People are resistant because of lack of use or even knowledge. Of course people are always resistant to dialects that are foreign to them.
“I ain’t no quitter” is a fine sentence as far as how English works, and has valuable use. It is just as correct as “I am not a quitter” or even “I am not someone who quits easily.” but they do convey slightly different tones and variations of meaning, but some will feel odd or even “wrong” based on
the dialect expected or environment.
I guess I am saying, ‘They’ is being used in more LGBT spaces, places with their own dialects and vocabulary. That needs to be fully embraced, as well as a wider recognition of non-binary genders and correct terminology for them. ‘Gay’ and ‘Queer’ had very different meanings 60 years ago. Heck, one word for us here is a major slur, while in England is a simple cigarette. And someone would probably need the internet to know what a tribad was.
More articles like these, more publicity so it’s more well known will encourage usage, when it becomes common vernacular perhaps ‘Standard English’ will adapt it.
Editor’s note: For the record, we are no longer allowing arguments in favor of “it” for nonbinary folk. That argument is dehumanizing and not something we will host here at Mythcreants.
If the singular they was good enough for Chaucer – making older than modern English itself – I think the traditionalists don’t have a leg to stand on.
That was my thought as well! If the traditionalists go far enough back in history they will return to a time when they was used as singular gender neutral pronoun!
I’m not arguing against singular they, but I do think it’s a recent invention.
What older versions of English had, was generic they. Basically a pronoun to refer to an unknown or hypothetical person: think “If you meet a friend, great them.”, “Nobody wanted to share their food.” or “A queen that young cannot rule their country”, etc.
If you can find a counter example, I’d be interested to see it. But as far as I know, using they to refer to a specific singular person (“See that teacher? They are my friend.”) is only a couple decades old.
An unknown person was still singular. If someone’s been stabbed through the heart, you know the murderer is a single specific person, you just don’t know who they are.
And that’s still the common usage – a hypothetical person, or a person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant. That hasn’t changed.
What’s different now is that we recognise people to whom neither he or she applies – that wasn’t really recognised in the Middle Ages (although some courts did acknowledge transgender people).
In the absence of a new pronoun, they is most logical one to use if he or she aren’t right (though I believe some nonbinary people do prefer a new pronoun over they, specifically because it implies an unknown or irrelevant gender, and they don’t regard their gender identities as such, just not male or female).
Some languages don’t work that way. When I was in Phuket in Thailand a while back gender was something a speaker added to indicate their own gender. If you identify as a woman and wanted to say HELLO you might say “sawasdee ka” but if you identified as a man you’d say “sawasdee khrap” (the first word sounding like “swa-dee” to the tourist).
The issue with any usage should be clarity of meaning and whether or not a gender is relevant. For example the words “marksman”, “postman” and “spokesman” are potentially misleading because they suggest a gender about the subject that may not be correct or none. The answer though isn’t changing -man to -person, like marksperson postperson or spokesperson, because in context we’re talking about a job or role which a person does anyway. Rather, it’s to find a more accurate word or phrase, like sharpshooter, postal worker (or “postie”) . Spokesperson seems to work, but using the position of that person (like press secretary, or media representative) might be more useful. Likewise a manhole cover could be an access hatch or sewer lid.
I’ve been using “they” as a personal pronoun since the 1970s when doing fanzines, when I couldn’t remember the names of people on panels at SF cons. No one complained back then, because it was what was said that was more important. Alternative words like Hir, Zie, Per, et cetera, are problematic because they’re either not well known or can be mistaken for other words when spoken rather than read (Hir could be Her). I’m slightly deaf and have been since childhood, and without seeing a person’s mouth when they speak can’t tell the difference between “f”, “th”, “h” and “sh”. Hence HE and SHE sound the same from a distance, and most of the time I don’t correct people because I could have got it wrong.
I’ve been to more than one QUEER COLLABORATIONS (an annual queer student conference mainly for Australian university students) where genderqueer issues, including personal pronouns, were hot issues and points of friction when others got it wrong. However, when you’re half drunk at the hostel afterwards, it’s often hard to remember someone’s name – especially if you’ve only just met them – let alone their pronoun preference!
