TIL: American’s are having a super freak out over the singular use of “they” rather than “he” or “she”.

I’m British, and this is utterly baffling to me.

Singular they is super common here, and has actually been in considerable use for hundreds of years, and used by people like Shakespeare.

I had absolutely no idea that the American derivation of English had such crazy little grammar quirks like this.

What’s everyone’s take on this? Why have such a problem over a word that rather elegantly avoids any conflict over gendered usage of pronouns?

It avoids mislabelling when you’re not sure, it allows you to make statements that are inclusive, and it’s just cleaner.

(And no, I’m not at a ‘Zir’ level of madness)

No. No.. no... No.

It's only the thin skinned pussies that give a fuck about that.

75%ish don't believe in that shit.

@Stuxnet see, it’s so fascinating that it’s been spun into a gender / SJW argument.

It’s not seen that way here at all, it’s just an elegant grammatical shortcut for when the gender isn’t known / there’s no need to keep repeating “he” or “she” when context is key.

@AlexDeLarge I suppose because it’s so common here, we just don’t see it that way.

Yes it applies that way, but it’s sort of just reflexive here, and prose that’s unnecessarily gendered makes us itch much the same way “they” must do Americans.

Even weirder is when it flips in the same block of text, it’s clunky and weird.

“The candidate will have a minimum of five years experience. He will also have experience with Angular. She will have experience with Node”

^ that’s pure insanity to me, and so is the h/she nonsense too.

“They” slots right into that wording, everyone knows immediately what’s meant by it, and yet people are freaking out?!

I just. I just don’t understand.

++ for singular they, altho I'm not a native english speaker, I like using they, so much cleaner and inclusive than he/she, the latter is annoying af.

My native language (Estonian) doesn't have gender specific pronouns, or any other gender based grammar, so you can freely speak without thinking about gender.

Singular "they" in english is generally used when the statement talks about an abstract third person, when you are talking about specific third person whose gender you are aware of, then this is very rarely used historically. That's mostly what the argument is about.

I personally don't support those who say people have the right to be called "they" or "zir" or whatever. It's how the language is, and it's bit silly to expect the whole world to bend after your will.

But at the same time, I don't see the need for gender specific pronouns at all. I like when I have better control over my language, where I can add or omit information to my conversation as I want. With gendered pronouns, I have to spend an extra effort if I don't think the gender of the person I am talking about is relevant.

The correct pronoun is the generic "he". Simple as that. And if people were not fucking up grammatical gender and biological sex, they wouldn't have a problem with that.

@zlice I dunno, the gendering of words in a linguistic sense rather than pronouns referring to actual sex / gender are just historic things, it’s not that a chair is literally masculine etc.

As for the defense of using a word in its “evolved” context - I’m not buying it.

I know words like “retarded” and “lame” are now fairly commonplace, but in contexts that are always somewhat aligned with the original meaning (except for weird words that completely flip meaning).

“Lame” in the context of something that is somehow defective is fairly applicable today across a broad range.

“Gay” simply doesn’t apply to inanimate objects, so yeah, I don’t really buy it.

@Fast-Nop “he” is inherently not generic though.

It may have been used that way in historic contexts simply owing to the larger domination of men within the work / academic circles.

There’s significant historic usage of “they” for the very same purpose, and it simply fits far easier.

I quite like use of singular they, but as a native italian speaker i don't use it much, in italian we generally use the male pronoun when the gender is unspecified or otherwhise unclear.
I get comments about it quite regurarly actually, people look at me funny for using male pronouns all the time and its weird :D

I was scrolling to see if anyone identified as American had commented. I didn't catch any (apologies if I missed it). I am American and English is my native language. In the context of not knowing the gender I think they is just fine. We do tend to think of they as being a group/organization/company/ect over a single person. But English is all about context and it makes sense that once you have established talking about an individual then you can refer to that individual as they.

IE: the sentence "They like their beer cold" alone would indicate a group setting to me. But it would be fine to say "An individual/someone walked into a bar. It appears they prefer cold beer." Then, its perfectly clear you mean the individual and not some group of people.

Sorry for the examples. Im too lazy to think of better ones.

I use whatever the fuck I come up with. If you prefer to be called she when you look like a male or the other way around, I'll definitely do that because I'd find myself a fucking asshole if I didn't.

But don't expect me to call you she by default when you look like a male. Not because I don't want to be an ass but because you can't expect me to know you're identifying as another gender. Just ask and I'll call you that way :)

Resident American number 2: If I don't know the sex of whomever it is I am speaking about, be they hypothetical or otherwise, I tend to say either 'they', 'he or she', or 'one'. I developed the habit in english/writing classes, and it simply stuck.

i.e. One may think that they developed a practice of his or her own accord, yet they were in fact forced into doing so.

In person I typically err on the side of caution. If I can't identify the sex of the being I'm talking to, or fear that they may sprout some other gender akin to flying asault vehicles, I simply leave out all pronouns.

Wait, since when have we ever cared about that? I do it all the time...

He, she, they? Why bother? Just refer to everyone as 'asshole' and you'll never be wrong.

Dudes and dudettes

America is a fucking kindergarten country where we take offense to every little-fucking-thing!

We absolutely shouldn’t, but we do... My theory is, it’s because we have a bunch of asshats running around with nothing better to do with their time than to bitch and complain about frivolous and pedantic shit while going on these fucking SJW crusades

Not american, just an english speaker. I'm perfectly fine with they as singular person. Instead I find pretty much crazy that some humans go around saying how much bad are made-up pronouns when every single word used is human-made; all of this while complaining about those "weird-pronouned" people geing easily butthurt when the person who complain is just as calm and thick-skinned like a lunatic 80yrs old running and screaming at kids because the good years are gone. 😂
Grow up 😅

If someone tells me what their pronouns are, I call them a crazy fuck and walk away.

Canada is even worse than this, and has even passed legislation about this

@dthree I have seen this nonsense in NYC recently. I went to a small conference in NYC a few months ago, and they had a special panel about addressing people properly in the workspace. They started talking about "gendered terms", and I went for a bathroom break

I use “he” because it saves space and looks better to me, in addition to having been traditionally used in place of “they”.

I find the usage of "they" to be very apt especially in online conversations where the other person's gender might not be immediately obvious. It's sort of a get-out-of-jail-free-card that works for both genders, and I think it's important that such a thing exists in this day and age.

The languages I speak have either a gender neutral pronoun, as is the case with Swedish ("hen") or don't distinguish between the two to begin with, as is the case with Finnish ("hän"). For English I think it's simply easier to use "they" instead of inventing a new pronoun.

@Brolls talk about "fucking up grammatical gender and biological sex".

@sabbonaut or even crazier, laws that require you to do so.