Point 1. I wrote a post about they as a gender-neutral pronoun for indefinite use, which you can read here. I’ve never had any difficulty with that, but that was 13 years ago and since then they has come into more common and mainstream use as a specific pronoun for specific individuals. That’s what I’m talking about today.
Point 2. I’m in my mid-50s, and while that may not be ancient, it’s certainly old enough to have a pretty solidly set internal grammar. And when it comes to they pronouns, my internal grammar has a way of acting like autocorrect. You know how autocorrect goes: you type “I hope to be by in ten minutes”, hit send, and see, to your annoyance, that your text has popped up on the screen not the way you could swear you typed it, but instead as “I hope you die in tenements,” because autocorrect oh-so-helpfully figured that obviously that must be what you really meant. I feel the same way sometimes when I know perfectly well that someone uses they pronouns, and yet I hear the pronoun she come out of my mouth.
Point 3. Just because I’m old and set doesn’t mean I can’t learn. In fact, when I’m talking about someone who isn’t there at all, I actually do fine. Sometimes when I read or hear a sentence with they pronouns, it leads me astray and I have to do a quick recalculation. For example, on the back cover of a book I might read “Writing this book was their lifelong dream” and for a moment I wonder who the second author is. But I’ve reached the point where once I get into the rhythm of it, my grammar accepts they as a singular pronoun for a specific individual and I carry on without difficulty. But there is one situation in which I just keep getting it wrong…
Point 4. The thing I keep messing up is when I’m in a conversation with multiple people so that I’m mostly using second-person pronouns. Then within that conversation, when I need to refer to one of those people in third person, that’s when my autocorrect insists on picking he or she even if I know they use they.
Point 5. I assume that all I need is sufficient practice to get this through my not-quite-ancient head and teach my internal grammar the new rules. But although I know lots of people with they pronouns, there is no one in my immediate circle of family or friends whom I speak with on a daily basis, so I just don’t have that daily reinforcement and practice to speed the process along. My children, of course, are fully fluent in this new English, but I was a speaker of English for nearly 50 years before this entered my grammar, and it’s still not coming as naturally as I’d like.
Any living language is constantly changing, and since I’m a pedant there are plenty of changes that I resist kicking and screaming. This isn’t one of them. Non-binary they serves a purpose and fills a need, so there’s no reason to object to it - but my autocorrect objects anyway. I hate that I do this, as it’s never my intention to make anyone feel that I don’t acknowledge or respect who they are. I know that it can be hurtful to them, as if I don’t care or don’t accept their identity. To them it seems like it should be easy, but I do hope they can be patient with my unhelpful autocorrect, and know that my spirit is willing, even if my internal grammar is weak. And in the meantime, I truly do apologize, and I really am trying to work harder get it right!
[Picture: Perspectival Fantasy Landscape with an Obelisk, wood block print from Geometria et Perspectiva by Lorenz Stör (block cut by Hans Rogel), 1567 (Image from The British Museum.)]
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