They/their/them

[Fffffs]

I want to say this here. I’ve not seen this addressed in any of the discussions about this over the years and I think more gc women need to be aware of this.

Aside from the shockingly bad grammar involved in using plural pronouns for ‘gender neutral’ or non binary etc it’s also appropriation. People who have DID (dissociative identity disorder) term themselves multiple (as opposed to us singletons). They use we us and they/them/their.

I’m a survivor of csa and have worked with other survivors for decades. Imho there’s a great deal of the multiple community who are vulnerable to the trans ideology and plenty who aren’t in a position to speak up. I wouldn’t doubt they all agree with me on this so I don’t want to claim to be taking on anyone’s behalf. But plenty of people (women almost always ime) living with DID place a great deal of importance on viewing themselves as multiple as opposed to using the diagnosis they have or DID. They see the latter as a medical diagnosis and a sign they are wrong, but the use of multiple is a way forward for them where they can learn for alters to co-operate with one another and not be pushed to intergate, which some see as a way for medical professionals to ‘fix’ them and erase their experience of how they survived trauma. I appreciate this isn’t everyone’s experience of DID and I’m not meaning to trample over those who don’t feel this way, but many survivors I’ve worked with or have known as friends through survivor groups voice this.

The arguement that using they/them/their is harmless isn’t true. Appropriating the language used by the DID community, language which helps make them feel safe and describes their experience and enables them to move forward with their condition is hugely harmful. DID is almost always the result of extreme and repeated sexual abuse, during the primary attachment period and often by primary care givers. This particular group of survivors are one of the most vulnerable and most victimised groups and appropriating their language to appease the most privileged group-men- is an abuse of power.

So for those overlooking grammar or arguing against those who are rolling their eyes at that arguement please keep this in mind. I never hear or see the DID communities needs ever acknowledged or addressed outside of work or survivor groups. They may be a small minority but they are a hugely vulnerable one and the idea that 51% of the population should bend over backwards to accommodate the needs of the tiny percentage of trans people seems ingrained, yet they directly take away the language used by a much much more vulnerable and unseen/unsupported percentage of the population.

Thanks for reading.

Lots of people appropriate Native American culture in ways that is harmful without being aware they are appropriating it- general public talking about their own personal spirit animals or their tribe is called out for appropriation all the time, even when plenty of people use these terms because they’ve seen others use them on social media or bloody talk show hosts have used them or similar. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t diminish how dismissive it is to native Americans, how it turns their lives and culture and experience into a cutsy joke to stick on a badge or something equally as tacky.

I don't think that example works. Everyone knows Native American people exist (and tbh "Native American" isn't necessarily that great a term for the persons you mean but that's another topic)

You aren't comparing like with like.

Talking about “finding your tribe” isn’t appropriating Native American culture FFS , native Americans don’t have a monopoly on the term tribe. It comes from a Latin word.

The general public adopting the use of they for any person does affect how people with DID are able to utilise it. They have a very very different experience of the world to us, even dramatically different experience of it to someone like me who is a survivor and has had dissociative episodes from ptsd. People with DID are massively disabled by switching in and out with no control. Imagine how impossible that makes accessing the world around you, even for basic things like buying food or opening bank accounts or accessing healthcare. As DID develops very young it’s not like they ever have any experience of life not living with it, so they can’t look at us and understand how life is when you don’t constantly loose time and behave like entirely different people during that time. Adopting the ideas of being multiple for them and that we are singletons has been something that has worked for many. When your consciousness is constantly in and out with zero control using this simple concept can be grounding, and can help implement ways of having some control over switching, so that it becomes less dangerous to them and so they can access basic things the rest of us take for granted. The likes of mh professionals who work with them or survivor groups for people with DID often help this by adopting they for anyone multiple. It adds strength to these concepts to hear others refer to other people with DID as multiple and not using they for all the rest of us helps identify the difference of experience to them.

