Gender Neutral Pronouns: They're Here, Get Used To Them

CORRECTIONS
March 9th, 2019

Back in 2013, I made a video about ‘singular they’ and gender-neutral pronouns. Looking back on it with half a decade of hindsight, there are several things I want to correct. I also have a few thoughts on how the reactions to it have changed over time, and why the video’s comments will remain off.

Firstly, while editing the video, I cut the first sentence of the script. That sentence didn’t seem to add anything, and I’m a believer in ‘don’t bore us, get to the chorus’. That would have been fine — if only the script didn’t refer back to that first sentence later on, noting that the viewer probably didn’t notice the singular they in it.

There used to be an annotation explaining that mistake, but YouTube’s deleted all annotations now. I regret the error.

Secondly, I mentioned that recently-coined gender-neutral prounouns (hir, xe, etc) haven’t caught on in regular usage, and that trying to deliberately add new words into a language is extremely difficult. I think that’s true, but my tone was a bit too dismissive — there was an implied value judgment there. I’d rephrase that in a second video.

And finally, I co-opted a couple of LGBT slogans, both in the title of the video and the video itself. Those aren’t my slogans to rewrite, and adding ‘with apologies to’ in the reference line isn’t a great way of solving that. Looking back, I’m uncomfortable with those.
Changing times

In 2013, the video was uncontroversial. You can see that in this chart of likes and dislikes over time from YouTube’s analytics tool:

The video received very few dislikes until 2016. And I remember the comments from back then: those dislikes weren’t from angry conservative types. Instead, those were speakers of languages that used grammatical gender — they were angry that I’d insulted their language!

But you can see the tide start to shift in 2016. This is why I turned off comments: it seems that a small number of people with limited empathy deliberately search out videos about subjects like this just so they can hit ‘dislike’, leave awful comments that are usually one of a few toxic in-jokes, and go. YouTube's moderation tools remain desperately inadequate at dealing with that problem without appointing full-time moderators, and frankly, that would be time and money that could be better spent on almost anything else. For that reason, the comments are going to remain off.

If I were to remake this video in 2019, the most significant change would be focus: the title would be all about singular they, not gender-neutral pronouns. It probably wouldn’t even mention LGBT issues beyond a quick reference. It wouldn’t be a shout of hey, did you know about these folks, because five years later, most people watching the video do. Instead, it’d be a quiet nod of I see you.

What worked for a 2013 audience doesn’t work in 2019.

It seems that, over the last few years, non-binary and trans folks have reached stage three on the Williams Scale: ‘then they fight you’. Hopefully, it won't take long to reach stage four: ‘then you win’.

[TomScottGo]

This comment section was reasonable a few years ago when I put this video up, but now it seems like there's a lot more kneejerk-reaction boors who comment without watching the video. Everything's already been said and I'm sick of banning jerks, so I'm closing these comments. (And yes, I accidentally trimmed the "very first sentence" that I refer to while I was editing. I regret the error!)

[altalector]

down south we also have "y'all"

[MarieKyriney]

"She" in german is "Sie". The formal version of "you" is also "Sie". And "They" is also "sie". I think we got a problem.

[abigailfails]

I never knew that blond and blonde weren't interchangeable.

[finniko]

And then there's us Finns, who have no kind of gender words for anything. For example he or she are both " hän " in Finnish.

[XwaYdesu]

I've been using "they" and the only problem I've encountered are a few flustered self-proclaimed grammarians. Most people don't even notice I'm using it. I can't imagine going back.

[kuroichan]

A lot of times when someone doesnt really know if a person is female or male 'they' say 'they' this isnt a new thing at all but people are acting like it is.

[jektonoporkins]

Just bring back thee/thou/thy/thine and get it over with.

[AntLee]

What I find interesting about the use of "they" as singular is that it's kinda the same thing as what happened to "you". As in, "you" used to be exclusively plural while "thou" was exclusively singular, then "you" became both plural and singular, and "thou" got phased out. Now "they" is being used as singular too (and has been used as singular before, but in less specific cases) - the only difference is it's not really phasing any other pronoun out.

[naz]

As a native French speaker, I can't imagine how hard it must be to learn what words are 'male' and others are 'female'. There's just no logic behind it !

[BecxKK]

I kind of laughed at "if that surprises you, you need to get out more" because the only times I've ever in my life encountered this gender discussion thing, or people who identify differently, have been times when I'm sitting at home on my laptop or phone -being rather antisocial..

[carmarcam]

I love how in Spain computers are male (el ordenador) but in Latin America they are female (la computadora) 😆

[paterbubo]

In Spanish:
His table = su mesa
Her table = su mesa
Their table = su mesa

[scattygirl]

I've been using "their/them/they" in place of an unknown gendered pronoun since the 1980s. is it really a new phenomenon?
The only thing that ever surprised me was finding out last year that up until recently it was considered correct and not at all insensitive to use the pronoun "it" for all babies.

[erravi]

Great video! I find it funny how my English teacher said, "singular 'they' is grammatically incorrect, " when she uses it constantly!

[Lin-ntqh]

Fact: In Turkish there is no separation of "she" and "he" and "it", there is only one 3rd person pronoun which is "o"

[eliseweusthuis]

Personally what I find questionable about always using he or she isn't that a few people don't fit that description but rather that is suggest that the gender of a person is always relevant to the subject. Especially when talking about a hypothetical person I find it irritating to have to assign them a gender to talk about them even if that is in no way relevant to what I'm trying to say.

[ionlymadethistoleavecoment]

Blond and blonde? I didn't realize that was different. In my part of the US we use blonde for both genders

[Monocultured]

Oh, so that's the difference between blond and blonde.

[rossthebesiegebuilder]

2:07 Minor nitpick: his motions don't match the order of the cards.