Adding to Laura Ess’s comment: another concern about pronoun proliferation is how those who have visual acuity problems identify new people in groups.
I still remember with embarrassment sitting security for a conference for our denomination. We had several gay or lesbian clergy marrying their same-gender partner that afternoon, and we had had several violent disruptions on the floor by outsiders. A number of us had been tasked to check badges, but not disrupt traffic flow of attendees.
Having just stopped a group of clergy that included our national minister (think bishop) and who I knew by sight for not having their badges out, I asked the next group to turn their badges around so names were visible. (Badges were color coded by preferred gender, and then the pronouns were also printed under the person’s name. We had male, female and non-binary coded badges). All members of the group had female badges on but one member of the group was giving me lip about turning their badge around. So in exasperation, I said something to the effect of “Ma’am, if your name is not visible you will not be allowed on the floor.”
Turns out this person preferred zhe, and should have been addressed as “gentle person,” which I would have done had zhe been wearing a non-binary badge. I got ripped a new one, after having shoved the badge in my face.
This put me in mind of how I would have handled the gender identification had I met zhir back in the hotel while I was contact-less. Even with the badge shoved in my face, I would not have been able to distinguish between z and s and would only have seen the color of the badge.
The plethora of pronouns on the non-binary badges was truly mind-boggling and I would have given up and resorted to pointing, which my Midwestern roots frown upon. A single gender-neutral pronoun, even one grammatically plural, would have simplified the mass of misgendering that occurred at that meeting. (He-white, she-blue, they-green would have been so much easier to remember.)
I always wondered if there was a formal way to address someone in a non-gendered way. I don’t feel comfortable saying, “Hello you” when I want to say, “Hello Ma’am, Miss, or Sir.”
The amateur lexicographer in me would like to have another word for the indeterminate singular. It not a problem in writing so much as it is in composing spoken sentences. But listening to my kid use pronouns, it’s clear that objections to the singular “they” will soon fade. They know what they mean when they say it, and they have no problems sidestepping any ambiguity they might encounter.
“With singular they, the writer wouldn’t have needed this clarification.”
The writer would still have needed this clarification since many would interpret the word Hero as referring only to male protagonists due to the existence of Heroine.
I’d say if you couple the word ‘hero’ with the pronoun ‘they,’ it’s clear your hero isn’t male. And the word ‘hero’ is used in gender neutral terms a lot these days, because ‘heroine’ refers to another type. See ‘hero’s journey’ vs. ‘heroine’s journey.’
I feel that hero, like wizard, needs to be a gender neutral term.
“heroic person” and “practitioner of wizardry”
Gender neutral terms already exist. Having a one word expression is just wanting shorthand and maybe that’s a little lazy on the part of science fiction and fantasy writers.
Everyone should examine the tools they already have before demanding a new tool.
Fun fact, “hero” is already gender neutral in the vast majority of cases! Most of the time when you say hero, people won’t assume a gender, especially if you use neutral pronouns.
“Wizard” is getting there, though not quite.
If you want to be really safe you can say things like “protagonist” or “mage.”
Also using proper nouns as identifiers increases clarity of identification.
Grumpy is a dwarf.
Grumpy has a short beard so people aren’t entirely sure if Grumpy is a girl-dwarf or simply a boy-dwarf who likes to have a short beard.
However since Grumpy is perpetually grumpy and carries a traditional dwarfish walking axe; most people are willing to allow the mystery to remain unsolved.
Use the proper nouns and you’ll identify the character with far less confusion.
But you will also repeat the character’s name over and over, which is not a good thing. We do have pronouns so we don’t have to use a character’s name over and over again, thus using ‘they’ instead of ‘Grumpy’ is perfectly fine.
Also, Cheery Littlebottom taught us that girl dwarves have as much of a beard as boy dwarves (because part of the dwarfish courting process is to discreetly find out whether you want to date a girl dwarf or a boy dwarf). Grumpy therefore clearly is an individual who likes their beard short.
“The dwarf”, “this short fighter”, “the one that wields the axe” and “the Grumpster” could all be used if one is getting tired of the repetition.
Indeed I’ld argue that the singular form of they would be “this one” in a great many cases.
Hero becomes generic but heroine remains specific.
It’s interesting that that is the rule of thumb for the male form of any particular word.
