Pronoun Frustration Erupts in Cringeworthy TV Moment

The transgender movement has raised a lot of awareness and some degree of pronoun frustration among grammar sticklers.

I get it. When it comes to “singular they,” some people just don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t sound right to them and it never will when it is used to apply to a single, specific person. But there’s another side of this pronoun frustration. That’s the transgender and non-binary people who do not feel either gender adequately expresses their identity.

The two sides of this issue aren’t likely to see eye to eye anytime soon. They may never agree.

During a recent news broadcast in India, the subject came to a head when the anchor refused to use a guest’s preferred pronouns. It aired on TalkTV last month. The anchor, known as a conservative British radio presenter, political journalist and columnist, introduced a guest, journalist Shivani Dave, who uses they/them pronouns. But the Hindustan Times reports that rather than honor the guest’s preferred pronouns, the anchor specifically — intentionally — used referred to the guest as she.

Ironically, Dave appeared on the program to discuss the CASS Review, an independent review of gender identity services for children and young people provided by the National Health Service in England.

From the start, Dave politely reminded the anchor to use they/them pronouns.

“Yeah. Thank you for telling me your pronouns,” the anchor said. “I use correct grammar.” She went on to claim she wasn’t being rude, adding, “You can choose what you want to call yourself. But you don’t get to require me to use incorrect grammar and factually incorrect things.”

When the anchor suggested Dave was a single female person, Dave objected again. The anchor eventually said Dave didn’t need to mention her pronouns to begin with.

“Well, maybe I’m just making sure people know in case they’re watching and they want to refer to me respectfully,” Dave answered.

You can watch the full exchange here:

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The guest seemed far more calm and respectful than the anchor. In fact, I don’t know what said anchor was thinking in trying to fight this fight. I suppose to her conservative fans, she might have looked like a hero.

More’s the pity.

For some, it’s more than policing grammar

Several months back, I told you about research that found that bad grammar can cause a genuine physiological reaction. It’s easy to critique someone else’s choice of words, of course.

But researchers at the University of Birmingham found the reaction to bad grammar might be more than just being picky. They brought in 41 British English-speaking people. They subjected their volunteers to recordings that contained instances of poor grammar. 

Analysis revealed the more errors a person heard, the more regular their heartbeat became.

That might sound like a good thing. But it’s actually a sign of stress. They confirmed that by measuring their test subjects’ Heart Rate Variability. HRV captures the time between heartbeats, which become more regular when one experiences stress.

It is entirely possible that hearing singular they used to describe a single specific person could cause that level of angst. It’s also possible that they just aren’t informed enough to understand that transgender people exist, no matter how much the angst-ridden people might wish they’d just “pick one gender or the other.”

But they do exist

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I fully understand the concept of being trans. I’m a guy who was born a guy and feels like a guy. So in my case, the characteristics I was born with fit the gender with which I identify. I can imagine someone feeling as if they should have been the opposite gender.

Everyone jokes about guys having a “feminine side” when they do something kind or caring. But I know feeling you belong in the opposite gender is very different and far more involved than that. Still, I don’t find it so difficult to imagine feeling the gender into which you were born is not the gender you identify.

I have to admit I cannot grasp feeling that you’re neither gender or that you’re actually both genders in one. You can call it a failure of my imagination. But I just can’t imagine that. Then again, like I said: I’m a guy who was born a guy and identifies as a guy. So I’ve never had to experience feeling any questioning of my gender.

That, naturally, could only make it at least somewhat challenging for me to completely put myself into the shoes of someone whose gender identity doesn’t match the gender into which they were born.

The fact that I have a hard time putting myself in their place doesn’t give me the right to disrespect them by using the wrong pronouns because I don’t like the sound of singular they.

And that’s really the point

I would ask those grammar sticklers out there who get offended when someone asks you to use what you consider to be the “correct” pronoun to consider one thing: Can you really not imagine your using the wrong pronoun to be at least as offensive to the person who requests a different one?

You’re trying to valiantly come to the defense of language. Under most conditions, I’d support you.

But this is a different situation. Your refusal to use someone’s correct pronouns is offensive. It is disrespectful.

It really is as simple as that. If you can’t see that, I’d encourage you to spend some time thinking about it. You clearly haven’t spent enough time so far.

I struggle with it when I’m writing

I’m not perfect, nor do I pretend to be. I’ll acknowledge that singular they causes me angst as a writer. But it’s not because I don’t want to respect someone’s pronoun choices. Instead, it’s that I don’t want to confuse my readers.

If I can get away with using no pronoun when the a singular they might confuse the reader, like using one’s last name, I’d try to do that instead.

English grammar doesn’t have a good solution for singular they. When we’re talking about a single specific person, it looks like a mistake — and reads like one — when they is used to refer to a single person. If you explain the situation before the first use of a pronoun, that can certainly help. But it can still be a distraction — perhaps it’s that physiological reaction to a perceived grammar mistake.

As I’ve said, people have argued that we’ve used singular they since Shakespeare’s time. And that’s true. It’s just that we haven’t used it in this particular way. Consider this sentence:

Any student who doesn’t do the assignment will have their homework doubled.

That’s singular they. The subject of the sentence is student, a singular noun. But it’s a nonspecific person. It might be a boy or a girl. (It might even be a transgender student for all we know.) We’ve long come to understand that singular they in this context means either/or for one specific person.

But our historical understanding of that usage has never really been understood to mean one person who identifies as both or neither at the same time.

Yes, singular they has been around for a long time. But the way it’s being used now is different. It’s not an apples-to-apples argument. Both sides need to understand that.

For many people — including some people who identify as transgender — this is still new and unexplored territory. A good dose of respect from both sides might help avoid unnecessary conflicts like we saw in that clip.