The Origins of Gender-Neutral Pronouns (#121)

One of the biggest topics of discussion and debate at the moment is the idea of gender neutral pronouns. As trans and non-binary identities are becoming more common, and trans rights are currently being debated all over the world (because how dare people want to just peacefully live and feel comfortable in their own skin), a certain type of people are still hung up over the fact that language is changing — despite the fact these changes have been happening over the last few hundred years.

In this episode, I’m going to try my best to cover the history of gender-neutral pronouns: what pronouns are and why we should respect them, when gender-neutral pronouns came into existence, and some frequently asked questions about using them.

Terminology and Definitions

Let’s start with a quick glossary, in case anyone listening doesn’t know what any of these words mean that might crop up in this episode, or any of our other Pride episodes:

• Transgender: Applies to a person whose gender is different from their "assigned" sex at birth
• Cisgender: Applies to someone whose gender matches their "assigned" sex at birth (ie someone who is not transgender)
• Non-binary: Applies to a person who does not identify as "male" or "female"
• Genderqueer: Similar to "non-binary" - some people regard "queer" as offensive, others embrace it
• Genderfluid: Applies to a person whose gender identity changes over time

Next, I’m going to cover another basic question before we get started: what is a pronoun? The LGBTQ+ Resource Centre explains it in the simplest way that I’ve seen: a pronoun is a word that refers to either the person talking (“I” or “you”), or someone or something that is being talked about (like “she”, “it”, “them”, and “this”). Gender pronouns (he/she/they etc) specifically refer to the person you are referring to.

Pronouns are part of someone’s gender expression, and people can have multiple sets of pronouns for themselves (such as using both he/him as well as they/them). We commonly hear the term “preferred pronouns”, but really, pronouns are not “preferred” but required for respectful communication.

A gender neutral or gender inclusive pronoun is a pronoun which does not associate a gender with the individual who is being discussed.

Some languages, such as English, don’t have a gender neutral pronoun available, and this has been criticised, since in many instances, writers, speakers, etc use “he/his” when referring to a generic individual in the third person. Also, the dichotomy of “he and she” in English doesn’t leave room for other gender identities, which can cause frustration for transgender and gender queer people.

‘They/them’

In English, the word "they" is used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun - even though some critics argue that "they" should really only be used as a plural. But these identifiers are nothing new, and have actually been used throughout the history of literature.

Examples of the singular "they" being used to describe someone features as early as 1386 in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and in other literary works like Shakespeare's Hamlet in 1599. "They" and "them" were still being used by literary authors to describe people in the 17th Century too - including by Jane Austin in Pride and Prejudice in 1813.

While these pronouns weren't used historically to define people as gender neutral, 'they' has long been used to refer to one singular person.

Dr Emma Moore, a professor of linguistics at the University of Sheffield, said that it was from the 18th century onwards that people started using male pronouns when describing someone of a non-specific gender in writing, and this is when opinions on what pronouns should be used started to change.

Moore said, “You might have a sentence like 'if a student comes to see the teacher, he must bring his homework', where he is supposed to refer generically to males and females. There are lots of psychological studies that show when people hear that generically, they don't hear it as gender neutral - they just think about men.”

In his book “What’s Your Pronoun? Beyond He and She,” linguist and English professor Dennis Baron writes about the history of pronoun use and the role pronouns have played in establishing our rights and identities. While the masculine pronoun “he” has long been used as a generic pronoun, as I mentioned just now, it excludes women and others.

Some people object to using “they” as a singular pronoun, but Baron points out that “you” at one time was strictly a plural pronoun. It wasn’t accepted as singular until the 17th century.

The pronoun debate, particularly in the 19th century, involved legal implications as well as literary ones. The courts and government debated whether the use of the generic “he” in law excluded women. Baron said, “Suffragists argued from the 1870s to the early 1900s that if ‘he’ is treated as generic in criminal law, then the voter ‘he’ should include women as well.” The courts at the time disagreed, although they continued to uphold “he” as including women when it came to obligations such as paying taxes or incurring civil or criminal penalties.

