“I don’t have any problem with gender-neutral identities. I just can’t stand to butcher grammar.”
Chances are that this sounds familiar, especially if you happen to be a nonbinary person who uses “they/them/theirs” pronouns. Asking people to use these pronouns will often enough be arouse all manner of confusion and even indignation: “But you’re only one person!” “Should I use singular or plural verbs, then?” “It just isn’t right!”
Let’s set things straight: first of all, you should use plural verbs. None of us expect you to struggle with piecing together a frankensentence such as “they is a good student;” now, that would be grammatically incorrect. Using “they/them” to refer to one person, however, is perfectly fine--and chances are that you already do it.
Imagine that someone left a bag behind in the library, and you noticed it while sitting with your friend. Your conversation might go something like this:
“Look, someone left their bag.”
“I hope they come back for it….”
“Should we turn it in to the front desk?”
And so on. “They” is used because the gender of the person in question is unknown.
Of course, there are people who resist acknowledging that they speak this way--there is the common insistence “I would say his or her bag,” though if you take the time to think about it, chances are it’ll be difficult to produce a single recent instance in which you’ve seen or heard a clunky, dual-pronoun phrase like this outside of a formal written document. Almost every English speaker uses “they” without thinking about it, and here’s the thing--that’s okay, because it is grammatically correct. And it has been for a long, long time. Look to some of the most historically respected artists of the language, and you’re likely to find an instance of singular they:
"‘Who is in love with her? Who makes you their confidant?’"
“There's not a man I meet but doth salute me /
As if I were their well-acquainted friend…”
“No man goes to battle to get killed…. But they do get killed.”
In order: Austen, Shakespeare, and Shaw. The singular they has, in fact, been in use since the 14th century, and has only been contested as recently as the late 19th. To deny its grammatical accuracy is to challenge these writers--and I feel relatively secure in saying that no one reading this article is a writer of such brilliance that they can demean Shakespeare.
Another opposition frequently raised is “We need a real singular and neutral pronoun!” To which I respond: of course we do! Pretty much the entire trans community is in agreement about this issue. And we’ve been trying--a lot more than people to whom this issue isn’t immediately pertinent likely think we have. “Xe,” “ze,” “per,” “se,” and “ve” are only a handful of the countless alternate pronouns that have been proposed over the years. The problem is that none of these have really caught on to the point of standard use, which means that it’s a lot harder to ask someone to use “ze/zir” for you than “they/them.” These are entirely new words, and they take a lot of getting used to--we have to think about them in a way that we usually don’t when it comes to pronouns.
With a little luck and a lot of effort, we may be able to push towards a world where “ze” or “xe” is as commonly accepted as “he” and “she.” In the meantime, though, we aren’t without alternatives. “They” exists, and it’s been used for a long time--both by you and by Will Shakespeare. So next time you meet a nonbinary person who uses “they/them,” save the comment about grammar. They’ll appreciate it.
