Instead of (or in addition to*) he, she, they and all of the more fine-grained pronouns such as xir, we could just invent one for everyone that doesn’t require prior knowledge of the person to which it’s being applied.
* I could see a neutral pronoun being used until you know for sure what regular gendered pronoun the person prefers. That way, you can always just play it safe with the neutral one if you want. No harm done.
By way of example, let’s say we used “it/it’s/its”. Obviously we wouldn’t use that because it sounds dehumanising, but it would work for every person with no chance of offence or bigotry (I think?). It doesn’t deny the person’s identity, it just makes their identity untethered to one small part of casual language in the same way it is now.
Do you agree, and if not, why not? I’m not sure where I would stand on such a proposal, so I’m interested to hear the for and against, particularly from the non-binary and trans folks.
P.S. I’m not saying we do away with gendered language entirely, just those introductory pronouns; the part of language that requires the speaker to make a snap judgement about the person’s identity based on unreliable visual and aural clues.
“They” is literally that.
You are completely right, but many people don’t like they because it’s historically been more frequently used as a plural pronoun.
When Sam is talking at the board meeting, and “they told them x and they responded with y” it doesn’t help me understand who said what.
(Just like OP said we DO NOT WANT TO USE “IT”, EVER. But, rather than making up a new pronoun off the top of my head, I’m going to borrow it for an example because it is a word we already understand)
“It told them x and they responded with y” easily tells me which is the group and which is the individual.
I know it’s nitpicking, but the best way to get people to adopt a new habit is to remove as much frustration from the translation as possible. And this example has been the most common reason people have told me that they don’t like “they”.
If Fred & Bob are talking and 'he told him x and he responded with y" then that is also unclear. This is not a problem that is unique to the word ‘they’.
Of course, in either case, the answer to use phrase it so that you remove any ambiguity and communicate clearly: “Sam told them x and the board responded with y.”, “Bob told him x and Fred responded with y”.
Yes! Pronoun reference errors hurt my very soul, but they are an inherent risk and pitfall of all pronoun usage. It is fun, when someone is resistant to using another person’s pronouns or is a dumb fuck bitching about pronouns because an angry bigot shouted about pronouns on TV, to point out that those people already use pronouns like shit. Because they always claim a concern for accuracy, then speak and write like shit.
Everyone I have met against “they” was just a queerphobe. Their concerns are worth less than nothing to me
Perhaps, and you have no obligation to worry about those concerns, but…
“This is how we should be doing this.”
“But what about…”
“YOUR CONCERNS ARE LESS THAN NOTHING TO ME!”
Isn’t any more inclusive than misgendering people.
This argument is worth nothing TBH. In the decades prior to 1960 it was also “historcally more frequent” that having a bank account was an exclusively male right, and certain people complained loudly when that changed and still refused to comply for about 15 more years (where many banks required a permission slip of the husband in question before even considering to give a woman an account of her own). Does that mean we should have never granted women the right to their own bank accounts just because it made a handful of people uneasy at the time?
Big changes are rarely immediatly accepted by everyone, but we should never consider stopping or slowing down positive progress just because a few people “don’t like it”. If they are unwilling to adapt, that’s their problem to fix, not ours to prevent.
I’m not saying it’s a reason to give up on it completely. I support neutral pronouns, and I’ve been trying to say they exclusively for everyone I do not personally know, but understanding why potential allies are reluctant and helping them get where you are will lead to much less resistance than “DO IT OUR WAY OR FUCK OFF AND DIE”.
Sure, the assholes will never get on board, and fuck them anyway, but there are people who want to be supportive, but are uncomfortable with certain things because they are new to them. Understanding needs to go both ways in order to expand support.
Language rarely changes under duress. That’s like trying to give yourself a nickname, it just doesn’t take.
Ngl but we can be pretty grateful that we even have “they” in English. In most Germanic and Latin based languages we have gendered third person plural pronouns or at least they are the same pronouns for something else, like in German with “sie” (third person female singular) and “sie” (third person bigender plural).
This (and sadly some other things) make it talking gender neutral in German really hard because your either have to use no pronouns at all (I’m doing that, then you say “that person is doing …” for example) or you use neopronouns, which, to be honest, most German speakers don’t like at all.
Also I have to add the following:
The language we use may not even influence current political situations, as Tom Scott points out: https://youtu.be/CmZdGo6b5yA?si=XIabOE5eLjcg9ciU
Summary: it may be that changing the language we use does not have an effect on the society we live in, because it probably is not the cause of discrimination but one effect of it or completely disjunct.