School referring to all pupils as 'they'

[newlife79]

Was just looking at my child's school Twitter feed and noticed that they are referring to all pupils as 'they' rather than he/she. For example, "Katie from Year 7 did well in a Drama competition, they said they really enjoyed taking part".

Is this a new thing? I suppose the person who runs the Twitter feed doesn't want to misgender the child. It seems a bit extreme.

How ridiculous. That's basically deciding it's better to refer to virtually everybody by the wrong pronoun, instead of daring to run the very small risk of referring to the occasional individual by the wrong pronoun.

I don't see why people who have 'changed gender' deserve to be called by what they consider the correct terminology, but the rest of humanity doesn't.

I can see why the person tweeting would do that if they don't know the student. Not all students have a name that's obviously male or female eg many non-English names if they don't speak the language and aren't able to easily find out. It's a lot easier.

That seems really rude, to me. Unless the child has specifically requested those pronouns, they're going to be misgendering most children, surely?

I am half Indian and my children have names that could, perhaps, be difficult to determine if a boy or girl. I would expect the school to find out. Ask a teacher. It isn't hard. It is absolutely a nod towards gender neutral ideology, and is absolutely disgraceful. I would be very unhappy if this was on my school twitter feed. In fact, I would kick up a real stink about it. Disgraceful.

This raises a question in my mind: if schools decide to re-gender a child's pronouns and not tell its parents, wouldn't the parents be likely to find out via the school's Twitter feed using their new pronouns?

Still think that neutral pro nouns are better idea
They avoid reinforcing the idea that male and female are so different that it must be emphasised at every opportunity

That is properly bonkers.
They should be getting permission from parents before they tweet out any info including names (some children may be subject to anonymity orders to protect them from abusive parents) so it would be trivial to confirm sex at same time as confirming names and permission.

It just makes the tweets appear illiterate, in my view.

@midgebabe

Still think that neutral pro nouns are better idea They avoid reinforcing the idea that male and female are so different that it must be emphasised at every opportunity

Totally agree, and I'm surprised more gender critical people don't see it that way. Surely if you want to reduce society's tendency to load specious gender expectation onto people based on their sex, the logical way to do it is only to mention their sex when it's relevant? It seems either hypocritical or just nonsensical to say "women and men are equal; women can do anything in the workplace etc. that men can do and shouldn't be judged any differently just because they're women. So it's very important that you specify that they're women by calling them "she", even when talking about something like a drama competition where it's completely irrelevant".

Having said that, I don't like "they" just because it sounds clunky, as it already has a different (plural) meaning, and can sometimes be confusing. Inventing a new pronoun is always going to meet resistance as it's a huge linguistic change (because pronouns are used so much, not like changing just a single noun for one thing or similar). But I wonder whether it's time to just bite the bullet.

"Katie from Year 7 did well in a Drama competition, they said they really enjoyed taking part" could be replaced by:

"Katie from Year 7 did well in a Drama competition, and spoke of really enjoying taking part".

No chance of misgendering or being woke then.

I would not want anyone who wrote that nonsense teaching children.

I'm another one who feels that gender neutral pronouns are the way to go, unless or is relevant to specify the sex of the person being referred to... but also wince at the bad grammar of they.
Can't help noticing too that many on this thread are getting riled about the 'misgendering' involved in using they as the default... is this not ever so slightly hypocritical - I thought that people didn't have the right to compel others to refer to them in a particular way.
I'm a lot more comfortable with a person deciding that they are going to use gender neutral pronouns as the default when referring to others than i am with the idea that individuals get to dictate how they should be referred to by everybody else.

It's the same old message isn't it?

Gender neutral pronouns are good. Women who say no must be reinforcing the patriarchy. No mention of what happens when it becomes important to know what sex a person is to prevent all sorts of perfidious things happening.

Like... knowing which sex requires more time and support in education for specific learning; knowing why same sex blood transfusions can be vital; why statistics are kept in all sorts of sex based differences in so very many areas of government.

No... let's just throw all that away and become They... regardless of the real costs, many already visible if you choose to look..

Oh, and I am a woman, she, her. More often me, myself and I. I see no reason to bastardise that in any way just to pretend that real things don't have to be real at all!

It is quite ridiculous. You get posters on here doing that too when talking about their child, it often sounds as though they have several and I feel like saying so sometimes.

There's nothing wrong with he/him, she/her because the vast majority will be one or the other whatever they decide later on.

Actually I think the English language is sorely missing a proper gender neutral pronoun. I would get rid of Mr/Ms in common use as well. 99 times out of 100 its completely unnecessary to know what sex someone is and when it is then people can ask what SEX somebody is.

