Pronouns she/they - what does that mean?

[MagpiePi]

A woman at work has she/they has her email pronouns. It doesn't even work grammatically as 'she' and 'they' are both 3rd person pronouns.
Not sure what she is trying to express, other than being tiresomely right-on, or have I missed something?

We already know exactly how ungendered pronouns would work grammatically in English, because we already use them when the sex of the referent is unknown.

One of my sons female lecturers was a she/they.
In her case it was she/her some of the time and they/them some of the time. No set ratio....
I imagine she could use it to punish people she didn't like and let it slide for her friends and admirers.

Yes, EVERYBODY knows that we use 'they' when we don't know the sex of the person. Why do people think this is a gotcha?
What we do have are gendered pronouns which have worked for ages and ages until suddenly a small group of society decided that it was offensive to use them. Using 'they' all the time just gets confusing and sounds fucking batshit

Means she is speshul. Very speshul. So stop thinking about your work and start thinking of ways to please, appease and affirm her. Mere courtesy will not be sufficient here nor will unthinking comradely pleasantness. She is speshul. Long conversations about speshulness are good. Ensure you monitor her every mood and check in with her regularly. Everyone else in the office needs to do this too. Do not attempt to tell her how you feel and do not mistake this for an exchange of equals. You are not speshul.

Actually, that's a good point - I can imagine the chance to scold anyone who doesn't use the ever changing pronouns 'correctly' must be a big draw for people who want to control those around them/make them dance to a tune. It's incredibly narcissistic.

And using it to punish those not in an inner circle must be an even bigger draw for them - it's very queen bee/mean girls.

I’m not sure who you think thinks this is a “gotcha”. I was just pointing out to somebody that using ungendered pronouns is not at all analogous to arbitrarily changing word order.
Using “they” sounds confusing to those who are unused to it. Languages change, and this change is for the better IMO.
I was taught by my mother that if I did not know the sex of a the referent of a personal pronoun, I should use “he” or “him”, no doubt based on some archaic Latinate principle, like the one that forbids splitting infinitives.
I prefer “Could the owner of the car parked across the entrance please move their vehicle” to “Could the owner of the car parked across the entrance please move his vehicle” but to my mother the former sounded wrong. To me it sounds fine, and to my children a singular “their” sounds fine used in situations that sound wrong to me.
Sure, it doesn’t carry as much information… but if we had different pronouns for “young referent” vs “old referent” and somebody suggested ditching those, then people would think “but that will introduce confusion”.
And the upside of ditching sexed pronouns should be obvious to most gender-critical people.

I agree that using default male pronouns when the sex isn't known , as in the past, isn't acceptable. "They" is fine in that regard.

I still think it's confusing to use it for a known person. It also feels forced and unnatural. Maybe if everyone stopped using he or she and started using they, the language would adapt accordingly. But that's unlikely to ever happen. Male and female will still exist.

For years I've used ‘s/he’ and ‘him or her’ when I'm talking or writing about a hypothetical person who could be female or male (style guides often require this). The ‘him or her’ is so clumsy that when repeated use would be required I usually rewrite so I can use plural pronouns.

Lately, however, in informal contexts where I have a choice I've sometimes opted just to use female pronouns, making it clear at the outset that what I'm saying covers both sexes, if that isn't blindingly obvious from the context. No complaints or misunderstandings so far. I spent long enough putting up with male as the default pronoun and with being told that ‘male pronouns have been used throughout where reference to both sexes is intended’. That irritated but didn't confuse me, so I assume that a female default will be similarly comprehensible.

I do the same @NasturtiumsAreUnderrated .

I am perfectly used to using 'they' when the sex of a person is unknown. It is when it is shoehorned into the language in place of perfectly good gendered pronouns that it sounds performative, clunky and causes confusion.

I understand your position, but I will reiterate mine: I'm not suggesting they're "shoehorned into the language in place of perfectly good gendered pronouns", I'm suggesting it's no bad thing if they're gradually adopted to replace irrelevant (at best) and harmful (at worst) gendered pronouns.

But how do you get over the confusion caused?

Referring back to @Mapletree1985 's post yesterday - can you make sense of this?

"Martin and Brenda went shopping. They was looking for a good charity shop, while they was hoping to pick up a bargain at Wickes. They said to them that they should split up and run their separate errands and then they would meet them at the coffee shop by twelve. But secretly, they was planning to meet their affair partner in the paint aisle."

Who is having the affair?

