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Comment by patrickfl | Hacker News Reader

Scanned the article, can someone give me a solid example of how this is used in a sentence?

Pretty much every great English writer uses it freely: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9364411. Also, listen to how people really speak, and you'll find that everybody puts it in their sentences without noticing.

The funny thing is that in terms of actual usage, it's uncontroversial and has been for 600 years. The debate about it is a real-life version of the joke, "I can see it will work in practice, but will it work in theory?"

"patrickfl didn't bother to read the article, as a result they were uninformed."

This may be right, but it does not sound right.

It's not right. There are linguistic restrictions on gender-neutral, singular 'they'.[1] When the referent is known, it can't be used (i.e. it's not about 'patrick' and 'he' matching up, it's about 'they' not being usable with a known person).[2]

My favourite real-life example of it's usage is one in which we know that the gender is female, and we know it's singular:

"If a mother wants to use the nursing room, they can just key in the code in their pamphlet".

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/3cgbyv/limitat... gives some good discussion

[2] I can't help but feel that these restrictions are related to nondefinite contexts for "(negative polarity items)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarity_item]", like 'no-one' and 'any', where you can't say e.g.

    *I ate any cake

but you can say:

    I didn't eat any cake

but you can also use it in questions:

    Did you eat any cake?

This seems related to usages like

    If someone comes, tell them to wait

    *If John comes, tell them to wait.

It doesn't sound right because the username includes "patrick", which implies a "he". Singular "they" doesn't replace "he" or "she" when gender is known.

It sounds a bit more natural if you say "That user didn't read the article, so they were uninformed."

> Singular "they" doesn't replace "he" or "she" when gender is known.

It does when the gender identity of the subject is known to be neither he nor she!

Why not? This is not new at all, I've used it whenever I'm not sure of the gender of a subject for as long as I can remember.

"...they was uninformed."

I'm not a fan. If we have to go somewhere, I'd rather go with 'it'.

That would be awful, but is a misunderstanding. People say "they were" for the singular, just like "you were" (not "you was").

"If the user needs further assistance, they will need to open a support ticket."

The leading clause of the sentence makes it clear that we're talking about an individual but does not indicate their (!) gender. You can use it anywhere that one might also use 'he or she'.

"After the customer presses the button, they will be surprised by the machine giving them a donut."

There are at least three different usages of singular they. The newest is where a specific person for various possible reasons has asked to be referred to in that way. The oldest usage is where the referent is unknown or generic. E.g. "The technician sent by the company isn't here yet, they may have gotten stuck in a traffic." Finally, some people use singular they even where the referent is specified and that person hasn't expressed a preference for singular they. E.g. "President Obama is on vacation, they must be tired after dealing with ISIS all last week." I find this last usage jarring.

You see it in notifications from social apps. "Jenny has started following you. Follow them back", etc. Because a lot of apps don't ask people to enter their gender they just resort to "them" instead of "him" or "her". It's really as annoying as people just using "her" everywhere just to be safe.

It seems annoying because personal names like Jenny and John have grammatical gender in English, so the unknown grammar use of they/them/their seems unnatural. It's also perhaps why similar-sounding names are generally spelt differently between genders, e.g. Danny/Danni, Jerry/Jeri, Tony/Toni, Billy/Billie, Francis/Frances, Robin/Robyn, Sidney/Sydney.

No, they don't. There is only natural gender here, not grammatical gender.

Why is it annoying?

There are certain cases where it feels very ridiculous. For example, some authors use "her" to refer to even a group of people generally known to be predominantly male oriented. While it definitely won't be criticized by any feminist group, it really is distracting from narrative point of view because most readers feel it's unnatural. I remember thinking "This guy is clearly talking about dudes, why is he using female pronoun?" I also think it's stupid to have to use female pronoun just to be safe, because this in itself is sexism--it implies that they are afraid of feminists accusing them but not afraid of masculinists (if it even exists). When I say it's annoying I am not saying these people are annoying, I'm saying the reality we live in is annoying. In some non-english cultures they don't have this problem because they have ways to refer to people without being gender specific.

Now we know how women feel, all day long every day. It'd be reasonable to say "get over it", which is essentially what women hear all their lives.

Your sentence is obviously valid but i'm not sure how it relates to my comment

Its equally ridiculous to use either gendered form for the wrong group. But groups of women are called 'guys' all the time. The observation that it sounds funny/annoying when a group of 'dudes' is labeled using a feminine term, is only something a male would notice. I'm suggesting 'get over it' because men have no special right to be not-annoyed by this.

Please don't try to use wordplay to get your feminist ideology across. Nobody calls a girl "Him" in real life, just like nobody calls a guy "Her" in real life. That's what I pointed out, not some interpretation of "guys" (I can go on forever talking about the semantics for that term too but that's not even what I was talking about)

I didn't think equality was a 'feminist ideology'. Its just humanism. That original point is, using 'her' to refer to a group of people, even men, seems odd. Its no less reasonable than using 'him'. So there are good reasons to mix it up.

On a similar topic, I find it more amenable in an HN discussion to remove all references to 'you' and 'your'. Its adding nothing to the discussion, can feel like an attack, and distracts from the topic, to the people talking. Its close to Ad Hominem.

You'll see this in Facebook, too. Even though they ask for your gender.

But that's because you can choose which set of pronouns you prefer.

(They also have a pretty okay list of genders to choose from, if you're into labeling things)

I just wish they had "Nonbinary" for people who feel weird about the word genderqueer.

Why is using "her" everywhere worse than using "him" everywhere?

> Why is using "her" everywhere worse than using "him" everywhere?

Because its just as gendered and conflicts with standard usage (which, in English, accepts the use of the masculine linguistic gender for subjects of unknown sex or gender identity, so it is not better from either a "gender neutrality, regardless of accepted usage" standpoint or from a "clarity of communication through conforming to accepted usage" standpoint.)

Tell me, where did I say that? This behavior of yours (putting words in people's mouth and accusing or insinuating them of sexism/racism/elitism etc.) is exactly why this stupid "singular they" phenomenon has arisen.

patrickfl wished to be referred to with the gender-neutral, and more recently invented pronoun "xe", but no one could figure out how to pronounce it so they referred to them as they when they were using the third-person to refer to them.

Very nice, singular and plural they.

The author was very clear in their piece.

"Alex has decided that they no longer want to be addressed by a gendered pronoun, and has requested that we all refer to them as 'they' and 'them' from now on."

edit: I'd be interested in understanding why people find this very real scenario to be so downvote worthy. Is it because you find the idea of non-gendered pronouns upsetting, or because you think my example is unrealistic for some reason? Or something else entirely?

I think you're example is one of the few I would think of as specifically "singular". In most other examples I feel "they" refers to some instance of an nonspecific person from within a group of people, which is still singular but related to a group.

It's a contrived example since the typical use of the singular they is when the gender of the subject is unknown. You might be getting downvotes for complaining about downvotes.

I am guessing you haven't talked with that many people who describe themselves as non-gender conforming, then. I was actually paraphrasing a conversation I had with some recently about their partner.

I'm not sure what to tell you other than 'I'm guessing I'm going to make unwarranted assumptions about you'

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