The politics of pronouns and social justice

Language reflects and transforms social realities, but the demands of equality and respect aren’t always in harmony

Pronouns are the most political parts of speech. In English, defaulting to the feminine “she/ her” when referring to a person of unspecified gender, instead of the masculine “he/him,” has long been a way of thumbing one’s nose at the patriarchy.

More recently, trans, nonbinary and genderqueer activists have promoted the use of gender-inclusive pronouns such as the singular ‘they/their’ and ‘ze/zir’ (instead of ‘he/him’ or ‘she/her’). The logic here is no less political: If individuals — not grammarians or society at large — have the right to determine their own gender, shouldn’t they get to choose their own pronouns, too?

As with everything political, the use of gender-inclusive pronouns has been subject to controversy. One side argues that not to respect an individual’s choice of pronoun can threaten a vulnerable person’s basic equality. The other side dismisses this position as an excess of sensitivity. Both sides have dug in. To move the conversation forward, consider the 17th-century Quakers, who suspected that the rules of grammar stood between them and a society of equals. They rejected conventional modes of address.

In early modern England, the rules of civility dictated that an individual of higher authority or social rank was entitled to refer to himself — and to be referred to by others — with plural, not singular, pronouns. (A trace of this practice survives today in the “royal ‘we’.”) The ubiquitous ‘you’ that English speakers now use as the secondperson singular pronoun was back then the plural, while ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ were the second-person singulars.

Quakers refused to follow this practice. They declared themselves to be “no respecter of persons”.

Modern practitioners of pronoun politics can learn a thing or two from the early Quakers. Yet unlike the early Quakers, these modern egalitarians want to embrace, rather than resist, pronouns’ honorific aspect, and thus to see trans-, nonbinary and genderqueer people as equally entitled to the “title” of their choosing.

To their critics, however, allowing some people to designate their own pronouns and expecting everyone else to oblige feels like a demand for distinction. Yes, some of these critics may be motivated by “transphobic” bigotry. But others genuinely see such demands as special treatment and a violation of equality. They themselves experience ‘he’ and ‘she’ as unchosen designations.

According to the Quakers, both sides are right: Language reflects, as well as transforms, social realities. But the dual demands of equality and respect aren’t always in perfect harmony.

At present, the battle over the third-person singular subject in English seems to be resolving itself in the direction of the singular ‘they’ — at least when referring to a person of unspecified gender.

If the rules of grammar are indeed an obstacle to social justice, then the singular ‘they’ represents a path of least resistance for activists and opponents alike. It may not be the victory that activists want. Still, it goes with the flow of the increasing indifference with which modern English distinguishes subjects on the basis of their social position.

■ Teresa M. Bejan is an associate professor of political theory at Oxford and the author of Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration.