They/them pronouns in primary school workbooks

[KellyMaureen]

I've been asked to review some resources for kids about autism. It takes the form of a workbook for primary school kids. There are two characters who are twins, one with a unisex name which is usually always spelled the same, and the other with a name that can be used for boys or girls but is spelled the usual way you would spell it for a boy. Both dressed exactly the same except for different coloured T-shirts.

Both these kids have they/them pronouns in this workbook. Is this now the norm? Will there come a time when there is no he/she? This is what this feels like. I wanted to ask that question in feedback, but I'm unsure how to give my feedback without sounding inappropriate. AIBU about this?

What are your thoughts please? This is a genuine question, and something I only feel comfortable asking anonymously so please don't accuse me of goading. I don't want to cause trouble. Thank you.

@SmartiesParty no that's not correct. The third person singular is he/she. They is the third person plural.

Singular:
I
You
He/she

Plural:
We
You
They

As the parent of an asd child, my Ds would find this either confusing (when he was younger) or very irritating once he was old enough to know it doesn’t make sense.
if you’re trying to give asd children advice it needs to be absolutely crystal clear
“Stevie does things that might confuse people. They need to explain it's how they express themself.”
WHO needs to explain? Is it the people or is it stevie? It doesn’t make sense! If my asd son had come across this at primary level I think he’d probably have ripped it up in frustration. Ordinary life/social interaction was already confusing. If a book supposedly trying to clarify things for him was even more confusing he’d get distressed.

No, I don't think even my 8 year old (who does not have asd) would understand the concept of non-binary. So even if it was explained by the author as I suggested, it probably would still be too confusing for children, let alone children with asd.

My autistic 7yo has yet to grasp the correct use of he/she. It wouldn’t be helpful to introduce more confusion at this point. Children need to understand binary before they can grasp nonbinary.

I might need educating... Suppose I'm at a hotel and make a complaint at the front desk. The staff member is unable to resolve my issue and tells me, "You'll have to speak with my manager." I do not know whether the manager is male or female, and I cannot see any other staff member at the desk so I respond with, "Where are they?", or, "Where would I find them?". Is this grammatically incorrect, and if so, what should I be using in this sort of scenario?

Isn't this not just because there are two of them? They / them is plural

It is confusing. Imagine a child whose first language isn’t English dealing with this.

We do use “they” as a placeholder when we are not sure of the sex of the person we are referring to, but in the hotel manager example, I’d expect the staff member to say “she’ll be here shortly” or “he’s just coming” which would then clarify this for me.

Things aren’t changing, there are still only two sexes.

I’d say the resource is inappropriate for two reasons - gender identity is a contested belief and it will cause confusion and uncertainty about the rules of grammar and how English language is correctly used.

It’s actually shocking that this is being proposed as suitable for children with autism. They need, like many children, unequivocal clear teaching examples that are designed with integrity (not TRA propaganda).

Ordinarily I wouldn’t see any issue at all with using they to refer to children in a resource like this, or a children’s book for example. It’s positive for kids to be able to identify with some / all / any aspects of a character without being influenced by gendered stereotypes, or what they might perceive as gendered characteristics. However, I think that to use they for two twins is potentially confusing, more so than it needs to be. A better option would be to use a range of pronouns for different characters.

Yes, we are heading towards this as a norm now. I think people need to just roll with the times and accept it. Children aren't confused by it, it's older people that are. Just like children aren't confused that there can be same sex relationships and families. When I was growing up I thought nothing of same sex relationships but adults were in uproar thinking that allowing children to know about it will confuse us.
Some people can be mistaken for the wrong gender even when they are the gender they are born with, especially young children so I think avoiding he/she isn't the worst thing. A lot of young children dress in neutral clothing so I tend to avoid saying boy or girl just in case.
There is an over representation of non-binary and trans people in the Autistic community, that may be why it is relevant to a book about Autism. The reasons for the over representation aren't clear but I would guess it has something to do with Autistic people generally doing their own thing rather than being hung up on social norms. Wouldn't life be easier for all of us if we could just be who we truly want to be without worrying about fitting in or people thinking we are strange.

That is just teaching children bad grammar. I accept that for someone who is binary there may be no alternative to "they", but it's probably better to leave that till they've got the basic grammar 100% secure.

It's pushing a belief system that not everyone subscribes to. If my autistic child was given a workbook like that I would not be happy. You can learn about others beliefs and learn to be respectful and fair without forcefully making children adopt those beliefs.

My daughter actually had an English workbook and within the definitions of proper nouns and common nouns was a section on pronouns with they not in the plural stated as fact. I was not happy. Teach some people use it that way of course but do not teach my children an ideology I do not consent to and consider incredibly harmful to women and girls

They are more hung up on norms than "binary" people! You can be a boy or a girl and dress/act however you like. By claiming you're "non binary" and "not like other people" you're reinforcing the very stereotypes you claim to despise.

