Any academics? Is this normal now?

[Herja]

I've just started a humanities arts degree. My first submission is in a couple of weeks, yesterday my seminar was based on essay advice.

My course tutor stated that we must not use gendered pronouns, that we should use 'they' rather than 'he/she' in our writing. I queried this and was told "well you never know, you mustn't make assumptions...".

So, is this normal now? If it's not I will either argue this, or just plain ignore it, but it seemes prudent to check if this is just standard practice now .

University of Bristol if you were interested, known for being woke eejits, hence the checking; I'm confident enough in my work ability to take the marks hit by pissing of the tutor...

FFS. No advice. Just... FFS

At my uni I'm seeing a few title blocks on the bottom of emails with preferred pronouns. No-one has tried to police how I write, but I'm an engineer and we struggle with social concepts at the best of times.

Are you writing about real people? I suppose it's stylistic. in a round about way will it help bring and end to gender discrimination? I could live with it on those terms but equally I could chose to be offended that you disregarded my gender without consulting me. So on balance I'm going to have to go with bullshit. He/she unless the person has said otherwise?

No it’s not normal, and I would simply ignore it.

Not normal- and I'm at the University of Woker than Woke.

Oh god. I went to Bristol (22 years ago), and it’s really dismaying to me that they’re like this now.

I should add that if you’re using “he/she” in a general sense rather than referring to specific people, then that is now considered by many publishers to be clunky, and a neutral form is preferred. But to refer to, say, Simone de Beauvoir (not that your tutor would ever have you read her, I’m sure!):as “they” is an ideological position.

So they want you to write in a grammatically incorrect (Or at least grammatically clumsy) way for fear of offending someone that won't ever lay eyes on you essay? And most likely is quite happy with the obvious he or she anyway.

What tosh.

I don't know if that's normal now but it's a bit rubbish.

However I would have used "they" a lot in essays because I would have been citing papers with multiple authors, and often didn't know the sex of single authors anyway. And mostly it would be completely depersonalised, "A paper by/A study by such and such (date) says blah blah blah"... But that's science. I imagine in arts and humanities you actually discuss people themselves more, so would use he and she when needed.

Imagine trying to write a history essay without gendered pronouns.

I'm a nursing lecturer and we still refer to people as he/ she. E may be asking the student to link to biology and like it or not- there are differences that impact upon health. So we can't just say 'they'.

At our uni we have those badges but no one is forced to use certain pronouns.
They do have those “do you identify with your assigned gender” tick boxes though and you’re not really given the choice to write an essay on the difference between sex and gender!

Of course you must never make assumptions, that would not be academically rigorous. Since third person pronouns describe what the first person, the speaker, perceives, you ought to use neutral pronouns if you are uncertain about your perceptions or if your intent is to make your reader's perception unclear.

It has been demonstrated that readers will often give greater importance to the work of someone they perceive to be male (citation?), so, if you are contrasting the work of a female curator with that of a male curator, it may be highly relevant to avoid gendered pronouns. In this case you will want to prevent your reader making assumptions.

On the other hand, if you are discussing your perceptions, and you perceive Picasso's work to be angular and unsettling, you would state this. Equally, if you perceive Picasso to be make, you would state this. It would be inappropriate to assume that his work was angular because he was astigmatic (he wasn't, AFAIK!).

If a person's sex is relevant to their work, such as Charlotte Bronte/Currer Bell, then avoiding the correct gendered pronoun would be inappropriate.

"Jane Austen was a great author. They had some issues becoming a writer because they were born with female bits, and people with female bits weren't really expected to be writers. Or at least we assume they did, they didn't make their gender identity known after all, all we can do is speculate."

I am an academic. Depends on what they meant. Did they mean refer to everyone you cite as ‘they’ even though sex is known? If yes, this person is off their rocker and you need to ignore them. If they meant use they instead of ‘he/she’ then okay although it’s often a feminist statement to use ‘she’ and specify that you are using it to denote a person of either sex. But personally, I hate reading stuff where ‘he’ is used to refer to both sexes so I think the singular ‘they’ is fine when you are speaking hypothetically. It’s not grammatically incorrect as it is recognised as referring to the singular when used in that context (as I have used it in this post when referring to this tutor whose sex I don’t know)

Ironically, Jane Austen used "they" as a non-specific 3rd person singular pronoun for situations when a generic person who could be either sex was being talked about, as did Chaucer, Shakespeare, Thackeray.. .

The rules of English grammar are largely a Victorian invention, and a highly artificial attempt to force English into a mould provided by Latin, a mould into which it doesn't fit very well.

I personally have no problem with "they" in phrases like "if a person is over 12, they should play the sport appropriate to their birth sex" (though I'd probably opt for a plural construction) - I find he/she really clunky.

I do however think the use of"they" for named particular individuals is bloody daft. I think these people are confusing stereotypes and personality with fundamental shifts in their nature, which I don't think makes sense. Then again, people are at liberty to adopt all sorts of stupid metaphysical beliefs if it helps them through the day, and I suppose when confronted with stupid sexist stereotypes, wanting to set yourself up as some sort of special person sitting between the two categories the stereotypes get applied to has a certain naive appeal (even if the rather more obvious response is that the stereotypes are shit).

I'm not sure which specific subject you're studying, OP, but what if you're referring to a fellow scholar who's active now and whose "preferred pronouns" you could presumably ask, or you'd know from having communicated with them? Is this person insisting that you refer to even people like that as "they"?

It was the former Pota2. For example, if I were to write about Sylvia Plath, it is expected I would use 'they' rather than 'she' as I could not be certain of her prefered pronoun. I did enquire if this was expected in cases where it IS a known pronoun. Yup. Even if everyone is clear on the sex of the writer, still 'they' because you can never know...

So yes that's fucking awful.

"Women, enjoy your erasure", as one male trans activist said.

TheProdigalKittensReturn, the reference book used alongside this module was actually written by another lecturer at the university. It seems absurd, but I might send him an email checking his prefered pronoun just to use it with impunity.

Any chance that's just an over-eager PhD student by the way?

Is the person hoping to trans her colleagues after they die, and that's why the options need to remain open? I'm not sure whether to read her comments as terribly keen or as anxiety about getting it wrong and the inevitable TRA smiting as a result and thus overcompensating.

University academic here. No, it isn't normal and in the specific instance you cite it's downright weird.

That's just plain daft Herja - your tutor is jumping the shark.

I'd argue that we've had to fight long and hard to get women's writing recognised and onto the curriculum (and women's contributions to science, music, art,... You name it) and I'm damned if I'm going to "invisibilise" their contributions.

It's also historical nonsense. How do you explain that Elliot had to publish under a male name, not because she were trans, but because she was forced to by a society which didn't take women's writing seriously, unless you can refer unambiguously to her sex.

(Of course this is actually the end game - to prop up an ideology built on offensive sex stereotypes, its adherents now need to retrospectively trans any woman in history who fought against those stereotypes).

We were always taught not to use they, he, she, I, me .. where possible. So if you would say "She carried out research, which proved.." you'd say "X (surname, date in brackets) carried out research, which proved.." and you'd make sure everything was like that, either referring to the research, or the researcher by their surname. So from the assignment, you would never know the gender of any researcher referenced, as it would be initial and surname only. I thought that was quite standard for academic text, and nothing remotely to do with what gender anyone defines themselves as.

Simone de Beauvoir (not that your tutor would ever have you read her, I’m sure!)
No, they just endlessly quote ‘one is not born, but rather becomes a woman’ without even reading the next sentence let alone the rest of her work!

Am a current Humanities student and can assure you it’s not standard at my place.