'Mx' and non gender specific pronouns.

[catsmate]

In a story published last Wednesday the New York Times included a new honorific, Mx. ["mix"], in a story that quoted one Senia Hardwick, a bookshop employee who didn’t want to be assigned a gender by the newspaper. Link.

The Washington Post has decided to permit employees to use 'they' to refer to "people who identify as neither male nor female".

It is usually possible, and preferable, to recast sentences as plural to avoid both the sexist and antiquated universal default to male pronouns and the awkward use of he or she, him or her and the like: All students must complete their homework, not Each student must complete his or her homework.

When such a rewrite is impossible or hopelessly awkward, however, what is known as “the singular they” is permissible: Everyone has their own opinion about the traditional grammar rule. The singular they is also useful in references to people who identify as neither male nor female.

Expect the usual suspects to rant on how this will cause the end of civilisation and/or is a "SJW" plot.

 

[bonzombiekitty]

I'm all for gender neutral pronouns and honorifics. You don't always know the gender of the subject. Granted, it's common to use "they"/"their" (or just default to "him"/"his") when the gender of a single subject is unknown or ambiguous, but those annoy me. "They"/"Their" is plural, so it shouldn't be used when talking about a single subject.

 

[Bikewer]

Some months ago, we all had to attend a class on "non-gender-specific" pronouns including things like "Ze", "Zis", and others.
We were assured that these were becoming more commonplace, though I have seen little evidence of this.... We do have a clause in our new report-writing manual indicating that we can use these terms "if the person desires".

 

[Cleon]

Only time will tell if any of these catch on. I'm told the Swedes have largely switched to gender-neutral pronouns, but not being Swedish myself I can't verify.

It's not terribly uncommon in Spanish-language media to see terms like "latin@s," though it's not what I'd call widespread.

Regarding they/them - using these terms as a third person singular has been in common language for many, many years, and in my experience only grammar Nazis really argue against it, mainly because reasons. They/them are, IMO, perfectly cromulent and we're all embiggened for using them.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I'm all for gender neutral pronouns and honorifics. You don't always know the gender of the subject. Granted, it's common to use "they"/"their" (or just default to "him"/"his") when the gender of a single subject is unknown or ambiguous, but those annoy me. "They"/"Their" is plural, so it shouldn't be used when talking about a single subject.

'You' can be singular or plural, so it's not exactly a shocking innovation to treat 'they' the same way.

 

[Duffy Moon]

Who's 'they'? The cat's mother?

 

[Fizil]

I'm all for gender neutral pronouns and honorifics. You don't always know the gender of the subject. Granted, it's common to use "they"/"their" (or just default to "him"/"his") when the gender of a single subject is unknown or ambiguous, but those annoy me. "They"/"Their" is plural, so it shouldn't be used when talking about a single subject.

They/Their has been used in a singular sense for hundreds of years, at least since Early Modern English developed (not sure about Middle English or earlier).

I don't necessarily have a problem with introducing new singular gender neutral pronouns to English, but getting people to adopt them is the tricky part. New nouns and verbs are easy, but pronouns are part of a language's structure, and structural words are much harder to extend and replace.

The plain fact is that non-standard genders are incredibly rare. Pluck any person in the English speaking world at random, and chances are they don't personally know anyone who doesn't conform to the gender binary. If a new pronoun will hardly ever get any use in most people's day-to-day lives, it isn't going to catch on.

This by the way, is why I think the fight for transgender rights will be more difficult than the fight for gay rights. Even though homosexuality is rare, it is common enough that, given the size of a typical person's social network, they know at least one or two gay people. Once gay people started coming out of the closet, people had to deal with it. It was harder for people to think of homosexuals as "others", when some of them are friends or family. The same is not true in the case of the transgendered. Most people will not even have acquaintances, let alone friends or family, that are transgender. And even then, not conforming to the "pronoun binary" is even rarer, since if you do know someone who is transgender, they will typically want to be referred to by their identified gender's pronoun.

 

[catsmate]

'You' can be singular or plural, so it's not exactly a shocking innovation to treat 'they' the same way.

I think it is for the Washington Post.

 

[casebro]

What's wrong with just leaving off the honorific?

I guess in things like police reports where gender might be a necessary descriptive note, instead of Miss/Mrs/Ms, we will need to write it out some other way. "Leslie Jones, a black male,..."

Back in the 70s I knew a guy who insisted on being called "Mrrr Jones" as a whiplash to "Ms".

 

[Ryokan]

I'm so glad Norwegian has dropped honorifics ages ago. Ours were similar to English and German, where males always had the same honorific, but females had different ones depending on whether they were married or not.

 

[Peterson]

What's wrong with just leaving off the honorific?

I guess in things like police reports where gender might be a necessary descriptive note, instead of Miss/Mrs/Ms, we will need to write it out some other way. "Leslie Jones, a black male,..."

Back in the 70s I knew a guy who insisted on being called "Mrrr Jones" as a whiplash to "Ms".

I just put the full name on letters I send just because you can't always tell from the name alone (i.e. Ashley).

In the case of a police report, I imagine they are listing sex, not gender. So the person in the article would be described as a "white female" in a police report regardless if this gender neutral stuff ever gets popular.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

It has been said English didn't so much borrow from other languages as mug them in a dark alley and rifle their pockets for loose grammar. Gender-neutral pronouns apparently were not among the things stolen, so we have to make them up. I use Y'all and They for second and third person plural, and for singular gender neutral. It works just fine. Any offense others take for this use I consider A Feature, Not A Bug.

 

[Steve]

English already has a perfectly usable gender neutral pronoun - it.

And... I should have read Jrrarglblarg's post first. Sorry mate

 

[ThunderChunky]

Expect the usual suspects to rant on how this will cause the end of civilisation and/or is a "SJW" plot.

I thought the SJW plot was to get rid of the singular they, which has been used for a very long time now.

 

[Peterson]

English already has a perfectly usable gender neutral pronoun - it.

And... I should have read Jrrarglblarg's post first. Sorry mate

Too scary!

 

[marplots]

I thought the SJW plot was to get rid of the singular they, which has been used for a very long time now.

Them have many plots.

 

[Slowvehicle]

They/Their has been used in a singular sense for hundreds of years, at least since Early Modern English developed (not sure about Middle English or earlier).

Actually, dedication to "They" as determinedly plural can be traced to the mid-18th Century (at least in the US), with the publication of Ann Fisher's A New Grammar, in which she insisted, apparently de hyancinthus, that "he" subsumed both genders as a general indicator.

I don't necessarily have a problem with introducing new singular gender neutral pronouns to English, but getting people to adopt them is the tricky part. New nouns and verbs are easy, but pronouns are part of a language's structure, and structural words are much harder to extend and replace.

The plain fact is that non-standard genders are incredibly rare. Pluck any person in the English speaking world at random, and chances are they don't personally know anyone who doesn't conform to the gender binary. If a new pronoun will hardly ever get any use in most people's day-to-day lives, it isn't going to catch on.

This by the way, is why I think the fight for transgender rights will be more difficult than the fight for gay rights. Even though homosexuality is rare, it is common enough that, given the size of a typical person's social network, they know at least one or two gay people. Once gay people started coming out of the closet, people had to deal with it. It was harder for people to think of homosexuals as "others", when some of them are friends or family. The same is not true in the case of the transgendered. Most people will not even have acquaintances, let alone friends or family, that are transgender. And even then, not conforming to the "pronoun binary" is even rarer, since if you do know someone who is transgender, they will typically want to be referred to by their identified gender's pronoun.

The plain fact is that the drive for non-gendered pronouns is not driven by the existence of gender-ambiguous people. Instead, the impetus is the fact that everyone should be referred to by a nongendered pronoun unless or until their own personal preference is made known.

The identity of the public bathroom I use should not drive the pronoun by which I am addressed.

 

[ddt]

Some months ago, we all had to attend a class on "non-gender-specific" pronouns including things like "Ze", "Zis", and others.
We were assured that these were becoming more commonplace, though I have seen little evidence of this.... We do have a clause in our new report-writing manual indicating that we can use these terms "if the person desires".

One problem with these gender-neutral pronouns is that there are so many proposals to choose from. If at least interested lobby clubs could unify on one proposal and push that, you could actually see it in more widespread use.

Personally, I prefer to use singular they, because I think "he or she" or "he/she" is ugly. In Dutch, my native tongue, I don't have that option, so then it is "he/she", "sir/madam" etc. Oh well.

It's not terribly uncommon in Spanish-language media to see terms like "latin@s," though it's not what I'd call widespread.

In German, it's fairly widespread to use a construction like "StudentInnen" with a capital-I in between, which then refers to both male and female students. (male student: Student, plural: Studenten; female student: Studentin, plural: Studentinnen). In Dutch, it's fairly widespread to put the suffix which puts the word into female between parenthesis: "student(e)".

I'm so glad Norwegian has dropped honorifics ages ago. Ours were similar to English and German, where males always had the same honorific, but females had different ones depending on whether they were married or not.

Dutch has taken the same route as English, having a marriage-status-agnostic honorific for women instead of the previous two distinguishing ones, but it is plain weird to leave it out and write a salutation like "Dear Johnson" (or at least is so to me).

[personal rant]
A partial solution would be if people would more often use the honorifics for academic grades - like "Dear Dr. Johnson" - but in our egalitarian society that's not going to happen. In fact, my personal experience is that when I sign off a letter with my Dr title, it has never been answered with a proper salutation containing the title.
[/personal rant]

BTW, German has dropped the use of "Fräulein" (Miss) as a honorific for an unmarried woman. The word now effectively is only an address for a waitress or a (primary) school or kindergarten teacher.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Some months ago, we all had to attend a class on "non-gender-specific" pronouns including things like "Ze", "Zis", and others.
We were assured that these were becoming more commonplace, though I have seen little evidence of this.... We do have a clause in our new report-writing manual indicating that we can use these terms "if the person desires".

Everyone I know just goes with a singular they instead of a made up new pronoun.

 

[ponderingturtle]

English already has a perfectly usable gender neutral pronoun - it.

And... I should have read Jrrarglblarg's post first. Sorry mate

A friend of mine would have preferred that, but it makes people uncomfortable using that as a pronoun for a person, so they ended up being their preferred pronoun.