They them pronouns

I’ve seen the badges. I work close to several uni colleges. They ‘They/them’ badge wearers are generally those trying to attract attention to themselves. It’s all so tiresome!

I've never heard anyone say anything about their own pronouns in real life. (Though I have briefly met maybe three transgender people.) It is clearly a fashion. I think a problem would only arise in practice if someone looked just like a bloke but insisted otherwise. I assume most transgender people try to look like the gender they are adopting.

Reminds me of those bloody tests where you have to say the colour you see - so words will be BLUE but printed in red. Tricky!

Reminds me of Fr Ted.
'Call me Len??! It's Bishop Brennan to you, you little bollix'

Yes, agree Errol. It’s also quite difficult when you can clearly observe the sex of the person in front of you but you are required to use the pronoun for the opposite sex or they. Not insurmountable but difficult.

I teach at a university and despite the apparent spread in wokeness, I have very very few students myself who have asked me to use certain pronouns. It’s probably also because I don’t make a huge show of it. I have colleagues who spend half an hour in the first seminar going round the room asking for pronouns, even if they have no trans students. If my students feel violated by the fact that I don’t mention it, I have yet to hear about it. I think many secretly feel that the performative wokeness from academics is slightly pathetic (or maybe that’s just my view). If one of my students came up to me privately and said that they preferred a certain mode of address, I would do so but I don’t have that happen really. I think that the places where they all seem to have different pronouns, they are often whipped up by the staff to act like that. Or maybe they do gender-studies (which I don’t teach).

Funny that. I don't think I was pulled up on using 'he'.

Just out of interest, did all the people who were told not to say 'she' get told not to say 'he' as well?
My mother always said 'who's she, the cat's mother?' but she never asked me if he was the hamster's dad or something. Is it worse to be known as she than he?

. I think most people just don’t clock how often it happens though.

Yes - because using 'he' and 'she' in the contexts described are so normal.

Beamur I think it would be pretty unusual though to never hear gendered pronouns used about yourself unless you never work or socialise or spend time with more than one person at a time. I think most people just don’t clock how often it happens though.

Kind of rude to say refuted as nonsense when the examples given were from personal experience. You might not agree or have the same experience.

I'm glad the idea that you never hear your own pronouns has been refuted as nonsense. In any group conversation people will refer to others present with he or she! Using their name everytime would be ridiculously clunky.

Similarly rubbish about using 'it' or people not knowing how to use they/them (or as I've seen on Mumsnet people deliberately doing it wrongly to try to 'prove a point').

I was arranging a new hires work environment earlier today, sex unknown (because we haven't actually hired anyone yet!) and no one has any problem understanding sentences like "They will need a desk". If I'd said it will need a desk people would have thought I was bonkers.

I'm by no means pro-gender bollocks but pretending that 'no one hears their own pronouns' or 'you can't use they/them for a single person' just makes it sound like you don't know what you're talking about.

If it was they for everyone how would certain people be validated though?

But agree that they is pretty acceptable in the singular and I use it quite a bit. It’s harder when you’re referring to an actual person whose sex you know though rather than a hypothetical.

Language is a convention and there are languages without gendered pronouns. There is no NEED to mention my sex in absolutely any description of me. But I suspect that no TRAs want to get rid of gendered pronouns, they just want to control who can use them.

Adding an apostrophe to theirs, ours, its is a very common, and in my view understandable mistake.

Bloody autocorrect is liable put an apostrophe in a possessive its. But I'd usually notice!

FFS, didn’t mean to post it twice.

Some people seem to have problems with using neutral pronouns grammatically correctly even though we have, of course, always used they etc when we don't know what sex the person is.

I'd be fairly sure these people use 'they' as a singular frequently, without even noticing. Because, in the absence of knowledge of a persons sex, it's the normal thing to do in English, we don't routinely say 'he or she' (and heaven forfend we return to using 'he' as a default as would sometimes be the case in the past!).

The problem of course arises when faced with a specific person whose sex is obvious. Even if you're concentrating, there's the Stroop effect in play.

Adding an apostrophe to theirs, ours, its is a very common, and in my view understandable mistake.

Maybe not so much for a 'journalist' though, and certainly not for an editor. Do PN have editors?

Reminds me of this

Brilliant idea. Let’s call EVERYONE they..

Some people seem to have problems with using neutral pronouns grammatically correctly even though we have, of course, always used they etc when we don't know what sex the person is. I read part of an article the other day (PN) where they had written their's ie with apostrophe . I know they aren't proper journalists but come on!

Perhaps we could easily circumvent the 'pronoun' issue by insisting right from the start that everyone be referred to as 'they'. Personally never been confronted by this ludicrous thing, but couldn't go along with it if I was. I'd just get in there straight away and suggest this.

Somehow, don't think some people would be happy at not being singled out for special treatment, though.

'They' is valid at as general pronoun, and I often use it myself, in written text, for the purpose of neutralisation.

I think the they/their annoys me because it’s plural. Surely the pronouns should be it/its for a single non-binary person

Not really, tbh. The use of 'they' as a singular third person pronoun to refer to someone of unknown sex is quite standard usage.
It's not standard in the case of a person of known sex eg a specific individual or a pregnant woman.

Are they the grotesque bastard children of Emos (with a good dose of entitlement thrown in)?

Apologies to any ex/emos - who just got on with their lives, tried not to piss everyone off and wanted everyone to stay the hell away.

Actually they remind me of hippies back in the day - well the darker side of it anyway.

Whenever I hear people, inevitably under the age of 30, wanging on about they/them, what their pronouns are, being triggered, literal violence etc I always start humming Green Day in my head. "Do you have the time, to listen to me whine?" And the answer is no I bloody don't! People with jobs and/or kids and/or caring responsibilities and/or a busy life have got more important things to worry about.

It really is a disease of a narcissistic, self absorbed mememe subsection of a generation that spends far too long online and not enough time out in the real world.

Surely the pronouns should be it/its for a single non-binary person

Good point.

I think the they/their annoys me because it’s plural. Surely the pronouns should be it/its for a single non-binary person