If a kid with autism learns he is for boy and she is for girl for the first ten years of their lives then someone comes along and demands that he/she use they for both it’s a complete head fuck, totally incomprehensible, impossible to process, can send their worlds spinning out of control in a way they can no longer understand. For someone living with DID whose learned to use they as plural (which is accurate of course) and singular pronouns for the rest of us to suddenly experience everyone using they as gender neutral would have a similar affect, only while also spacing in and out constantly. The use of multiple and singular can provide a semblance of understanding that can help them access life and they for everyone takes away that meaning that provides that way of understanding the world around them. A lot like how a child who is blind learns to navigate their world within a familiar setting but take them off to somewhere they don’t know and take away their cane or dog and you’ve screwed them. It’s the same process. We all learn to understand that other people are based on who we are, we don’t have alters so we learn to recognise others don’t and we navigate in the same world they do. But for people who have always grown up with several alters that they aren’t even aware of yet they can’t understand how we work or how our worlds are set up in the same way, and that’s a lot like being blind in a seeing world, or like being unable to ever learn the language in a country even though you grow up in it. Using plural and singular (accurately) is a sign of a part of that, using they just to be polite to trans people takes away the meaning from that for them. Like face masks take away a hearing impaired persons ability to lip read. Using they for everyone makes these concepts meaningless and useless fir people with DID in the same way. Like if the sign for stop suddenly means both go and stop. Or like living under Orwell’s up means down and down means up. It’s the same form of disabling gaslighting, unintentionally applied but harmfully so, to a very vulnerable group, just to be nice and polite to trans people or to be trendy and self righteous.

Funnily enough, I was thinking about plural identities and pronouns this very morning, but came to a very different conclusion.

Are you plural, OP?
I probably am. It's messy and confusing and I don't like it very much, but that's how it is.
It's rooted in fear and pain and no escape and feeling dead inside for so long that starting from scratch again and again made more sense than trying to remember who I was, or patching over the void.
A multitude of throw-away personas to cover a hollow self.
If "I" don't exist, "I" can't get hurt?
... It's a survival trick, out of necessity.

So... pronouns?
Don't ask me mine. It hurts.
Being plural means avoiding being trapped in any single identity. Being able to escape "backstage" at any time, to avoid getting hurt. Being both anyone, and nobody at the same time.
But pronouns nail you down. I can't commit to any pronouns. It feels downright scary to reveal so much about my self. Or even my selves (even scarier, in fact: revealing my best survival trick? No way!)

Weirdly enough, in my head everybody else is a "they". It feels natural.
So I really don't mind people calling themselves "they".

But when it comes to my own person, the answer is a big blinking "N/A". Nothing fits. It must not. It would threaten the balance of that fragile edifice, because it's all about being there but not there, any person but not a person.
It's fucking weird, and also painful, when you look at it too closely.

And these feelings of mine are not something I ever want to discuss publicly (in real life... anonymously over the Internet is safe enough, obviously)
They make me feel broken, inhuman, and utterly vulnerable.

And I dread being asked publicly to disclose my pronouns (never happened so far, thankfully), especially if it became workplace policy, because then I would have to "commit", and it's terrifying.
Or I would have to lie (which obviously I can do, and have done before, but still feels bad), and even then, the lie I'd pick would be a form of commitment, and would require a serious discussion with myself to make sure we all agree this does not really mean anything about who we are.

I'd probably pick "she" out of convenience, and respect for my female form. But "she" would not be me, because there's too many of us.

I'm afraid OP your post has had the opposite effect on me than you intended.

I was not aware of the DID community. However I'm not convinced that there is appropriation going on or that the use of plural pronouns by non- binary people prevents or hinders their use by the DID community.

I have to follow our corporate style for articles or seminars and it encourages the use of plural pronouns to avoid the default to male or the clumsy random swapping between male and female or the even clumsier "he and/or she". This isn't new by any means and was established long before the current explosion in trans issues.

The DID community does not have a monopoly on the use of plural pronouns. As others have pointed a cultural or psychological phenomenon can arise and exist separately for different groups.