I mean “mankind”, has meant the entire human race since before Dickens was born.
‘Mankind’ itself is short for ‘humankind,’ though, and humankind encompasses every human, no matter the gender.
Sorry gotta be pedantic here:
Mann in Old English means person, so mankind = person kind. Hence also woman (from wifman “wife/woman person”) and manslaughter.
“human” comes from French/Latin and has nothing to do with mann. It just happens to look similar.
(sorry wanted to make this one post, but can’t edit)
The feminine is a more recent innovation within the Indo-European languages (including English). It has taken over the explicitly female referents from the earlier common (becoming the ”masculine”), leaving it with everything else.
This explains why ”masculine” forms typically take both male, undefined, and sometimes female referents, and why their plurals are used for groups of mixed referents as well. (Think of ‘guys’, Spanish ‘Latinos’ and French ‘ils’)
So, male forms becoming generic might not be the development, instead they simply already are.
This would also include generic he, which is already found in Old-English. ‘They’ was only borrowed from Old-Norse in Middle-English (when the native 3rd person plural hīe had merged with masculine singular hē due to sound changes).
I’m writing a story which has a group of non-human genderless characters. When I came to write a scene with them, it became apparent that saying “they” all the time was extremely off-putting.
Thankfully the scene is not terribly important so I’ll just omit it altogether and work the information contained within it into the story another way. But it would have been nice to see these characters working together.
Well, the gender-neutral characters probably have gender-neutral pronouns of their own from their own culture. Couldn’t you just call them whatever they’d be called on their home planet or whatever? Inventing a set of pronouns could be the solution here, as long as you make it clear what these pronouns are and what they mean.
I suspect you can make that scene work without constant repetition of “they,” in the same way writers make scenes with more than three male characters work without constantly repeating “he.”
I read a novel (can’t remember the title or author now) that used the word “shim” for a person of unknown gender, which I thought was a cool solution- you can easily get that it is the combination of ‘she’ and ‘him’ and thus meant to be inclusive, and it’s short and easy to pronounce.
The dictionary approves of the singular ‘They’ as well. See this article:
https://www.dictionary.com/e/they-is-a-singular-pronoun/
“the language is naturally evolving to fix it.” This is not true. If it were, you wouldn’t be writing this post. In fact, outside social media singular they is not even a thing. Maybe in College, but not in real world were people wake up early to get to job. It’s not natural, and therefore it won’t happen. Forced changes on language don’t work without a repression machine.
The singular they isn’t a forced change. It’s been around for centuries, and is a natural part of the language – the only “force” was on the part of those trying to say it was wrong.
I have read a lot from the sj crowd about how there is no fundimental difference between men and women other than hormones and plumbing. How do these arguments not contradict the argument that gender identification is not a choice, and how do they not validate the idea that it’s far less traumatic to change the brain to match the body than to change the body to match tha brain?
I believe a person should be able to live the life they want. I’m not making any arguments. There just seem to be some odd cotradictions in these parts of the www.
It’s actually much more traumatic to change the brain to match the body, as the case of an accidentally castrated boy who was brought up as a girl (body female -> mind trained to follow it, it happened only days after birth) shows dramatically. The boy didn’t even know why he was not feeling like other girls and eventually ended up killing himself. Now, a lot of people use this example to show that transgender people are mentally sick and should be treated, but the simple fact is that the boy never chose to become a girl. Because of an accident during his circumcision, the doctors changed his body and thought giving him the right hormones would change his mind, too, and make him a normal, albeit sterile, girl. Transgender people are the other way around: the mind yearns for the body it sees as the right one. If they were treated like that boy, it would mean forcing their minds to accept the bodies they were given, instead of giving them the bodies they crave (which is medically possible now). It doesn’t even have to be complete – quite some transgender people never go through the surgery for several reasons, they’re content with slight changes, some even with merely being socially recognized as the other gender.
Also, given there are people who identify with both genders or none, gender identification is not an easy topic. Even overall identifying as a woman doesn’t mean I, for instance, do have to agree with everything people think is part of my gender. Also, gender roles are not set in stone, they’re different in different cultures and they change with society, which shows they’re not hard-wired into people’s brains.
