Beyond the Gender Binary

by Alok Vaid-Menon

“Why use the pronoun they when it’s plural? It’s not grammatically correct.” Despite the fact that in 2019 Merriam-Webster added the gender-neutral they pronoun to the dictionary, people are still upset about the use of a singular they. People’s fixation on “proper” grammar or “new terms” often hides a more sinister motive, even if it’s not conscious. They are okay with language shifting as long as it’s the people in power doing it, not us. They say that gender non-conforming people, in particular, are caught up on some new fad: that we are inventing language, identities, pronouns, and genders. But language and grammar have always been developed to meet the needs of society. Consider words like selfie and welp, which have recently been added to the dictionary. This is actually the purpose of language— to give meaning to concepts as they evolve. They is not exclusively plural and actually does have a history of being used as a singular pronoun in the English language. In fact, many people still use it unconsciously today. For example, when you find a lost phone and have no idea who it belongs to, you might say, “Did somebody leave their phone behind?” The selective outcry over new words to describe gender and sexuality—amidst the thousands of words that are added to the dictionary every year—is about prejudice, not principle. If these people are so averse to change, why aren’t they outlawing the use of bingeable or taking more public stances on the use of the Oxford comma?