Response: “They” is Too Confusing

~ Susan Knoppow

Yesterday I received a comment on my post, On Parenting and Pronouns, that I want to share, reflect on and, ultimately, argue against.

Here’s the comment:

There has to be a better way. Using they is too confusing. You are not communicating. My solution: don’t use pronouns at all. To the waitress: I’ll take a coffee, but my partner won’t. Is Scooby upstairs? Tell Scooby dinner is in 10 minutes. Yeah it is awkward, but not more awkward than “they” and is miraculously clear.

Maybe English will develop a gender neutral pronoun. Until then, find a way to make a gender neutral person comfortable AND communicate without confusion to that person and all others. I spent my career in corporate communications and when this came up successfully eliminated hurtful pronouns and wrote text that communicated. No, a crowd is not coming downstairs for dinner.

Here’s my response:

I see your point, but I respectfully disagree. I too am in the communication field (marketing, PR, speech writing, training for nearly 30 years) and recently wrote a book with my business partner, and we discussed this issue at length.

So you can see that I grapple with pronouns personally and professionally. In a marketing piece, I can edit for clarity and gender-neutrality, because I have time to think and revise. In daily conversation, I need a pronoun.

I am assuming this is not an issue you face in your daily life, so I will ask you to defer to those of us who need ways to talk about our children, friends and loved ones every day as naturally as possible. Using “they” as a singular pronoun facilitates those casual conversations. It is an imperfect solution, and I suspect that one day English will evolve to the point where we have the right pronoun. For now, we do the best we can.

One other point of correction: non-binary people are not “gender neutral.” They have a gender, but that gender does not conform to the male/female binary.

You might ask, “Why bother?” I bother because I think the commenter’s understanding is incomplete. I have no idea, beyond a first name and email address, who this is. I don’t recognize the name, so it’s probably someone I don’t know.

I bother because I feel compelled to engage. It is my responsibility to participate in this conversation. And that leads to a concept I’ve been mulling over for weeks. I believe that when we face an unfamiliar issue or identity, we have four choices for how to proceed:

  1. Dismissal: This issue doesn’t exist. Being “non-binary” is impossible and ridiculous. You are confused, so please stop talking about it.
  2. Tolerance: Fine. Non-binary people exist. I find this uncomfortable and confusing, so I’d prefer that you keep your gender to yourself. Be who you are, but do so over there, outside of my sight, where I don’t have to participate in the conversation.
  3. Acceptance: I hear you. You are non-binary. I do not question your identity, and in fact I am getting used to the idea. Be non-binary in my house. I’ll use your pronouns and try to learn about this issue. I’m ok with it.
  4. Engagement: It’s my responsibility to go beyond my comfort zone, to help make the world a more accepting (and, ideally, a more engaged) place. When a Lyft driver asks if my children are boys or girls, I will reply “I have two sons, and my oldest is non-binary.” And when that driver asks what non-binary means, I will explain. I will tell her that I’ve shared this information so that the next time she hears the term “non-binary,” she won’t have to ask what it means. I will correct my friends’ pronouns, and I will respond to well-meaning, but misguided comments on my blog.

I challenge you to engage just a bit. At the very least, don’t be dismissive. If you are tolerant, become accepting. And if you are accepting, take the risk to engage.

8 thoughts on “Response: “They” is Too Confusing”

  2. I have been interested in this topic for several years, from a grammatical point of view. Here is what I have written so far:
    The intention of this writing is to open a new discussion proposing a new set of third person singular pronouns that are gender neutral. I think that it is high time for the American English language to include such pronouns for cases where the gender of that person is unknown. It is also important in cases where there is a general discussion about an individual, and use of the word “one” or “they” does not seem to follow any rules of grammar.

    The following next three lines demonstrate the existing patterns for: the first person singular ( I ); second person singular ( you ); and the archaic second person singular ( thou ) pronouns. The fourth line is my proposed suggestion for the third person singular pronouns.

    Case nominative objective adjective possessive reflexive

    First-Person: I me my mine myself

    Second-Person: you you your yours yourself

    Second-Person: thou thee thy thine thyself

    Third-Person: ze zee zy zine zyself

    First of all, why the letter ( z )? Well, it earns my vote as the best alternative because so many other people have already proposed it. The problem comes when you try to fit other alternatives into each of the above cases. By looking at just the possessive case, there are already too many words in the English language ending in -ine. It would add more confusion to a typical reader, if the possessive case started with a different letter.

    I have included the ( you ) for the sole purpose of showing that the nominative case and the objective case can take the SAME form, and that is why I am suggesting that ( ze ) can be the format of both the subject and the direct object. Alternatively, I am suggesting using zee for the objective case, if it helps to make things clear.

    And lastly, this proposal introduces new versions for the word endings for each of the cases or tenses. Here is the basis from which the suffix could come:
    the ze comes from the same formations as me, thee, he and she;
    the zy comes from the same formation as my and thy;
    the zine comes from the same formation as mine and thine.

    I welcome a discussion on this topic. Thank you.

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  3. They/them/theirs my preferred pronoun set, and I’ve percolated on this for some time, so I speak with my own authority at least when I say they/them/theirs is just fine. 🙂 There are two reasons that I am satisfied with this linguistic arrangement going mainstream, and perhaps firmly sticking around.

    First and foremost, there is the way that when the typical English speaker reaches for the right word in the case where gender is unknown, and finds the neutral pronoun they need missing, they commonly grasp onto “they/them” as the next best thing automatically, like finding a synonym that isn’t quite right, but is close enough. It feels a little weird rolling off the tongue, but it’s close enough that the listener often wont even notice. They’re not so focused on the gender ambiguity the way the speaker might be – they’re focused on the meaning of the sentence as a whole. (See what I just did there, 4 times? Did it read/sound that weird?) I think it is easier to get widespread adoption of a neutral pronoun by taking advantage of a pre-existing association/tendency than to generate a whole new set of terms.

    Second, the English language is also lacking a plural “you”. I think we find “they” when we go reaching partially because we use “you” as both singular and plural. So again, there’s a linguistic precedent here. We can say “You are beautiful” to mean a single person, or a whole room of people, and that’s ok, right? So a singular they could become really ok too.

    Tl;dr? We can and should use what we have to our advantage. Using “they” seems like the path of least resistance, which is good if we’re looking for rapid, culture-wide change.

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  5. I do find myself, getting a little lost reading with the non-binary pronouns, but I think that I will naturally as I read more articles referring to non-binary. I think it is more of a question of exposure at this point, for me anyway. I am more interested to know your thoughts on English evolving. Would it be more inclusive to go to genderless pronouns, simply singular and plural, or would additional pronouns such as a singular/plural non-binary pronoun?

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