Do you know who “they” are?
By Louise Østergaard (She/Her)
Trigger warning: This article mentions suicide and discrimination
I was sitting in my local pub with a friend. It was just an ordinary Saturday – nothing fancy – and we shared a handful of pilsners for the meagre sum of 100 DKK. As often happens when you’ve been talking for a while, a change of pace was required, so we decided to play a game of dice. We asked the bartender for dice, and they gave us two cups, two mats and whatever else we might need. As we sat down, my friend went to relieve themselves. And then I realised we never got the dice. It’s damn hard to play dice when you have none. I hope they pick them up on the way back from the loo, I thought. The evening continued, we chatted, we laughed, we played – and we drank. As the night drew to a close, we gave up on the evening’s debauchery. But not before we made a stop at the gas station for cigarettes. And finally, we went home. Not together, mind you. I made it all the way to my front door before I realised that I had accidentally put their cigarettes in my pocket. Damn. They’ll miss them later.
Sounds like an easy night out with a friend, don’t you think? I think so.
Do you know what else was easy? To recount my ordinary, boring Saturday without using gendered personal pronouns. Did you get it anyway? Yeah, I thought you might. Because it is not – despite what many people claim – an abnormal use of pronouns. In fact, we do it all the time.
Besides not being abnormal, it’s actually not ungrammatical either – *GASP*!
Did you fall off your armchair? Don’t worry. We’re not in a hurry. I’m happy to wait for you to sit back and get comfortable.
The argument I hear most often – typically shouted at the top of their lungs – is that it is ungrammatical to use a plural pronoun in the singular form.
It is even more interesting that this comes from a generation that celebrates proper behaviour, tact, and everyone’s most beloved Shakespeare. No one would dare disrespect Shakespeare, right?
Well, do you not disrespect Shakespeare when you insist on addressing people with the pronoun ‘you’ rather than ‘thee’? That is indeed hopelessly modern of thee. Do thee not see that thee is watering down the proper usage of English with thine self-invented pronouns? You. What was thy thinking?
Do you need a moment to swallow your Werther’s Original? I’m happy to wait. As I said, we’re not in a hurry at all.
Why does it bother so many people to do something we’ve been doing for years without a hitch? Is the problem that you don’t want to? That it’s scary and confusing when there’s something you don’t understand, so it’s easier to reject than respect? So instead, perhaps, it’s easier to blame the language and grammar?
As we all know, language NEVER evolves. We speak exactly the same way today as we did 20 years ago. And 50 years ago, and… 100 years ago? 1000 years? Do you see where I’m going with this? And while I’m at it, let me remind you that the dictionary is a work of reference – not a rulebook. The dictionary records the development of the English language – it doesn’t dictate it. If the reverse were true, you wouldn’t be able to ‘rant’ (Hamlet, Act 5 Scene 1) about language politics, honour ‘traditional’ (Richard III, Act 3 Scene 1) values, complain about ‘mainstream media’ (OED, 2023), or shake your fists angrily at the ‘anti-monarchal‘ (OED, 2023) youths.
Think about what you stand to lose.
If you think I’m being a bit too harsh, and if you think it’s a bit one-sided to assume that only the older generation is being disrespectful to people who don’t use gendered pronouns, you’re absolutely right. Fortunately, you don’t have to write letters of complaint about the former (especially if they’re sent by PostNord – my goodness, have you seen how much a stamp costs these days?), I apologise in advance.
My sincerest apologies.
But to provide a healthy perspective on my mean-spiritedness, I’d like to round off with some very real statistics from the country of Denmark:
- One in four trans people has attempted suicide.
- 56% of transgender people experience discrimination based on their gender identity.
- 2,000-3,000 people aged 16-74 are subjected to violence motivated by hatred of their sexual orientation or gender identity every year.
Now, I don’t know your motivation for being a linguistic purist. And to be honest, I don’t care. Language is constantly changing (that’s how language works), and we change with it. After all, we can also talk about ‘cars’, ‘computers,’ and ‘television’ today because the world around us evolved and we needed words to describe it. Which is wonderful if you think about it.
It is neither the language’s responsibility nor the language’s fault if you don’t want to show respect to your fellow human beings. Because that’s essentially what it boils down to. In 1958, when Ms. Jensen married Mr. Andersen, she became Mrs. Andersen. You could figure that out back then, couldn’t you? I promise it’s just as easy to use they/them pronouns – especially since you’re already familiar with the concept.
So don’t be ‘obscene’ (Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act 1 Scene 1) – get familiar with they and them instead. It doesn’t cost you anything, but it can cost them everything.
