my latest windmill to tilt at

[rone]

English already has perfectly useful gender-neutral pronouns: it, its. Use them. Do not use they, them for singular objects. Do not use the abhorrent, artificial 'hir', 'zie', 'blim', 'gur', or whatever. Yes, people can be called 'it'. Deal with it.

Comments

[gallifreyan.livejournal.com]

You should take your meds, Don.

Would you consider 'someone' to be singular? I asked someone if they wanted to give you something to talk about. They told me it wasn't up to them. I think that's perfectly acceptable.

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

Well, you'd be WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Oops, was that my outside voice?

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

Why? Why use gender-neutral pronouns in this way? There are so few gender-neutral people, after all.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

For the case of a generic, unspecified person.

[lusercop.livejournal.com]

Yay! Someone else who agrees with me. I prefer 'they' to 'it', but...

hir and zie and the rest are abominations. They're ugly, they sound ugly, and argh!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I once read an essay (I think it was a reader contribution to one of those silly "People's Almanac" volumes) that attempted to introduce gender-neutral pronouns beginning with the Old English thorn. þe and þim, or something like that. Yes, this person decided that the correct way to do gender-neutral pronouns was to modify the alphabet. Talk about overengineering.

Greg Egan used ve/ver/vis in a couple of science-fiction novels that had many genderless individuals in them. They worked OK except that it appeared that the copyeditor had changed them back to standard third-person pronouns here and there.

Ursula Le Guin used male pronouns for Gethenians in The Left Hand of Darkness, then later decided that that had been a bad idea and did other things in subsequent stories about them.

[eviltofu.livejournal.com]

Come to Singapore and watch us mangle the English language! Lah! :P

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I have heard some reports of this thing you call "Singlish"...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

"They/them" is vastly preferable to "it". First, singular "they" already has a long history of use, though grammar pedants disparage it; whereas "it" is only used for adult humans as a term of insult, which would make its adoption difficult. Second, the extension of "they" for use as a gender-neutral singular pronoun would follow the patter already established for second-person pronouns: once "you" was the plural and formal form, and it replaced "thou" as the second-person informal singular.

In conclusion, it puts the lotion on its skin.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

I've heard "it" more often used to de-personify robots and talking dolphins.

Of course, we personify other tools that seem to behave with a mind of their own, and don't "they" them. "It never does quite what I want, but only what I tell it."

On the other hand, you can still "It's" people. "It's the President." "It's the pizza guy."

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with the solutions we pedants have been using for ages? Either choose a gender arbitrarily, say 'he or she' (or 'she or he'), or write s/he?

It ain't elegant, but at least it's not WRONG. Wrongity wrong wrong wrong.

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

it puts the lotion on its skin.

Thank you for what I expect to be the best laugh of the day.

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

Here's an interesting note: Finnish does not have gendered third-person pronouns at all ("hän" is used for both "he" and "she"). However, in spoken langauge, "se", which means "it", is often used instead of "hän". It took me quite a bit of time to realize people were not just being total assholes, and that it was quite acceptable to call a person "it". The years of Finnish classes I've had to take in school of course didn't feel this important enough to ever mention, even though it's very commonly used in spoken language.

Which makes me wonder if the lack of gender made the transition from "hän" to "se" easier, or if there were more complicated reasons for this.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

As you say, singular-"they" has been around for a while and i should get over it. But "it" is still around and is useful for any third-person singular use EXCEPT PEOPLE, which i find rather dumb. The lack of a unique second-person plural pronoun is similar, but it isn't like there's an existing one that is ignored in certain cases (although i think "y'all" is nearly acceptable).

Anyway, it's my damn fault for seeking consistency in English. I rue the day i ever learned to speak the damn thing.

[jwgh]

Good lord, you've gone mad with power!

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

BWAHAHAHA! I've gone MAD with POWER!

[opadit.livejournal.com]

The language must not evolve! No changes, ever! We must freeze current usage and never add new syntax or vocabulary to our language!

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

In fact, we've gone too far already.

We must reverse the Great Vowel Shift!

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Things like 'hir' and 'zie' aren't evolution as much as Frankensteinian grafting.

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

I agree.

However, you not only neglected to capitalize your subject, but ended it with a preposition! Ack!

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

But i NEVER capitalize my subjects! Well, except when they're in ALL CAPS.

I suppose i could've rewritten it as "the latest windmill at which i am tilting", but i think you'd all just want to beat me up if i had.

Cervantes has abandoned you

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

It and its are unacceptable for personal pronouns because their definitions specifically exclude people.

Going to the usual suspects, we see disagreement among noted grammarians. The more definitive Gregg Reference Manual (William A. Sabin) extorts writers to avoid the issue by rewording sentences. For example:

Parents of teenage children often wonder where they went wrong. instead of
The parent of a teenage child often wonders where he or she went wrong.

In cases where it is not a good idea to reword the sentence, Gregg recommends the he or she and him or her construction, but adamantly says to avoid he/she and s/he constructions.

I think Gregg knows that its recommendations are awkward and not going to stand.

Which brings me to Richard Lederer and Richard Dowis:

"A doctor must respect his or her patients" seems innocuous enough, but a little his or her can go too far. The true zealot continues with "A doctor must respect his or her patients if he or she wants them to respect him or her."

... The problem didn't begin with the feminist movement. It has been recognized, and solutions sought for it, since at least the nineteenth century. One suggested neutral pronoun, thon, never caught on, but it remained in some dictionaries until the 1950s. Other rejected suggestions include co, E, mon, heesh, na, hir, and pa. One university press published a book using hir.

We strongly recommend against using the ungainly him/her, himself/herself, and the nonwords theirself and themself. The following appeared in a telephone company booklet on handling obscene calls: "Hang up if the caller doesn't say anything ... or if the caller doesn't identify themself."

We are dubious also about the merit of alternating the masculine and feminine pronouns, a device we have seen from time to time. This device is too contrived. We want readers to enjoy what we write, not to be concerned with whether one sex gets more mentions than the other.

... Is there a natural solution? When the reference is clearly to more than one person, perhaps the most natural solution is to toos traditional grammar out the window and use they, them, or their when you need a singular, genderless pronoun or pronominal adjective. They, "Everyone must do his own work" becomes "Everyone must do their own work." Purists may become apoplectic upon reading this, but the construction is almost universal in educated speech and increasingly common in writing. For some years now, we have been seeing it in well-edited publications such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Moreover, the sense of everyone (read, "all people") is plural even though the word is technically similar.

Lederer and Dowis continue by explaining how everyone works as a singular and discusses idioms. They wrap up by saying that they have reservations about they constructions in formal writing, but not in informal speech and writing. They caution against stupidity as when Oprah Winfrey said, "One question a mother should ask a baby-sitter when they leave them with their child ..." as though the presence of "mother" does not allow us to assume that a feminine gender pronoun is appropriate (i.e., " ... when she leaves them with her child ... ").

In formal writing, they echo Gregg -- restructure the sentence if possible to avoid the situation.

Even the all-inclusive Chicago Manual of Style does not permit it and its for he and she, though it permits pretty much any grammatical monstrosity. (Not a slam on Chicago -- its goal is to be comprehensive rather than definitive)

Re: Cervantes has abandoned you

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

By the way, I'm a lousy typist so assume any typos are mine rather than the writers.

Sabin, William A., The Gregg Reference Manual, ninth ed., Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2001.

Lederer, Richard and Dowis, Richard, Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1999.

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

Finnish has a gender-neutral third person pronoun which applies to both he and she: hän. This is distinct from the neuter third person pronoun of "se". Finaldn was alos the first country in the northern hemisphere to give women the vote.

Finnish pronouns don't seem likely to be adopted any time soon by English speakers. However, it does give an opportunity to be rude to people who complain about sexist use of "he" or "she".

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Ahem. Neutral != neuter. "It" is neuter, not neutral.

That says, English does have a gender-neutral third-person pronoun: he/him/his. That this word is also used as the male third-person pronoun and you have to pick out which meaning is being used from context apparently makes some people's brains short out. But since the solutions these same people usually offer to resolve this non-problem are, without fail, awful, I try not to indulge them.

That said, if we must fix something that's not broken, I'll accept expanding "them/they/their" into the singular, with the proviso that no one who adopts this usage is ever allowed to conflate "their" with "there" again.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

So conflation with "they're" is OK?

[straightxedge.livejournal.com]

Hey, sorry if my reply to your comment sounded rude at all. I was just suprised you knew about WFT. The drummer and guitarist are actually my best friends. I guess SJSU's radio station is (was?) playing a track off of their LP, and Zero magazine is supposed to do an interview with them some time soon.

I'm glad you like them. They're amazing musicians and I wish more people could hear their stuff. Want me to send you a copy of their LP? It's got 5 songs on it, including whatever they played on the radio.

Talk to you later.

Maggie Thatcher to the rescue, as usual

[palecur.livejournal.com]

"In language, as in life, the male embraces the female."

Use he and him for unknown gender. Simple!