Your post and Kaiserin's post have made me think it really doesn't affect me if that is someone's preference and that preference may indeed be very important to the other person.

It’s not my job to persuade you dido, if you want to discard a vulnerable community that’s on you.

No one is asking for a monopoly on the term they. Words have meaning a they means plural, just as it always has. Currently everyone changes it to gender neutral just to be ‘nice’ to trans people. I was just explaining how throwing away meaning of words isn’t just harmless. Retaining meaning harms no one, altering the meaning can harm some of a very vulnerable small minority. If you don’t understand that then that’s on you, it’s just info for people to take or leave as they want, it’s a perspective i never see in these discussions despite hearing it at work and at survivor groups or from friends from these groups frequently. If you don’t know about that then your lucky to not have that experience and if you don’t want to consider the impact on a very vulnerable minority to appease the trans community that’s your choice.

Your work may have adopted they as standard for a while now, both my degrees over the last 15 years would have ripped students to shreds for using they as gender neutral. English lit degree required the gender neutral reader to be termed his/her and psych degree expected accurate medical facts. Just because you find they is standard in work doesn’t mean the rest of the country have forgotten words have actual meanings.

Not everyone within the multiple community will feel the same. But using the accurate meanings for words doesn’t harm any of those people with DID who don’t find they as gender neutral confusing, yet using made up meanings for the term can be harmful to some with DID. It’s merely an explaintion of how the idea that using they is harmless isn’t true. If that tiny, most vulnerable minority doesn’t matter to you that’s up to you. You may not grasp how it might effect them but then as you say you didn’t even know they exist, so you not understanding how that might impact them is in no way representative of their reality.

Some others here might understand or consider this, and that matters not those who don’t.

Wait, hang on, are you now trying to argue against any use of “they” in the singular form? This is a long established practice when the individual being referred to is unknown or their sex is unknown. “Oh look, someone left their book behind in the waiting room”. As PP said this avoids default to male and perpetuating sex-based stereotyping, both things widely supported in feminism. The feminist defence of sex-based rights argument against the forced use of inaccurate pronouns isn’t that ‘they’ can never be singular, clearly it can when the person/their sex (see!) is unknown. I agree that forced declaration of pronouns is wrong though, as a PP just explained that can be traumatic for someone not comfortable with the expected pronoun, and can be deleterious to women - there are times when not being immediately identifiable as one sex or the other can be advantageous, especially for professional women, it is well established that ‘Dr Sam Jones’ will get a better response in emails that ‘Ms Samantha Jones’, because of the sex-based oppression of women we are fighting against.

The feminist argument is that being forced to use inaccurate pronouns, when the person (of known sex) being spoken about isn’t even present, or when their sex is entirely relevant to the matter being discussed and obfuscation of such is frustrating the conversation, is an attempt to enforce belief in gender and degrades recognition and understanding of the reality of biological sex - recognition and understanding of which is crucial to fighting for women’s sex-based rights. Hence the slogan ‘sex not gender’.

This is the feminist forum, we are here to advocate and fight for women’s rights, and I’m not about to stop all use of ‘they’ as singular pronoun for a sex-unspecified person as that would be detrimental to women. It is also emphatically not any kind of appropriation from the multiple community, as demonstrated, similar social phenomena can evolve separately. Clearly this is an important issue to you, you have written long posts here, can you at all point interested parties in the direction of any advocacy groups representing the multiple community that might have an opinion or statement on this? I understand that you are not part of this community yourself, and you state that not all members would share your view.

@Kaiserin Thankyou for your post, and I’m very sorry to read of your trauma and distress. Can I ask, as someone who identifies as plural, do you object to use of the singular ‘they’ to refer to an individual of unknown or unspecified sex?

Your work may have adopted they as standard for a while now, both my degrees over the last 15 years would have ripped students to shreds for using they as gender neutral. English lit degree required the gender neutral reader to be termed his/her and psych degree expected accurate medical facts. Just because you find they is standard in work doesn’t mean the rest of the country have forgotten words have actual meanings.

