I am They

[plymouth]

I wish I could be as awesome as rax in announcing this, but I'd feel totally weird copying their schtick and I can't come up with one of my own that is half as clever. So I guess this will be kinda dry.

I have wanted to be referred to be gender-neutral pronouns for, oh, on the order of 18 years now. You may have noted in my gender timeline that I

Comments

[ravan]

I'm down with that. I don't really identify with either gender pronoun either. "They" (singular) works, and not an artificial bolt on that just doesn't flow with the language.

[plymouth]

I don't really agree with calling the other options artificial. I mean, I don't like them, but artificiality would not be my objection. If I felt like there was a different option than "they" that was close to achieving widespread acceptance I'd use it & I'm sure it would shortly stop sounding strange.

I think that when a concept needs a word people come up with a variety of ideas and all of them seem strange until one or more of them achieve some level of widespread acceptance. Then they seem normal. It wasn't long ago that "blog" sounded like a strange an awkward construction but now I use it without much thought. Pronouns are harder to adapt because they're a more fundamental building block of language but the process is still similar.

[arisrabkin]

Singular they is my favorite of the gender-neutral pronouns. But I find that sometimes it's less linguistically painful to just avoid pronouns altogether with those people and instead just use their name repeatedly. I assume nobody is offended by this?

[plymouth]

I think it's problematic to assume that there's anything you can do that NO ONE will be offended by. I've known folks who are strongly attached to their gendered pronouns & find attempts to contort sentences around avoiding pronouns to be denying their identity.

But certainly *I* am not offended by it.

[arisrabkin]

Yes. I was being glib and am aware that there's always somebody unhappy. But how common is the attitude of "you affirmatively must use my pronouns, and not merely avoid using the wrong ones?" I've never personally encountered it. I gather you have?

My current tentative feeling is that it's a request I feel comfortable saying "no" to. I'm willing to avoid saying things that upset people, but I feel like 'saying something that doesn't sound right to me' is a bigger imposition.

[plymouth]

In a direct confrontational sense, not so common. People tend to pick their battles & that one is not likely a high priority. But in the sense of in private spaces expressing frustration to friends that they feel disrespected, quite common. And it depends on the level of sentence-contortion required. Like if you said "Hey, Alex wants to talk to you" instead of "Hey, they want to talk to you" while gesturing at Alex, Alex probably won't notice or care. But when it's "Hey, Alex wants to talk to you about giving Alex a ride home" it starts to sound obvious and weird to people. Is that more of less weird than "Hey, Alex wants to talk to you about giving them a ride home"? Depends on your perspective

[rax]

Welcome to the team. :D

[plymouth]

Team They Represent! Are there team shirts? What's my number? :D

[coraline]

i saw this and thought of you :)
http://chaoslife.findchaos.com/agender-agenda

i have been getting practice at singular-they with rosefox, so now i get to add you to the list. good luck, and i hope this improves your life experience :)

[rosefox]

Welcome to Club They! We're a good crowd.

Also, thanks for linking to rax's post--really marvelous.