They/them pronouns in primary school workbooks

If these are social stories about children with autism, they do include disability (though I understand that you'd like physical disabilities to be represented as well).

The examples you've quoted sound totally illiterate. Poor kids having to deal with this nonsense.

I've seen a fair few books 'for children' of this kind about which I've had a fair suspicion that they're nothing more than a vehicle for the author to validate themselves and their identity and push their agenda, rather than any primary desire to provide children with fun, entertaining and/or educational reading.

I bet that's what it is then, @KellyMaureen. They have covered ethnicity and gender identity. There should be some kids with disabilities too.

Sounds like it's written for the author themselves rather than ND kids who are going to end up baffled and confused. PLEASE tell them to bin this

If they felt compelled to cater for the tiny minority to whom 'gender' is an issue, they could have had a third character who went by 'they' and explained that, and why, with the twins being one male and one female. At least that way they would be owning what they were about rather than imposing their ideology as default in a mainstream that typically doesn't share it.

Hopefully the workbook will be binned now. In this morning's Times it says that schools will be advised not to teach gender identity as it if is fact - so the silly they/them stuff will no longer be appropriate.

From the Times:

"Schools must not teach children that they can change their gender identity and should avoid “explicit” conversations about sex until they reach the age of 13, the government is to say.
Ministers will warn schools on Thursday that gender identity is a highly contested area and that teaching children about it could have damaging implications. Staff will be explicitly told to avoid proactively teaching children about gender identity. If asked, they should teach “biological” facts about sex.
The guidance will also impose age limits on sex education for the first time, to address concerns that children are being exposed to sensitive material before they are ready. It will state that children should not be given any form of sex education in primary school until Year 5, when aged nine and over."

I find it confusing and clumsy writing. Just use he or she! I am adult diagnosed with autism. I might have found social stories really helpful. I have no learning difficulties and learnt to read early so would have found this very confusing given the twins

I had and still have serious problems understanding interaction. It is hard and therefore painful knowing you can’t do something that people seem to find easy. If I could have distracted a teacher from social stories and learning about interacting to a grammar rabbit hole I would have.

The confusion comes when there are other people in the scenario not just the main subject called Stevie.

As several posters have pointed out, it is perfectly normal and grammatically correct to use 'they' (with the appropriate form of the verb) when referring to a hypothetical person or someone of unknown identity or sex. You see it in school communications all the time "If your child wishes to take part in the activity, they should write their name on the list" etc.

I'm not at all on board with all the gender identity bollocks, but I do wish people would stop trying to use grammar as an ill-conceived gotcha when they don't really understand what they are talking about.

YABU. The language is changing. It would actually be better to ditch the concept of he and she entirely as that would lead to less discrimination between the genders.

It really wouldn't. Because discrimination has never been on the basis of gender. It's on the basis of sex. And getting rid of certain words is not going to fool anyone as to which sex has the babies or which sex is physically weaker. It's also not going to change which sex commits almost all sexual and violent crime. Nor is it going to erase millennia of misogyny and sexism.

It is indeed - but then you don't get the chance to push whatever agenda it is that you may have.

Do we even know for a fact that the author originally decided to write the stories as a result of some great ideas for fun adventures that he/she wanted to communicate to children - or might the sole desire have been to expressly push the 'non-binary' thing to children and then just make up any old poorly-written generic stuff as nothing more than a vehicle for that?

Exactly.

We don't really know do we. If you want everyone to identify with the characters , which I assume is the point ,you can write well and construct sentences that do this with no confusion about who is doing something or needs to do something. Feels like a hammer to crack a nut.

The examples just seem like gibberish as I have no idea what is actually meant by those statements.

Otherwise Stevie's mum and Stevie are starting to worry about the shops.

I can sympathise with her there, actually.

"Stevie's mum needs to go to the shops after school. Stevie didn’t expect this and starts to feel nervous. Mum knows that Stevie will be calmer with something interesting to do to keep busy".

It's easy enough stuff to rewrite.

For adolescents in Finland who are dealing with various levels of gender dysphoria and who don’t want to conform to gender stereotypes at all they can wear whatever clothes and hairstyles they like, use what nickname they like and they don’t have to worry about pronouns because they’re all the same. There’s less of a need to ‘socially transition’.

I do feel for people - especially children - who are working through these feelings and experiences; but I still don't see how that's any reason for society as a whole to scrap sex-based pronouns from the language for everybody.

Sex-based pronouns (obviously) refer to your sex and that's all. You can still wear what you like, have your hair how you like, use what nickname you like - all of it.

Unless you're a big fan of restricted, rigorous stereotypes - but only to assume for other people and not for yourself - there's nothing whatsoever to transition from or to.

Also, where does it end? Supposing we were to go down the Finnish route and completely ban 'he/him' and 'she/her', so that everybody is 'they/them' by default - not because that is standard language, as with Finnish, but specifically to centre those who struggle with dysphoria... somebody with dysphoria that makes them believe that they are fundamentally different from 'normal' people, and thus feel the urge to insist that this be made abundantly clear every single time somebody else refers to them, will surely find that the now-standard (non-dysphoric) 'they/them' is obviously not appropriate for them and so they will most probably react by looking for a different pronoun to continue to mark out the belief that they are 'different'.

How does it help anybody once the 99.999% of people who want to be referred to as 'he' or 'she' have had that taken away from them against their will and replaced with 'they', so as not to upset the people with dysphoria - but then the people with dysphoria jump ship and abandon 'they', insisting that people now refer to them as 'ze/zir', 'bim/bam' or possibly any other word or sound, to clearly differentiate their perceived 'specialness'?

If you were aiming to use "they" to allow for either sex or gender, you could still construct those paragraphs a lot better so that there's no confusion about who "they" refers to - Stevie or whoever Stevie is interacting with.

I would be concerned about the workbook on those grounds. If I wanted to write a simple workbook for children that allowed them to identify the main character as male or female, I'd just have that character say "Hi, I'm Stevie" on page one and use the first person throughout. Much clearer. Easy to introduce other pronouns for other characters.

I wonder if the publisher is being inclusive? They should include the same number of illustrations of kids who are white, black, Asian etc. They should also represent kids with disabilities. So I've wonder if they are also representing kids with different genders?!

Wasn’t the main aim of the enterprise to use they/them pronouns as part of teaching non-binary gender?

I think it's lazy writing actually in the examples op has given, it's perfectly possible to construct sentences which are accurate and don't include any pronouns if that is the aim.

@Doingmybest12 true but it also had a humanoid body. I'm still debating what would have been best. Shame as it was otherwise spectacular.

What problems do you believe we have that need to be solved that are currently caused by our use of 'he' and 'she' to (respectively) refer to male and female people or animals?

Theres a whole pronoun debate going on in some sectors of society for one thing so this removes that.

For adolescents in Finland who are dealing with various levels of gender dysphoria and who don’t want to conform to gender stereotypes at all they can wear whatever clothes and hairstyles they like, use what nickname they like and they don’t have to worry about pronouns because they’re all the same. There’s less of a need to ‘socially transition’.

As it says in the Cass report, adolescents are free to wear whatever clothes and hairstyles etc they want. Removing the issue of gendered pronouns altogether takes away some of the trickier aspects.

I’ve probably not organised my thoughts very well there someone else might be able to do better.