Baron said, “The debate has been reenergized in the last 15-20 years because of awareness of nonbinary gender issues and transgender and gender-nonconforming people. The pronoun is becoming like an honorific, like a title. This is how you refer to me. It’s got this extra-special significance once again in the context of new gender issues. It’s not just women’s rights; now it’s trans rights and nonbinary rights. We see a revived interest in both coined pronouns and the singular ‘they.’”

Coined pronouns

Baron’s interest in pronouns began when he was researching language reform in the early 1980s. He came across a number of coined pronouns from the 19th and early 20th centuries, and he published an article about them in a linguistics journal. More recently, he started looking at digitised 19th-century newspapers online. His list now contains more than 200 coined pronouns. (Another term you might see today is ‘neopronouns’.) The earliest example he found, from 1841, is “e,” with “em” for the object and “es” for the possessive. Others include “zie” or “hir”.

“It was a curiosity,” Baron said. “Somebody coined pronouns because they felt a word was missing from English. A few of the words made it into dictionaries. None of them ever achieved widespread use. But one word that seems to be filling the gap is the singular ‘they’.” 

As Baron said, coined pronouns — i.e. ones that aren’t the typical ‘he, she, they’ — aren’t new inventions created by attention-seeking millennials. One word that got the most traction before other widely used third-person pronouns was the word ‘thon.’ Thon was coined by Charles Crozat Converse in 1858 and was a contracted form of ‘that one.’ The word was included in Merriam-Webster’s Second New International Dictionary in 1934 as “a proposed genderless pronoun of the third person,” but was removed in their third edition of the dictionary in 1961.

In 1912, Ella Flagg Young—the first woman to serve as superintendent of the Chicago public-school system—took the stage in front of a room of school principals and announced that she had come up with a new solution to an old problem.

“I have simply solved a need that has been long impending,” she said. “The English language is in need of a personal pronoun of the third person, singular number, that will indicate both sexes and will thus eliminate our present awkwardness of speech.” Instead of he or she, or his or her, Young proposed that schools adopt a version that blended the two: he’er, his’er, and him’er.

Young’s idea drew gasps from the principals, according to newspaper reports from the time. When Young used his’er in a sentence, one shouted, “Wh-what was that? We don’t quite understand what that was you said.”

Young was actually borrowing the pronouns from an insurance broker named Fred S. Pond, who had invented them the year before. But in the weeks to come, her proposal became a national news story, earning baffled write-ups in the Chicago Tribune and the Associated Press. Some embraced the new pronouns—but many dismissed them as an unnecessary linguistic complication, and others despaired that the introduction of gender-neutral pronouns would precipitate an end to language as they knew it. An editor for Harper’s Weekly, for instance, insisted that “when ‘man’ ceases to include women we shall cease to need a language.”

And people still have these attitudes today. A 2018 Wall Street Journal op-ed went so far as to claim that using they/them pronouns is “sacrilege”. After Demi Lovato came out as nonbinary last year, a conservative commentator called they/them pronouns “poor grammar” and an example of “low academic achievement.” There’s a common misconceived idea that gender-neutral pronouns are a new phenomenon, something stemming from internet culture, and suggesting that gender fluidity is also a fad. But they couldn’t be more wrong.

Even though people did not, in the 1900s, personally identify as nonbinary in the way we understand it today (though some identified as “neuter”), neutral pronouns existed—as did an understanding that the language we had to describe gender was insufficient.

Likely the oldest gender-neutral pronoun in the English language is the singular they, which was, for centuries, a common way to identify a person whose gender was indefinite. For a time way back in the 1600s, medical texts even referred to individuals who did not accord with binary gender standards as they/them. This changed in the 18th century, when linguists started spreading their views that singular they/them was grammatically incorrect. Thanks, 1800s linguists.

Today and onwards

Today’s gender-neutral English-language pronouns make space not just for two genders, but for many more, serving as a way for people who fall outside the binary of “man” and “woman” to describe themselves. In 2020, a survey conducted by Trevor Project found that one in four LGBTQ youth uses pronouns other than he/him and she/her.

A recent study found that using gender neutral pronouns reduces mental biases that favour men, and increases positive attitudes towards women and the LGBT community. There’s a whole article on the Guardian that goes in depth about this, which I’ll link in the notes.

The practice of using pronouns in a non-binary way has not featured much in academic writing - the first paper on it was published in 2017, but has become more accepted online and on social media, with people now listing them in their Twitter bios.