Oh, and loads of evidence that if you do know what sex the person you're dealing with, even by email, women get worst treatment.

@CuriousaboutSamphire

It's the same old message isn't it?

Gender neutral pronouns are good. Women who say no must be reinforcing the patriarchy. No mention of what happens when it becomes important to know what sex a person is to prevent all sorts of perfidious things happening.

Like... knowing which sex requires more time and support in education for specific learning; knowing why same sex blood transfusions can be vital; why statistics are kept in all sorts of sex based differences in so very many areas of government.

No... let's just throw all that away and become They... regardless of the real costs, many already visible if you choose to look..

Oh, and I am a woman, she, her. More often me, myself and I. I see no reason to bastardise that in any way just to pretend that real things don't have to be real at all!

Not sure if you are referring to my post, but I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying... and certainly wasn't suggesting that gendered (dithered here between gendered and sexed - plumped for gendered as a grammatical term) pronouns be discarded completely - or even at all, necessarily. I use them. But if we were creating a language from scratch, I would definitely want it to include a gender-neutral, singular pronoun. And if some people started using one (they or something else - I'd be happy with "it", but I've noticed parents tend not to like it when you use it to refer to their baby...), as a personal choice, when referring to others in situations where their sex is not relevant, and over time it gained traction, I reckon I'd get behind it.

The worse was "they" used throughout my son's school report!! I was tempted to email to confirm that my son was happy with male pronouns but thought I might get put down as that parent - and it was probably a cut and paste job so they can use the same generic report for all the kids!

@midgebabe

Still think that neutral pro nouns are better idea They avoid reinforcing the idea that male and female are so different that it must be emphasised at every opportunity

That makes very little sense given that in the example the child is called "Katie". I think one can safely assume that whatever pronoun is used Katie is 99.99% a girl or a trans girl.

Are you suggesting all existing names should be abolished?

In professional communication very often just initial and last name are used, no need to know the sex of the correspondents and give an opportunity to discriminate against women.

The English language does have a gender-neutral pronoun; it's just that people assume "it" is derogatory.

I like the neutral singular they. I think it works fine as a neutral, slightly formal pronoun.

I don't think it's the same as erasing sex - we can still refer to someone as a man/woman etc where necessary, we are just choosing not to specify sex/gender every time we use a pronoun.

It's consistent with most European languages that have grammatical genders - the gender of the pronoun agrees with the corresponding noun, not with the sex of the person. So for example, if someone puts their bag on their table in French, it's "son sac sur sa table" because bag is masculine and table is feminine. The gender of the person doing the putting is irrelevant to those pronouns.

It is a change to say "They put" rather than "s/he puts" but it's not drastic. I'd rather gender neutral pronouns for everyone as a default. It completely defuses the offence of misgendering if the word is no longer gendered.

@Kendodd

In professional communication very often just initial and last name are used, no need to know the sex of the correspondents and give an opportunity to discriminate against women.

This is a school. In the example given are you suggesting only an initial and surname should be used?

@InvisibleDragon

I like the neutral singular they. I think it works fine as a neutral, slightly formal pronoun.

I don't think it's the same as erasing sex - we can still refer to someone as a man/woman etc where necessary, we are just choosing not to specify sex/gender every time we use a pronoun.

It's consistent with most European languages that have grammatical genders - the gender of the pronoun agrees with the corresponding noun, not with the sex of the person. So for example, if someone puts their bag on their table in French, it's "son sac sur sa table" because bag is masculine and table is feminine. The gender of the person doing the putting is irrelevant to those pronouns.

It is a change to say "They put" rather than "s/he puts" but it's not drastic. I'd rather gender neutral pronouns for everyone as a default. It completely defuses the offence of misgendering if the word is no longer gendered.

That's a rather tortured example and conveniently ignores French has il and elle to identify who put the bag on the table in the first place.

I'm not sure you'll get very far with persuading the rest of the world to use "it" as a gender neutral alternative to him/her @Askingquestions. It is considered dehumanising. People don't like it if you refer to their dog as "it"!

I don't mind it tbh, as long as the grammar doesn't become muddled and hard to follow. I like the use of they as an alternative to "he or she" (eg "Please ensure your child knows what time they should arrive at school") A gender neutral pronoun would get rid of all the bollocks with people dictating to others what language the use to talk about them, or feeling the need to state pronouns on email footers. People will see I'm a woman of they meet me (or know my name), but nothing don't feel a need to have it reinforced in language in every sentence.