This topic is very context sensitive; most people in this world can not have a conversation about this without offending somebody because we simply are not familier with the lingo. We have a ton of lesbians in my family, I know female soldiers (the type that shoot at people), my mums best friend is a male flight attendent, and I’ve dated an intersex girl, social justice has never come up. So, like I said, I am not making any arguments.
I’m just curious how the non-christian-ideal community reconciles the these two conflicting ideas that, as far as I can tell, are both dogma.
The problem with the idea that ‘people who do not confirm to what we consider normal’ must be mentally ill (which comes up a lot in ideas like conversion therapy for gay people or the idea that trans people don’t need their body realigned, but their mind) is that it cements a norm which might not be a norm at all. My favourite thing to point out to those ‘it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’ people is that, according to their own holy scripture, Eve is a transgender clone of Adam, since she was made from a man’s rib.
Human biology is a mess already (although we only have one chromosome which determines sex – the Y chromosome, since everyone has at least one X chromosome – biological and genetic sex can be two completely different things) and when our personality is added to the mix, things only get worse. We should open our minds and accept there’s more than just two states, not get all aggressive and think everyone else is ‘wrong’ (especially when it’s an old fictional book which says so).
Before being converted to Christianity, a lot of the Native American people had a concept called ‘two-spirits’ which included those we’d today either consider trans or non-binary – people who were born in one body, but felt like they belonged to a different gender or fell somewhere in-between. Those people weren’t shunned or told that there was something wrong with them – they were accepted the way they were, they were allowed to dress according to their preferences and to live the way they chose. They were sometimes even considered wiser or closer to the spirits of nature, since they had both spirits in them.
To come back to the topic of the post, though, fact is that it’s hard to either talk about someone whose gender is unknown or someone who doesn’t confirm to a specific gender without constructing something new, because we have no culture (unlike the Native Americans) which includes those not confirming to clear standards. ‘They,’ unlike ‘ze’ or similar new constructs, is already there, can be easily pronounced, and is gender-neutral by definition, which makes it a good one to use.
I like that transgender clone thing.
I’m from the south pacific, we have fa’afafine. And I’ve never expressed any views about sexual orientation.
I guess nobody can answer my quetion without offending sombody. Or is it an ongoing debate?
Either you believe that gender is hardwired into the human brain and thus not a choice or you believe that there are people who are born in the wrong body and need the body and not the mind to change. There is no aligning both positions, because they are opposing each other. If gender (not sex, that is a difference) is hardwired, then there is no trans person, because their gender was hardwired when they were conceived and they only think they are the other gender and need psychological therapy. If gender is not hardwired, then there are trans people who ended up with a biological sex differing from their gender identity and they have a right to physically change.
Science supports the second position at the moment (with some scientists even claiming that we need to rework the biological definition of ‘sex’ to encompass more cases – around 5 is suggested), but that will not cut any ice with people who believe that everyone who claims they’re not born into the right body is mentally ill and needs therapy for that. The ‘gender is hardwired’ group.
The problem with the idea that a trans person needs a mental change instead of a physical one is that, despite the procedure existing, it does not validate the need to have a different body, but instead claims that the body is right and the mind is wrong (read: the trans person is mentally ill). As I wrote before, not every trans person does the complete change. Some only do parts of it. But they can, if they wish, do the complete transition today and they do have the right to have it. Besides, psychological evaluation and therapy are part of the transition from one sex to the other – no trans person does the physically change without being psychologically supervised.
My favorite reply when it comes to the argument that transgender people are mentally ill is this:
If you consider them to have a mental illness (which is a defendable position if they have gender dysphoria, since it does cause psychological distress), then as an empathetic and decent human being, you should wish them to get better. You should wish that their problem would be solved and their anguish stopped. Well the solution to that is either to completely rewrite their minds and personality so that they no longer have a mismatch between gender identity and sex, or to support their transition in whatever extent they want.
If you treat a trans woman as a woman, use the right pronouns, accept her as a woman, put her gender identity before her sex, then eventually her distress will fade and you will have cured her.
Sorry, correction; my lesbian aunt was extremely offended by Neil Patrick Harris’ offensive portrail of gay people in the Harold and Kumar christmas movie.
