September 10, 2014

I Have Gone Over to the Dark Side

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I have gone over to the dark side. I’ve been on the edge for a while, playing passive-aggressive games with my copy editor, but I guess I might as well just fess up. I now routinely use they and them as gender-neutral singular pronouns.1

I’m not proud of this. But he or she has always grated on the ear. Likewise, using he some of the time and she some of the time is just too damn much work. And it’s kind of confusing too. How careful are you going to be to use them equally? How much attention are you going to pay to make sure you aren’t using them in gendered ways (he when you’re writing about doctors, she when you’re writing about nurses)? Etc.

What other options are there? None. You can write around the problem, but that usually produces a mess. There have been a few feeble attempts to invent new pronouns, but they’ve gone nowhere and never will. So we’re stuck. The easiest thing is just to use they and them. Everyone knows what you mean, and except for us grammar pedants, nobody cares. I don’t think I have the will to resist anymore. I have been assimilated.

1See the previous post for an example—and for the proximate cause of this post.

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Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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