Base image taken by olia danilevich
Base image taken by olia danilevich
This essay is written assuming that we should have gender-neutral pronouns. This does not mean that I think that we should or should not. I simply do not have an opinion yet. It is a deep topic which requires a lot of thought and research. I do believe, though, that the answer is not trivially negative, because placing gender basically at the epicenter of language is in some important way bizarre. To put it differently, there are many characterizations that apply to all people, such as skin color, eye color, height, etc.1 Why is the gender the one we use? This means that all the people who think that gender (or sex) is not important at all should be trying to introduce gender-neutral pronouns (under which any version of “no pronouns” falls). Even though I have not made up my mind regarding the assumption, I still think it is valuable to publish this essay now (mostly for people who have answered the question in the affirmative, and they are thinking about the best implementation), rather than waiting until I figure out my position.
The topic of this essay is: are the current solutions to gender-neutral pronouns good? Let us start with “they/them”. One obvious answer is that it sounds very awkward grammatically. This is a common argument, you have probably heard it before, but hopefully I will take it a step further. So, what is the argument? That using a plural pronoun to refer to a single person is awkward. Two main ways to argue in favor of this is from the perspective of tradition. I would rather avoid the term tradition because it is problematic and ill-defined (much like populism).2 But clearing that up requires many more keystrokes than the whole of this essay, so I will stick with the term “tradition” for now.
The two ways are: (1) you want to preserve the present grammar, (2) you want to preserve a grammatical tradition. (1) is something that does not need to be analyzed any further, but why is the grammar of the present, which is anyway in constant and rapid flux, so important? I cannot find a good reason to support this. (2) is more interesting, because I can see why there is value in a historical precedent that has been true for many years. Nevertheless, the problem in this case is that the tradition is very weak, simply because Shakespeare used they/them to refer to a single person. Here is a quote from The Comedy of Errors (Scene 3):
There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me
As if I were their well-acquainted friend,
So, claiming that we should not use they/them due to tradition is a hard claim to defend. But there is another interesting tradition: the honorific plural. This is still widely used in Greek and French (and German is an interesting story), and it causes a problem to most people who are against they/them, because most of them support it (usually because of tradition). But if you support the honorific plural, you cannot claim that they/them is grammatically awkward. In fact, one could cite it as evidence that a very similar construct has worked in the past.
However, you can say some things if you think—like me—that the honorific plural is also a bad idea. It feels both grammatically awkward and pretentious. It's as if a single person acquires the value of many. So, this is why I do not think they/them is a good idea. These pronouns sound pretentious for the same exact reason. And then there is another reason. I do think it is grammatically awkward but not because of tradition, but simply because of semantics. It is confusing, exactly because of the fusion of the singular and the plural. In other words, I think it is a good idea to distinguish the single from the many whether we used to do it in the past or not.
Taking this argument a step further, then, one may say that using something like “it”, which is gender-neutral, is a better idea. This is what the “cool kids” use in Greece currently. The problem with that is that it goes against the aesthetic and value judgements Greek has had historically. In general, and to the best of my knowledge, neuter has never been used in Greek to refer to people, except for degrading them or denoting an early stage of development (e.g., αὐτὸ τὸ σκουπίδι τῆς κοινωνίας or τὸ παιδί μας). In other words, there has generally been a clear distinction between the human and the non-human (the object), and to a lesser extent between the mature and the immature. I happen to think that the first distinction is a good one, through the lens of Humanism. I am saying this because we should be careful about what this implies for animals. But that is a different discussion. Point being, I think that the non-binary people should have been the first to complain against “it”; because it (get it?) feels degrading, and another form of objectification.
What is a good solution then? I wish I had a good answer. But here is a thought to entertain. It seems to me that any good solution should introduce something new instead of reusing an old construct. This avoids all the problems I mentioned above. So, the solution may be to introduce a new pronoun. Note that this suggestion involves only one pronoun, a gender-neutral pronoun. It does not suggest to introduce one pronoun for each gender, nor does it suggest this one pronoun be used only for non-binary people. Rather, the suggestion is to use one pronoun for any person. Of course we may want to extend that to “any living being” or “any being that can suffer”, etc. That is a different discussion. Because languages become simpler over time (e.g., the grammar of Greek has been becoming simpler, English lost “thou”, “thee”, etc.), I think that such a change will eventually wipe out “he” and “she”. You get to decide if that is a future to look forward to.