A new South Dakota Board of Regents policy keeps employees from including their gender pronouns in school email signatures and other correspondence.
A new South Dakota Board of Regents policy keeps employees from including their gender pronouns in school email signatures and other correspondence.
“They” as a neutral singular pronoun has been in the English language for hundreds of years.
Enbys also use it as a personal pronoun, sure - but no one gets to dictate that it can no longer be used as a neutral pronoun for everyone of any gender.
English is my primary language, so yes, I’m aware of the historical use of they/them as a non-gendered pronoun for hypothetical people.
I’m also aware of the fluid nature of language. I’m still salty about “literally” becoming its own antonym, but I have to accept it because it’s now part of English.
That being said, it’s never been socially acceptable to use they/them for a known person of a binary gender, and I’d argue that it’s even less acceptable now, thanks to the common adoption of they/them as a personal pronoun for known persons of nonbinary gender.
It’d be much less confusing if there was an entirely new pronoun for enbies. Or, better yet, if there were never any gendered pronouns to begin with. But this is the world we live in, and we all have to find the best way to navigate our own paths without kicking up dirt onto others’.
I’m sympathetic to what you’re saying but there’s a part I just can’t get on board with at all. I don’t know if it’s just that I come from a really different society to your one or what is going on here, but this paragraph doesn’t ring true to me at all:
It’s totally socially acceptable where I am to call people “they”, or at least it always has been.
Didn’t mean to insinuate anything about your English btw; in my experience most native English speakers don’t have much interest in historical useage or etymology. Formal English style guides have only come on board with singular “they” in the last 15-20 years despite everyone using it colloquially for decades and decades.