The shift towards more inclusive and gender neutral terms allows more people to become aware of gender in their language. For example, gender-specific titles have become more gender-neutral, replacing terms like fireman with firefighter, policeman with police officer. People are starting to notice how certain words are used in a gendered way. And when it comes to pronouns, as gender identity and expression grow more diverse, language is naturally going to evolve — just like it has always done.

FAQs

These answers to some common questions come from two really great sources: the LGBTQ+ Resource Centre, and an article called “Gender-Neutral Pronouns 101: Everything You've Always Wanted to Know” by Devin-Norelle on the website them.us. Thanks for providing such great answers! Please go and check out those resources if you want to read more. Let’s get into some FAQs.

What if I make a mistake?

It’s okay! Everyone slips up from time to time. The best thing to do if you use the wrong pronoun for someone is to say something right away, like “Sorry, I meant (insert pronoun)”. If you realise your mistake afterwards and didn’t correct yourself in the moment, apologise to the person in private and move on.

Sometimes you might feel like you want to go on and on about how bad you feel that you messed up or how hard it is for you to get it right. Please don’t! It is inappropriate and makes the person who was misgendered feel awkward and responsible for comforting you, which is absolutely not their job.

What if I hear someone else use the wrong pronoun for someone?

Sometimes, you may hear someone using the wrong pronoun for someone. In most cases, it is appropriate to gently correct them without further embarrassing the individual who has been misgendered. This means saying something like “Alex uses the pronoun she,” and then moving on.

Try not to correct people loudly and proudly in case you embarrass the person being misgendered, or the person who made a mistake (they might genuinely not have known and will be grateful for you correcting them).

How do I ask someone what pronouns they use?

Try asking: “What pronouns do you use?” or “Can you remind me what pronouns you use?” It can feel awkward at first, but it is not half as awkward as making a hurtful assumption.

If you are asking people to introduce themselves as part of a group, for example if you’re running a workshop, ice breaker, work event, or whatever else it might be, ask everyone to state their pronouns. For example, you might say: “Tell us your name, where you’re from, and your pronouns. I’ll start – I’m Charlotte, I’m from Wales, and my pronouns are she/her.”

By asking everyone which pronouns they use, you can help create a more normalised and safe way for others to share their pronouns, which they may not have been able to do before. However, some closeted people may not be ready to publicly share their pronouns, so if someone does not supply them in front of a group, try asking in a more private setting. Asking someone “can I use these pronouns for you in front of other people?” is a good way of making sure you do not accidently out or misrepresent someone.

What if I’m unable to ask someone about their pronouns?

Sometimes, we don’t get an opportunity to introduce ourselves and inquire about another person’s pronouns before we have to refer to them — but there are other ways to approach the situation when we don’t have the information we need.

First and foremost, when we don’t know, we should default to they/them pronouns, or if you feel uncomfortable using any pronouns at all, default to using their name. The singular they is unassuming, all-inclusive, and can be used to refer to anyone. If used in conversation, it also allows another person to correct you if they happen to have the right information. (And once you do know someone’s correct pronouns, use those — don’t just continue to use they/them.)

Why is it important to respect people’s pronouns?

You can’t always know what someone’s pronouns are by looking at them. Asking and correctly using someone’s pronouns is one of the most basic ways to show your respect for their gender identity.

When someone is referred to with the wrong pronoun, it can make them feel disrespected, invalidated, dismissed, alienated, or dysphoric (or all of the above). Inclusive language usage for LGBTQ+ youth and adults drastically decreases experiences of depression, social anxiety, suicidal ideation, and other negative mental health factors.

So we’ll just be making up any words we want now?

Isn’t this how language works? We’ve been doing so for centuries and we make up words all the time in our daily lives. Sometimes we combine words to form a new one, or adapt words from other languages. We create words with our family and friends. That’s how slang works and how new terms enter our lexicon.

“Sometimes, people pick up on a particular word, it becomes ingrained in the broader language. So yes, people are making up pronouns, especially if they don’t like the ones that are available,” explains Baron. This does not invalidate pronouns, or make them any less real then other made up words of our language. They are as valid as words borrowed from other languages and combined to form a new, relevant word.