They/Them Pronouns: Advice for Grammar Nerds
People sometimes ask me if I find it problematic to use they/them as singular pronouns. You’re an English professor, they say. How can you embrace “grammatically incorrect” pronouns?
The notion that nonbinary pronouns, such as the singular “they,” is a new phenomenon is wrong. The Oxford English Dictionary traces back the first written use of a singular they to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romantic poem “William and the Werewolf.” The singular they was used in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1386) and Shakespeare's Hamlet in 1599. It appears in 1813 in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice. Charles Dickens used they to anonymize gender in The Pickwick Papers (1836).
So grammar nerds, nonbinary pronouns were good enough for Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens but not you?
(There's a whole conversation we could have here about the elitism of grammar policing--the ways in which linguistic prescriptivism reproduces racist, colonialist, classist, heteropatriarchal, and ableist hierarchies--but I'll save that discussion for another day)
Debates around pronouns aren't best understood as intellectual, linguistic, or even political issues. Using correct pronouns and names is essential to honoring others’ human dignity and affirming who they are.
About mistakes--something I struggle with myself: Misgendering someone may seem like a small mistake to a cisgender person, but it can have deeply traumatizing consequences for trans people. If you’re aware that you’ve made a mistake, apologize, correct yourself without centering yourself, and move on. Remember, allies speak up and respectfully correct others even when the person who has been misgendered isn’t present.
Language exists within a social context and changes over time. All the major style manuals now recognize they/them pronouns. You should too...and not just because it's "correct."
Gender diversity has always been a part of human experience. When you acknowledge people by their pronouns, it shows you respect them. It’s that simple.