I would recommend keeping an eye on this. I remember the big dust up when the RSC recommended we spell 'sulphur' the American way (sulfur). Given that the APA guidelines have changed to recommend 'they' being the best gender neutral descriptor, this change may well be making its way across The Pond in the near future.

Why can we respect people with DID believing they are multiple people in one body, but we can't respect people with gender dysphoria who believe they are a different sex/gender? Is it maybe because of a prejudice towards trans people? Because that is how it seems on a lot of threads.

@12frogsincoats

Why can we respect people with DID believing they are multiple people in one body, but we can't respect people with gender dysphoria who believe they are a different sex/gender? Is it maybe because of a prejudice towards trans people? Because that is how it seems on a lot of threads.

I'm inclined to agree.

The use of "they" for a single person is valid for a number of reasons.

What I got from this thread is it's really not for me to quibble why a person might choose it for themselves.

Just because you find they is standard in work doesn’t mean the rest of the country have forgotten words have actual meanings

"They" used as a singular as Cwenthryth pointed out is a long established usage.

If trans people are just quietly getting on with making the changes they need to deal with their diagnosed disorder of gender dysphoria, i think they are treated with respect. By feminists anyway, actual transphobia does exist.

When however they insist they actually are women, and try to force everyone else to share their belief, we have a problem. If they insist that they are "acting like women" by doing stereotyped things that plenty of women don't do, we tend to feel insulted. If they take away women's rights to single sex spaces or sports categories, if they try to prevent accurate recording of sex for statistics and medicine, if they try to stop women talking about issues that affect women in women's forums on the basis of their belief... None of those things are done by people with dissociative disorders.

Basically, I respect your right to believe, you need to respect my right to not believe. Like religions.

Nothing in the OP's posts or thirdfiddle's has clarified how the use of "they" by one group impedes the use of "they" by another group.

There has been considerable antipathy and mockery shown on this forum in the past to people who use plural pronouns on the basis that it's ungrammatical (a point the OP makes) or they're "snowflakes".

A person asking to use "they" does not bear comparison to an obviously male or female person demanding the opposite sex singular pronouns.

The OP seems to be asking that "they" should only be used for one particular group (of which she herself is not a member, nor does this group by her own admission even all agree with this)

The OP says If that tiny, most vulnerable minority doesn’t matter to you that’s up to you. This was in response to my saying that perhaps it isn't up to me to question or quibble why any person might choose plural pronouns.

Following the OP's logic one would have to question a user's motivation to determine if it was one the OP considers valid . That seems utterly unacceptable aside from being utterly impractical.

I don't think it does, so that would be why my post didn't clarify it dido.

I do think people thinking they are special and need different pronouns just because they don't fit gender stereotypes are being tedious and will probably feel embarrassed about it in 10 years time. But not that it has anything to do with DID.

A person asking to use "they" does not bear comparison to an obviously male or female person demanding the opposite sex singular pronouns.
To me it carries exactly the same issues just to a different degree. It is still requiring the speaker to adhere to a belief in gender and it is still attempting to erase sex. Both of these things I believe are overall harmful to women.

Interesting thread OP, thanks.

Trauma is so misunderstood and so much more common than people believe. Although obviously DID is less common and at the extreme end.

People living with trauma could do with more advocacy as it can seriously impede day to day living even without DID. One of the things that upsets me so much about trans rights activism is the complete disregard for the many women living with PTSD caused by abusive men.

It's interesting to hear about the unintended consequences of people without DID using plural pronouns. If I've understood OP correctly, it is that people with DID have to work so hard to integrate themselves into the world of people without. Removing their way of differentiating themselves from non DID sufferers undoes one of their potential coping mechanisms? (Apologies if I've got that wrong OP - I know a bit about trauma but not so much about DID).

I'm someone who uses they/them all the time with my kids when I'm referring to unknown or hypothetical people. I do it so they don't assume one sex is more likely to be in one role or another. I wonder if this would be similarly confusing for a person with DID? This has made me think, OP, as there is potential for me to meet people with DID at work.