My dim view of "they" as singular

In my post on <polling and interrupts> I argued for fair treatment and compassion for all minorities, but suggested that we should deal with the very small minorities when they come into our lives and do not need to make space for them in our minds until they do.

One <radical suggestion> was for everyone to start using the singular "they". But short of that, there is also a movement afoot to say that people should be able to tell us that they wish to be referred to as "they" instead of "he" or "she" to reflect the fact that they are very uncomfortable being forced into a binary gender decision.

Let's give some history on other issues around personal pronouns. Starting in the 1970s, more and more people felt we should no longer refer to a generic person of indeterminate gender as "he", which had been the custom in English (and just about every other language, as far as I know). Some words in a language are ambiguous and we can tell from context which sense is intended. But here it was often hard to tell, and it really did support the idea that a standard ordinary human being was a male, and females were this other, special case.

There were various solutions. "It" was a non-starter because it implied non-human. Another was to use a new pronoun such as "ze". This didn't work because it is very hard to change language in such a fundamental way. Another was to use "they" in a singular sense, though grammatically plural. We do often see "If a person talks to you, they are being friendly", but it makes many people uncomfortable and just doesn't work so well in many circumstances.

So the solution we adopted was to use "he and she", an effort which has been largely successful. "He" really does imply a male these days, and some variant of "he and she" is used when the gender isn't clear. This was a change that benefited fully half of humankind (and arguably benefited all of us).

More recently (notably the last ten years or so) trans people have become much more prominent. The typical case involves someone who was assigned a sex at birth but has since decided that they identify as the opposite sex. They make no demands on the English language, but request that we use the pronouns that match their new gender identity, even if they look more like the one they were assigned at birth. This does not require changing the language, just moving a person into the other gender category for linguistic purposes.

Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as saying that "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent". It is in the same spirit as a <dignity culture>. "All citizens are assumed to have a sense of dignity and self-restraint, and everyone is expected to, at least at first, give the benefit of the doubt to a disputant to see if a conflict can be resolved peacefully." You expect to take some insults and insensitive remarks and let them roll off your back. If your gender identity is not 100% clear, a stranger using either set of pronouns should be tolerated. If your relationship with them will be more than casual, you can "interrupt" them and tell them which pronouns you would prefer, and they should try to honor your request.

Now non-binary people have come along who dislike both "he" and "she". Using "he or she" doesn't work with an individual person, since the point is that neither word applies. Some hate these pronouns so much that in their interruption they ask -- sometimes insist -- that we refer to them using "they" as a singular. (I do not know what is objectionable about plural "they" -- maybe someone will enlighten me). This requires changing the language as much as use of a new set of pronouns such as "ze" would, and just feels very unnatural to lots of people. One reaction in line with dignity culture would be for a non-binary person to welcome both sets of pronouns as opposed to neither. Each set reflects a part of such a person even if it doesn't reflect all of the person.

Humans are an overwhelmingly binary species when it comes to gender. Until the idea of non-binary identity became fashionable in the past ten-odd years, it's a good guess that 99.9% of people were happy to identify as one gender or the other.

One theory for the recent surge in non-binary identity is that such people have always been present and suffering, and are finally free to break free of the shackles of binary identity and tell us who they truly are. Another is that in our rush to welcome enthusiastically all minorities, the intersectionalist is happy to identify this new minority, honor them, and look at themselves and even feel virtuous if they could consider themselves non-binary too.

It's unclear how many people will genuinely, truly consider themselves non-binary after the dust settles. My hunch is it will remain well under one percent. It is very hard to change language. A mighty effort was required to get us to adopt "he and she" for a generic person. The preferences of a tiny group of non-binary people won't provide enough impetus for a genuine change.

A somewhat parallel case concerns speakers of other languages whose names English speakers always mispronounce. When we are interrupted by someone in that position who offers us a better pronunciation, we can try to use it. My rule would be that we should try to use whatever they tell us that is consistent with the sound rules of English, but we can't be expected to use finer distinctions that are not part of our language. We will not distinguish the two "k" sounds in Arabic. We will not use click sounds of the sort found in Xhosa. Using the proper tone for a tone language like Chinese will likely be very difficult. Dignity culture requires those with such names to put up with our best effort.

Perhaps the "singular they" is an intermediate case. Some people will be able to use it easily in speech. Others will manage it writing. That's fine with me. Some will simply refuse to do it because their commitment to the language is stronger than some individual's desire to change it. That's also fine with me.