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.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

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

[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!

[eviltofu.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

For the case of a generic, unspecified person.

[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."

[jwgh]

Good lord, you'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!

[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.

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

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

Oops, was that my outside voice?

[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.

[jwgh]

Different approaches work better in different situations, obviously. The main objection to 's/he' that I've seen is that they're isn't an obvious way to pronounce it. (Well, that and that it's ugly, but probably all of the options look ugly to somebody.)

"He or she" can be awkward and distracting, particularly if repeated many times.

The burglar disabled the alarm system. He or she then broke a window, injuring himself or herself slightly on the borken glass, and entered the house, where he or she went to the den and took the teevee and VCR. He or she then [. . .]

Exhausting! This is where, if you're writing, 's/he' or 'they' become tempting choices, because if we're talking about a real person whose gender is unknown using 'he' or 'she' is inappropriate, because it indicates knowledge of the person's gender. In speaking, I'd probably use 'they' -- even if I started off saying 'he or she' I would lapse into 'they' eventually, just because repeating 'he or she' is too much of a pain in the neck.

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

Or you could rewrite it.

The burglar disabled the alarm system, and then broke the window, sustaining a slight injury from the borken glass. The suspect then entered the house, went to the den, and took the teevee and TiVo.

Also, remember (this comes in handy in these situations), there ain't nothing wrong with the passive voice none, either.

Or somethin'.

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

I agree.

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

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

it puts the lotion on its skin.

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

Ah, the once legendary cry of the IBM information developer

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

RWRTATP: Real Writers Rewrite To Avoid The Problem.

Boy, do I miss the old Uithoorn Nitpick Mob.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

In fact, we've gone too far already.

We must reverse the Great Vowel Shift!

Re: Ah, the once legendary cry of the IBM information developer

[jwgh]

I think it's not necessarily that realistic to expect people to do this sort of rewriting on the fly during speech, though (although it certainly becomes easier and more natural with practice).

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

DANGLING PARTICIPLE! *PLONK*

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know what he was getting at. Arguments about symbols matching referents aside, I was being silly. Isn't everyone already aware that there is no gender-neutral third person singular pronoun in English, though? The alternatives are not adequate, even Ron's. You don't call a person an 'it' - that doesn't imply that the person possesses unspecified gender, it implies that the person lacks gender.

'Hir' is not a word (and suffers by being phonetically too similar to 'her'), 'he and she' is cumbersome, 'he' arguably sexist, 'she' also arguably sexist but arguably less so. 'They', by usage, already carries the implication of unspecified gender, because it can refer to men and women together; but, as Ron points out, it is incorrect to use it to refer to a solitary person.

In casual writing I use 'she', in serious writing to be published I use 'he' or 'they'. In speech I almost always use 'they'. I am aware of the problem and don't find a better solution.

Also: tab damage has not yet made the deserts bloom. Some of us are getting impatient.

[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.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

Greg Egan used ve/ver/vis in a couple of science-fiction novels that had many genderless individuals in them.

This is perhaps of interest with inference to the very unusual case you mention: 'science fiction novels with many genderless individuals'. But in practice there are very few genderless individuals that one encounters. When you are writing instructions for equipment to be used by men or women, for instance, you do not assume that your audience is genderless.

As a clinical neurologist I am occasionally called on to visit the neonatal ward to evaluate newborns with developmental abnormalities. Some of these individuals, such as they are, possess no immediately identifiable gender. I can tell you that ve/ver/vis is not used in this case to refer to the baby in question. Rather, FISH chromosomal analysis is obtained on an emergency basis, and if this is also ambiguous, a gender is bestowed upon the child by joint parental/medical decree.

The moral: people don't like the genderless state or anything that presumes it. Trying to modify the language to incorporate this concept, then, is a silly idea. Or to quote Montaigne, "those who would combat usage with grammar make fools of themselves."

I note that Ron has removed his injunction that commenters to his LJ may not followup unless they are mocking him as strongly as possible, so I will stop here.

[jwgh]

The fact that English doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun, and that the various workarounds to this are not always appropriate, really bugs some people, and the solutions proposed to it are almost always absurdly radical schemes that have a slim-to-none chance of catching on with the general populace.

The use of made-up gender-neutral pronouns in science fiction novels (or, really, any kind of writing, but science fiction is where I most often have seen it) tends to be a really big turn-off to me. In the Egan novel it was a big obstacle for me to overcome, although eventually I did accept it, since the pronouns were coined to describe an actual new gender, so there was a motivation to it. I'm not sure what pronoun Egan used, or would have used, to describe a generic being whose gender was unknown (not known if the being was male, female, or genderless), but I think it didn't arise.

I also vaguely recall reading a book where both 'he' and 'she' had been replaced by the gender-neutral 'e', which I thought was reasonably clever and actually possible under certain circumstances (if an english-speaking society became mostly illeterate it wouldn't surprise me too much if that's the direction it evolved in, given that there are already dialects where something like this occurs, maybe).

In some of Lois McMaster Bujold books hermaphrodites are somewhat common and the pronoun that is used for them is 'it'.

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)