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.

My son with ASD struggled with pronouns so could definitely do with them being gender specific. It's a target from his speech and language therapist. I can't imagine this being uncommon. Two birds with one stone and all that.

God that is so confusing, poor children.

Quite. Whatever your sex you may be more or less masculine or feminine than any ‘type’.

Everyone is non-binary in this sense, even though their sex remains immutable, and even when they are attracted to people of the same sex.

I've been teaching autistic children for nearly 20 years; this does not sound helpful or appropriate.

Many have specific speech and language difficulties. We spend a lot of time with some directly teaching which pronouns to use for men and women, boys and girls.

(Sorry not rtft. I'm very fucked off to read this )

I went to a wonderful puppet show where the main character was an acorn. It was referred to as they but I felt that was somewhat ok, if a little confusing as it wasn't human. Though the oak tree was referred to as mother.

I could understand the argument to not define its sex within that context - as it was an acorn.

If you think it is pushing a belief system that not everyone subscribes to (and it sounds like it is), then that is what you should say in your review. You have been asked to give your opinion, so if you think the book could easily confuse young children, you should say so, with examples.

It's bloody awful, deeply confusing and grammatically incorrect. The only explanation is that the characters are meant to be non binary and teaching gender ideology in schools is not a neutral act. The government has recently issued new guidelines which state gender ideology is a contested belief not a fact. This is following The Cass Report which identified that gender affirmation in schools was also not a neutral act and especially affected children with ASD who might latch on to being 'non binary' or the opposite 'gender' as an explanation for why they feel different from their peers. I would suggest this is extremely damaging and should be raised as an issue of extreme concern. Non binary is a completely unscientific descriptor based on vague feelings about gender and has absolutely no place in education.

Surely the acorn is 'it' and doesn't need any pronoun.

Thank you everyone for your comments. It really is concerning for me. I will take all your comments on board.

Just to update, there was also a similar workbook for ADHD. This featured 'superheroes' and the characters here were two different cartoon animals. We don't know their sex. They were dressed in superhero outfits and conversing with each other. They talk about a postman, and say "Imagine him delivering thousands of letters on his own" and the postman is referred to as he/him. I don't have any concerns about this workbook.

In the autism book, we have (in addition to the examples I have given already)

"Sometimes Stevie can get worried when they don’t know what’s going to happen in the future"
"Stevie's mum needs to go to the shops after school. Stevie didn’t expect this, so they start to feel nervous. Mum knows that Stevie will be calmer if they have something to keep them busy"

Stevie is going to be very confused they read this book.

This is true. I remember well my DS in reception referring to identical twins as 'the two Jackenarries' sometimes shortened to 'the two Jacks'. Which was a bit harsh on Harry. I really don't think calling them (plural) them (singular) would have helped.

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.

Ha! I have a Jack and a Harry. I am going to use this going forwards!

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

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.

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

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?!

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.

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'?

"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.

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

I can sympathise with her there, actually.

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

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.

Exactly.

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?