It Is The Best We Can Do In English

The English language has many drawbacks and one of them is no gender neutral pronouns.

All Your Questions About Gender-Neutral Pronouns Answered
From grammar to what to do if you mess it up.
Teen Vogue
By Desmond Meagley and Youth Radio
October 17, 2018

People say the darnedest things about the singular “they.”

When I tell someone that my preferred pronouns are they/them/their, I never know what to expect. Sometimes people say okay and move on, but other times, they’ll start to ask a whole bunch of questions that I don’t really feel like answering. It’s usually well intentioned; I get that people are just trying to understand. But I do get tired of explaining the same things over and over.

So to save everyone (myself included) some time and confusion, I’ve rounded up some responses to the most common weird questions I get about my pronouns.

I use this video in my training…

“You’re only one person! How does that work?”It’s really, really simple. In English, we already use singular “they” all the time when the gender of a person is unknown. Say you see fifty bucks on the ground and pick it up. You might say:

“Oh, someone dropped their money here. I’ll set it aside for them, I bet they are looking everywhere!”

Using “he or she” and “his or hers” in this situation is awkward and clunky, so we use singular they instead. When someone uses they/them pronouns, all you have to do is apply that same sentence construction:

“Oh, Desmond dropped their money here. I’ll set it aside for them, I bet they are looking everywhere!”

Now if only I could get fifty bucks every time someone’s rude about my gender. No, I’m kidding. Let’s move on.

Okay I have to admit that sometime I have a problem with using they, them, and their.

“I try to use they/them pronouns when people ask, but it’s so hard! I keep messing it up.”
That’s okay! It happens to everyone. It takes time to adjust to new ways of speaking and thinking. Personally, I would much rather my friends and family mess up than give up entirely.

All I ask is for you to not make it my problem. Getting really apologetic or changing the subject to how difficult you find my pronouns won’t make me feel any more comfortable after I’ve been misgendered. Don’t tell me that you’re trying, show me. Try, and then if you get it wrong, correct yourself and move on.

Of course, there are people out there who will be harsh about good-faith mistakes. Sometimes it’s because they’re sensitized to being gendered a certain way. Other times, they’re just jerks. (Jerks come in all genders.) But in general, accidentally messing up pronouns is not the end of the world, as long as you’re holding yourself accountable.

If you think of gender as a spectrum or a continuum it is easier to see that there is a middle where someone may not identify as male or female.