As pp have said, other languages work without gendered pronouns but they may be structured differently or have other signifiers so that you can understand what is going on. If there are specific circumstances where knowing someone's sex could be harmful or used for discrimination then there are ways to avoid it. Why is there a need to remove gendered pronouns in general language?

I'm not responding on behalf of @moderate , but I would quibble with the example, deliciously baffling though it is. If the story were about Martin and Bob, not Brenda, we would be able to replace every singular they/them/their with he/him/his, and it would remain almost as confusing. In practice we don't write like that: we use names a lot more. Sure, if we're telling a story about a male and a female protagonist, then we have the luxury of being able to refer to them via gendered pronouns, but not all stories are like that.

To be clear, I'm not saying there's a need to remove gendered pronouns from a language. Gender-neutral pronouns are not ideal either, and I imagine speakers of Finnish, Turkish, etc., have to cope with little frustrations and misunderstandings from time to time.

@moderate ’suggesting it's no bad thing if they're gradually adopted to replace irrelevant (at best) and harmful (at worst) gendered pronouns.’

In what way is correctly identifying someone’s sex by a gendered pronoun harmful?

I am really not convinced that we need to replace precise and accurate language with ambiguity. Why would we do this because some people think it is politically a good idea? Just how often is it irrelevant to refer to a sexed pronoun that allows greater precision in referring to someone to avoid confusion?

So how has that worked out in Turkey, with its gender-neutral pronouns?

They have invented a gender neutral pronoun, "iel", but I have never seen or heard it used in real life

Depends on the circles you move in. French has developed lots of ways to express gender neutrality, e.g. https://www.anyti.me/fr/fiches-pratiques/ecriture-inclusive-quelles-regles-ou-conventions-utiliser-pour-ecrire-dans-un-langage-non-genre-en-francais/299

Thanks for this.

Yes, I know. (I've lived in France for a long time.)

This article is about moves to de-gender language where it is not necessary for it to be gendered, and where the masculine tends to be the default.

It has nothing to do with non binary identities, and the only reference to "iel" in this article is that it is a modern innovation which is not recommended because it hinders, rather than helps, communication.

That's not quite the same as using "they" indiscriminately for everyone, male, female, singular and plural, which immediately sacrifices quite a bit of clarity and precision.

Languages do change, and a lot of the successors to Latin (French etc) did eventually abandon their noun case- endings and find other ways to clarify what they meant. But as far as I know it was a gradual process over time, not a sudden diktat from somebody with a dislike of case endings.

So perhaps we'll see something similar with a gradual adoption of "they", and other clear and satisfactory ways of distinguishing the various different people being mentioned will emerge. But it will take time to sort out. Something similar has happened with the partial demise of "one" (now seen as overly formal and "posh" ), which has occurred in my lifetime. People try to replace it with a generalised "you", and I've seen offence taken in threads on this board because a poster has misunderstood a general "you"= "one" statement to be a statement about "you"= "you individually and personally" directed at them. As someone remarked earlier (on this thread?) "one" has left a gap which hasn't quite been filled - yet.

So even fairly organic change has its problems, and sudden surgical operations on language even more so.
Of course, coerced use of particular forms of language on pain of tantrum or of being officially reprimanded (or worse) is a whole other ethical issue.

Now tell the same story for Martin and Brendon, a gay couple.

Who is having the affair?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_stereotype#Gender_bias

"one" has left a gap

Generic "we" does a fairly decent job in particular kinds of academic prose, e.g. maths.

It's interesting seeing language develop during one's (!) lifetime, isn't it?

You’ll have to forgive me for not completely believing the source material, which is notoriously unreliable. So instead of trying to change the system and make it fairer for women, women are supposed to hide their sex to get along? For how long exactly? How long do they keep up the charade? So again, instead of addressing the real issue, which is men’s poor attitude and misogyny, it’s the women who have to deny who they are. Dealing with the symptoms and not the cause never has positive long term outcomes. And it isn’t gender, it’s sex.

I'm fairly sure my sex has sometimes got me interviews because some recruiter has to tick some boxes to say their vacancy ads appeal to a diverse range of people.

Once in a role, I've definitely had to do more to be seen as good as some of my male colleagues. It's tiresome.

I did have one colleague today who kept calling me "man" - as he does with everyone else. The difference is, they are actually men. I suspect he doesn't realise he's doing it, and I think it just shows he accepts me as one of the team. It does grate a bit, though. I am not sure whether to bring it up with him.