Both Jane Austen and Geoffrey Chaucer – who died in 1400 - used pronouns that way. This isn’t new – the saying “Everybody loves their own mother” has been used since around late 1300. It is normal in the English language to use they/them pronouns when we don’t know the gender of the person to which we’re referring, or if we want our sentence to be applicable to all genders. So please, if you learn someone uses they/them pronouns, don’t respond: “We get it OK – she’s gay!” – as my friend’s parents recently did. Being gender non-conforming, right down to their pronouns, is how they choose to identify. For others, it’s a form of protest: they contest rigid gender expectations and would rather live without them. Some people do it because they don’t feel they fit into a gender. Reasons for choosing gender neutral pronouns are complex and personal. Last year, Merriam-Webster made the singular gender-neutral use of “they” its word of the year, based on the fact that it had seen a 313% increase in searches for its definition that year. In 2015, of 4,000 students at Harvard who had submitted preferred pronouns, around 1% chose pronouns other than “he” or “she”. More and more people are using gender-neutral pronouns. It really isn’t that hard, however, to get it right. But I admit to having made mistakes – even avoiding using pronouns in the past, for fear of getting it wrong. Putting someone’s dignity before my shyness about how to use a pronoun is, of course, the bare minimum. As someone who is new to using them (a number of my friends have recently started to identify as non-binary), I confess it can be intimidating when you want to respect someone’s wishes without making any blunders. If gender neutral pronouns intimidate you, you’re not the only one. Non-binary people tend to prefer using they/them pronouns (although not exclusively – some use she and he interchangeably).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |