On Pronouns: A Modest Proposal
Pronouns. Once a backwater of philosophical and linguistic interest, but now a politically charged issue. Thus, I thought, I will start my Substacking with a modest proposal on what to do with pronouns.
There are those, a small but loud few, that think people should learn and remember everyone’s preferred pronouns. I have neither the time nor the mental bandwidth to learn a set of designer pronouns for every person I know, much less every person I encounter. Moreover, I view as an imposition anyone’s insistence that I remember their pronouns. I’m not going to do it, so don’t bother.
The idea of personalized pronouns is antithetical to the purpose pronouns serve. A pronoun serves to replace a noun (e.g. ‘Matilda’) or noun phrase (e.g. ‘the stripey cat’, ‘the present King of France’) with a single, short word the reference of which should be obvious. I note that Spanish does this better than English, but I digress. Consider the following example:
Matilda owns the blue car on the left side of the lot. She parked it there last night.
Matilda owns the blue car on the left side of the lot. Matilda parked Matilda’s blue car on the left side of the lot last night.
In the first example, we know that ‘she’ refers to Matilda, ‘it’ refers to the blue car, and ‘there’ refers to the left side of the lot. We know this because we are familiar with using the English language. We know that ‘she’ refers to Matilda because ‘Matilda’ codes as a female name. We know that ‘it’ refers to the blue car because cars are inanimate objects, and we know that ‘there’ refers to the left side of the lot because ‘the left side of the lot’ is a noun phrase that refers to a place.
Both examples convey the same information. However, nobody talks or writes like the second example in everyday business. (Exception: in legal writing where precision is more valuable than ease of reading you often find ‘She (Matilda) parked it (the blue car) …’ where the referent of the pronoun is not crystal clear.) To the contrary, it would be difficult to follow someone who talked or wrote in the idiom of the second example. While both examples theoretically convey the same information and so appear functionally equivalent, in actual use they are not functionally equivalent.
But Matilda it turns out objects to my use of ‘she’ in reference to her. Whoops! Better make that Matilda objects to my use of she to refer to Matilda. Instead, Matilda insists that I use designer pronouns when referring to Matilda. (Note how the repetition of the word ‘Matilda’ makes this paragraph tedious to read.) Matilda wants me to use the pronouns ze/zir/zirs.
Except that is not going to happen. Sorry, not sorry. I have two reasons for this. First, as I said at the beginning, I don’t have the bandwidth to memorize personal pronouns for everybody I encounter. Ask that I do so and I will politely decline. Demand that I do so and I’ll write you off as a crypto-fascist who wrongly assumes they get to police my language.
Second, ze/zir/zirs may someday become standard, recognized English. But they are not standard English today, and I doubt they ever will be. (As I write this, the spellchecker underlines them in red.) Yet languages change. When is the last time you said “thou art” without reciting an old text?
But top-down language modifications rarely if ever take hold. Ze/zir/zirs is an example of top-down language engineering. But I could be wrong. So get enough people to adopt their use to make them standard and I will use them then. But for now, if you say ze/zir/zirs you might as well be speaking Esperanto.
We all know how well Esperanto caught on.
Matilda reminds me, however, that a big reason that I know that ‘she’ refers to Matilda in the above examples is that the name ‘Matilda’ codes as female in English. Thus when I use ‘she’ to refer to Matilda I make a presumption about Matilda. Namely, I assume if a person is named ‘Matilda’, that person must be a she. Matilda reminds me that Matilda does not identify as female, and thus I impose on Matilda when I call Matilda ‘she’.
Fair enough. I feel no need to force Matilda into a gender identification that does not apply to Matilda. (At this point, I am tired of writing ‘Matilda’ and really need a pronoun to improve the flow of my text, but no, I am not going to use ‘ze’. Drop it already.)
Then Bob happens by into this conversation. Bob kindly informs Matilda that when he (Bob) uses a pronoun, he uses the gender pronoun which corresponds to the biological sex of the referent. Thus, Bob insists that he is correct to call Matilda ‘she’ and will continue to do so.
Let’s assume that Bob is acting in good faith here. After all we are giving Matilda the benefit of the doubt, so let’s extend the same courtesy to Bob. Maybe Bob has religious, ideological, or other strongly held reasons to insist on pronouns matching the sex of a person as opposed to that person’s gender identity. Maybe he is just a fuddy-duddy about English. Whatever the reason, let’s give Bob a hearing on the matter.
Moreover, as a member of the English speaking community, he gets a say in how the language evolves. We want to be inclusive, don’t we?
Let’s make one more assumption for the moment. Let’s assume that me, Matilda, and Bob approach each other from a place of mutual respect. The question then is, how do we maintain that respect? On the one hand, Bob should not use ‘she’ when referring to Matilda as it is an affront to her self-identification. On the other hand, insisting that Bob must adopt Matilda’s preferred pronouns is an affront to Bob’s metaphysical or ideological commitments. So what to do?
So here is my modest proposal and it is not new. Make ‘they’ the third person singular pronoun. Let’s look at the advantages.
‘They’ is a single word that would now work for everyone. There is no remembering long charts of pronouns and how to apply them. There is no having to remember individual designer pronouns. Everyone is now a ‘they’. It’s simple; just like how pronouns are supposed to work.
‘They’ is also gender and sex neutral. Bob, Matilda, and I may have different theories and beliefs about how sex and gender work and relate to each other. Nonetheless, using ‘they’ instead of gendered pronouns allows us to address each other without imposing our theories, conceptions, and opinions on others who do not share them. ‘They’ makes room for us to live and let live, and a sense of “live and let live” is vital if we want to live in a pluralistic society.
When we look at the alternatives, a pluralistic, live and let live society looks infinitely better that the alternatives. (Hint: those alternatives usually involve a jackboot stamping on the human face. Forever.)
For those who are skeptical of ‘they’ as the third person singular pronoun, consider that the shift from ‘he’ and ‘she’ to ‘they’ has precedent. Consider that we currently use ‘you’ as the second person singular pronoun. This was not always the case.
Back in the day, ‘thou’ was the second person singular pronoun and ‘you’ was the second person plural pronoun. ‘Thou’ even had its own verb conjugation (I am, thou art, he/she/it is, we are, you are, they are). At some point, ‘thou’ fell out of use, and ‘you’ became the singular and plural second person pronoun. We can follow this same precedent with ‘they’. Nice!
If your next objection to ‘they’ being the third person singular pronoun is that one cannot now distinguish the third person singular and third person plural, then you have a point.1 But as we see, language evolves to meet these needs. Consider again the precedent of ‘you’ becoming the second person singular pronoun. Same problem, right? When you say ‘you’ do you mean just me or both me and my friend?
Luckily our friends in the US South and West responded by giving us the gift of ‘y’all’. As in “y’all can use ‘y’all’ as a replacement for you as the second person plural pronoun.” Now we have (I am, you are, he/she/it is, we are, y’all are, they are). I note here that most of my Latin professors in college translated ‘voster’ as y’all.
Taking a page from our friends in the South and the West, I give you: tha’ll. Another problem solved. You’re welcome.
Now, some of you are champing at the bit to discuss the possibility that Bob or Matilda is acting in bad faith. Depending on your political alignment you will either be concerned that Bob just wants to force their gender normative views on Matilda by insisting on using their disfavored pronoun, or that Matilda just wants to force their views on Bob by dictating how they talk. My solution will suss out the bad actors quickly.
Suppose ‘they’ has become the standard third person pronoun. If Bob were to refer to Matilda as ‘she’ then Bob is deliberately circumventing the standard and shows themselves2 to be the jerk in the situation. On the other hand, suppose Bob is respectfully referring to Matilda with ‘they’ and Matilda complains that Bob should be using their designer pronouns (that dreaded ze/zir/zirs). In that case, we know Matilda is less interested in Bob showing them respect than policing Bob’s language to conform to their ideology. Thus, Matilda shows themselves to be the jerk.
Seriously, don’t be a jerk. All y’all need to respect all tha’ll.
Then again, we could signal the difference by using the verb conjugation, using ‘they is’ when ‘they’ refers to a single person, and ‘they are’ when ‘they’ refers to multiple people.
Maybe we need to add ‘themself’ when ‘they’ is used in the singular. Discuss.