792
Words matter.
You aren't writing an academic paper. Always use simple direct language.
- Help the poor
- Healthcare for everyone
- Good treatment at work.
Don't use complex words.
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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It's literally been used in the singular for hundreds of years for any individual where the gender is not known, and has never in my life been confusing. For example:
"The suspect entered the store, then they exited through the back."
English is my first and nearly only language and has been for 42 years, and there has never been a time that a singular "they" was not used. It is not a fad, the fad is taking issue with it. And hopefully in 20 years we won't have to deal with this fake "all of a sudden" bullshit, whether it's "they/them," vaccines, or any other nonsense that people suddenly take issue with because some talking head told them to and acted like it was new.
While it's true that the singular they/them has been used for a very long time, it was used in a very narrow context. It was used almost exclusively for an unknown person, or a theoretical person. In your example, the suspect is unknown, if it was known that it was a male suspect or a female suspect, the suspect would no longer be as unknown and so the sentence would probably be changed to "The suspect entered the store, then she exited through the back."
You can tell that it had a very restricted use because of how "themselves" was used. For example, "anybody who wants one can get themselves a beer". That's a singular construction, but in a way that it might apply to multiple people individually. There was no need for "themself" because "they" was always used for unknown or theoretical people.
Using it for a known person, especially a person who might be currently sitting in the room, is a brand new and confusing use. Now, it's not like English doesn't have other confusions, even around pronouns. Take: "she was drunk and her mother was angry, and she slapped her". Who slapped whom? Sometimes the pronouns alone aren't enough and you need to restructure the sentence to make it more clear. But, the fact that the singular they is used with the same verb forms as the plural they can add extra confusion. Take a non-binary player playing a team sport: "They're not playing well but they are." If the personal pronoun version used "is" instead of "are" it would be less confusing in situations like this, but it would be more confusing in other ways because "they" could use both plural and singular verb forms.
It would be just as confusing if people suddenly started using "one" as a pronoun not used for a theoretical person, but for a concrete and actual person. One has been used as a subject pronoun: "One must remain vigilant", and an object pronoun: "Wounds can make one weary." But, it is always a theoretical construction, it has never been used to refer to a specific, known person. So, it would be confusing to start using it that way: "Give it to one, one doesn't have one yet." But, even that would be less confusing than singular "they", because at least "one" uses singular verb forms, etc.
They/them for a specific, known individual is a new way of using "singular they" and it adds a lot of confusion You can argue that despite the confusion it's necessary, but you can't pretend that it doesn't add confusion.
Language reflects the culture in which it is used. In these times, there's more acceptance (though not universal) of the premises that a) sex and gender identity are separate concepts, and b) a person can have a gender identity that does not map onto a 'male/man-female/woman' scheme.
Given this, singular they/them makes sense - on discovering the identity of individual who, while almost certainly male or female (though intersex exceptions exist), does not neatly fit into the category of man or woman, they can remain a 'they' where someone who is distinctly a man or woman doesn't. This assumes they do not use other pronouns (some do, but neopronouns get a lot of flack).
I'll be candid and say I don't get why this throws people off, and I've had to fight prescriptivist English profs about it before. It only makes sense to me if we discard the premises noted at the beginning, and that doesn't make sense to me. To my fellow men - how many times have you been told you are/are not a man on the basis of factors beyond having an Y chromosome, a dick and male secondary sexual characteristics? And you're still certain that gender identity is inherent on the basis of biological sex alone, rather than related but distinct social constructions?
What defines the category of man?
Great question, and one that's pretty fraught at the moment. I don't have an answer beyond a tautology - a man is someone who identifies as a man - and the knowledge that some cultures assign adherence to certain behavioural norms to that (ex. A man acts as breadwinner, is competitive, has a certain type of physicality distinct from women, etc.), most of which crumble with any hard look at them.
To be frank, I don't really care about what a man or woman is. If identifying as a man if female, or a woman if male, makes it so someone doesn't want to blow their brains out, then that's a cool and good thing. But note the distinction - man != male and woman != female in my statement.
Isn't that sexism, something we should be fighting by saying "women can do that too?"
It is, though noting the term sexism itself hasn't been replaced with another that captures the distinction between biological sex and gender, at least one I know of. Gendered prejudice could be one, I guess.
We should be fighting it in a few directions:
"Women can do that too"
"Men can do that too"
"Women don't necessarily need to do that"
"Men don't necessarily need to do that"
"People who do not consider themselves men or women can do that too, and/or not do that."
I don't think it adds any more confusion than the pre-existing pronoun confusion you already described as part of the language (your she and her example) and there is already an established answer for it (you don't use a pronoun for one of them, you use their actual name or what you are referring to).
Pretending that it adds some grand new confusion that makes it difficult to keep up with because in very rare circumstances someone who is already really bad at communicating with pronouns (because one would have to have problems with your "she slapped her" reference to have problems with singular they/them) might have difficulty communicating what they mean by "them."