Hey Leon, so Cay Reet has already provided you with a lot of great info, but the simple answer is that your question is based on a false premise. Acknowledging that trans people exist and are valid does not require acknowledging gender essentialism, the idea that men and women are inherently different in all circumstances.
Gender is a complex thing that is different for every person based on a huge number of factors both inherited and environmental. Some people know what gender they are (whether it is the one they were assigned at birth or not), some people don’t care, and some people know they have no gender at all. We don’t yet understand all the factors that create these different results in different people, but no matter what they turn out to be, it costs us nothing to respect people’s identities, whether those identities were deliberately chosen or inherently known.
Ok.
My question was;
Person 1 says, ‘There is no real differance between men and women.’
Person 2 says ‘There is a difference. I know this because my body does not fit my gender.’
Person 1 trivializes person 2’s situation.
Person 2 invalidates person 1’s argument.
How do these people get along?
I am making no claims or attacks against anybody.
I was just looking for some insight because the trans girl I dated (No. She said she is a girl). Convinced me to include an intersex character who chooses to remain intersex in a world where people can completely reshape their bodies in about a week.
Intentionally or not, your question is making a straw man argument. Almost no one seriously believes there is no “real difference” between women and men because “real difference” could mean literally anything. Without a being more specific the term is meaningless.
Ok. I get it. Bye.
It’s weird that the informal/familiar for “you” became seen as rude in English. Lots of languages have something like this and it’s only rude if misused.
Any advice for what to do when you have two or more ‘they/them’ characters in a scene together? I had that happen in one of my most recent books, and it’ll happen again in my next book.
You treat it pretty much the same way you handle having two characters using “she” or “he” in the same scene. Having multiple characters with the same pronoun is always a pain. You have to use names more often, and it can also help to rearrange sentences and clauses so you aren’t switching back and forth as often in referencing the characters. Talk about one character for a few sentences, then talk about the other for a few sentences.
If you are referencing multiple people in a scene where you are using singular they, sometimes you might want to use “they both” or “they all” to clarify.
If it’s going to happen a lot and one of them is a viewpoint character, you might also consider using first person to give yourself another pronoun.
W/ the right narrative premise you can use first AND second person. These, along w/ “they”, give you three different pronouns
Great article! Very well done! I always thought singular they was just a no-brainer… you didn’t know the gender, or the gender was not he/she, you just said they. Due to the way is/are works, it’s not exactly a matter of confusion. This is not something people should be upset over using.
Remember, “you” is actually the second person *plural* pronoun in English. The second person singular pronoun is “thou”. Using the plural “you”, as a matter of politeness, became so common that nobody would use “thou” except when quoting old texts written before it became obsolete, or trying to sound like that older English. In fact, people who use “y’all” to create a new second person plural pronoun have often started using that in a singular sense, leading to the addition of “all y’all” to make it plural yet again. There is also the “royal ‘we'”, where “we” is used as a singular pronoun..So I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with using a plural pronoun in a singular sense in English, especially as a matter of formality or politeness.
It isn’t really about preserving the integrity of the language, given the extensive precedent for singular “they” over centuries, and extreme popularity in everyday usage. It’s about maintaining cultural constraints and social control, limiting the range of ways in which and words with which people can define themselves. Enforcing “he” and “she” as the only options accepted linguistically, let alone socially, forces them to conform to that structure or mark themselves as other. It’s about controlling people, and this is a case where that does more harm than good and is a losing battle, largely because the intent is so transparent. Arguing against singular “they” just comes off as asinine, not intellectual. Kinda like people who insist it’s improper to end a sentence with a preposition. That was never an actual rule. Some academics just came up with that and tried to make it a thing, trying to make the loose rules of English conform more to those of Latin. It was literally made up to look down on people.
Also, bonus benefit of “they” which wasn’t mentioned: it works for when the *number* of people is unknown or ambiguous! “Were there two people or one at that table? Either way, they left a great tip!”
I’ve always found it strange that the same people who prescribe not ending sentences with a preposition should also forget that Latin has a complex system of gender which allows far more possibility and nuance than a strict he-or-she approach does in English.
(To say nothing of Latin nouns that decline with endings different from their gender)
((To say nothing of how Latin neuter nouns combine endings from both other genders))