Kids need to learn about he and she, and I'd go back and ask for one character of each sex.

This doesn’t sound grammatically correct to me. I don’t know factually whether it is or isn’t but it sounds odd and not correct to my instinct ear.. I don’t know about ND children particularly but I still think we can use pronouns he/her in primary school or the world might go even more mad. I’d be saying it’s not really appropriate or accurate enough if I was in your shoes op

‘They’ in my mind is plural. It’s not a term you use for one person.

You clearly don’t know what ‘norm’ means in any sense of the word statistically, factually, biologically, socially, legally… so on snd so on. 🙄

Stevie does things that might confuse people. They need to explain it's how they express themself.

Even when using 'they' for a single person of as-yet unknown sex, I've never heard of 'themself'.

Am I understanding this correctly? Are they claiming to be trying to help children to avoid confusion by teaching them in a deliberately unnecessarily confusing way? If so, people might be interested in my phone hotline which gives you valuable tips to avoid getting scammed - it costs £500 per minute to call

I do think it's sad if there's a perceived need to change the characters' sex(es), depending on the age of the children. It's one of the most basic facts in the world for children to learn: that there are boys and there are girls - and it really doesn't matter if the character(s) in a book has the same sex as you do, or indeed whether the author happens to be your own sex or the opposite one.

A good story is a good story regardless of the main protagonist's sex - and that really shouldn't be the only important or most interesting fact about the character.

In my mother's dialect (Philippines) we only use gender neutral pronouns. So only 'they/them/theirs'. There are of course words for man/woman/boy/girl etc, so using they/them isn't confusing for me. Maybe soon it will be the same in English. Can't see the problem tbh, we always know who we're talking about 😆

Stevie likes chatting to their friends at school about their weekend

I would initially (and on second reading) expect this to mean that Stevie chatted about the friends' weekend. Well done Stevie.

But that is the opposite of what the text is trying to convey, so it's badly written. Even if wedded to ungendered pronouns, you could go with 'Stevie likes chatting about their weekend to friends at school', which is less likely to be interpreted as the friends' weekend.

Away with your sensible reasoning, this is clearly propaganda from an evil cult don't you know.

The things is, though, that different constituent grammatical parts of a language don't grow in a vacuum.

We could just as easily tell the Germans that they only need one form of the word 'the', regardless of noun gender or case - but it would be a touch arrogant and, I'm sure, extremely weird for all but the very youngest to get used to.

Then again (not just wanting to pick on German as all languages have their quirks), but where something isn't quite as precise and unambiguous as it maybe could be, people naturally find ways around it which can sound a little clunky. For example, 'Freund' means a friend who happens to be male and 'Freundin' a friend who happens to be female - but because there's also a strong interpretation of the words likely meaning (romantic) boyfriend or girlfriend, if you're wanting to indicate a standard (non-romantic) friend, you have to say 'a (male or female) friend of mine' so that others understand you properly.

But WHY do we assume that a boy simply won't be able to enjoy or grasp the story if the main character happens to be a girl, or vice versa?

If, for some reason, a child is only able to relate to characters of their own sex, make the character one or the other (by all means keeping unisex/ambiguous names) and then the adult reading it to a little one can easily adapt it.

Do you know what a tiny percentage of people in the world identify as 'they' compared to those who are 'he' or 'she'? Why choose the teeny-weeny minority one as the default - especially when doing so necessarily introduces confusion and a lack of clarity in understanding (e.g. is 'they' referring to both twins or just one?)?

Take dolls for example. Historically, in the UK at least, dolls were always white, which naturally made black and Asian children sad and puzzled as to why they never saw a doll - a toy modelled simply on a human form - that was the same colour as them. The obvious solution was that you can now buy dolls approximating to all different racial colours. This doesn't mean that a child can only have dolls that are the same colour as they are, but a variety reflecting human norms is now available and many children will have several different dolls.

Referring to every character in a story as 'they' is the equivalent of making every single doll bright blue - so that no child can ever see one that remotely resembles their own colour - and thus considering it a universally appropriate solution!

Yes lots of things can maybe be perceived as 'clunky' when we're looking at it in direct translations. Words are not islands, and I find it so interesting how languages develop and change over time.

As you say, changes to language are easier for younger people to get used to. Much like younger people speaking English in the UK don't seem to have the same issues with pronouns at the same rate as their elders.

If DS brought this home I would assume it was written by someone whose first language was not English. I would send it back to school with corrections.

There are two characters who are twins

I think using they/them as pronouns for individuals, given the individuals in this case are twins - so truly in a state of being they/them often enough - makes this book stupidly, and ridiculously confusing given the age it is supposed to be for.

Then it is adult political indoctrination in gender identity theory. Isn’t that supposed to be against guidelines?