blog posts

• Gender conceal: Did you know that pronouns can also hide someone's gender?

  Nov 9, 2019 4:15 pm1511 views

  Gender reveals have been exploding in the news recently, but there are also a growing number of gender conceals—using a pronoun to hide someone’s gender. Historically, two English pronouns have been used to mask a person’s gender: it and they. But so far the definitions of it and they don’t include the gender conceal.

  First let’s look at they. The Oxford English Dictionary lists three senses for singular they: 

  • referring collectively to members of a group (everyone, everybody)
  • referring to an individual generically or indefinitely (someone, a person, the student)
  • referring to someone who is nonbinary or gender-nonconforming (Sam Smith’s pronouns are they and them).

  I think it’s time to add a fourth sense:

  • referring to someone whose gender needs to be concealed (the whistleblower…they).
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  Can a Swedish pronoun cure sexism?

  Aug 29, 2019 10:45 am1232 views

  Can a coined gender-neutral pronoun reduce sexism? A recent study by Margit Tavits and Efrén O. Pérez published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is optimistic that it can. According to Tavits and Pérez, now that the new, ungendered Swedish pronoun hen is official, Swedes will be more open to women in public life and more likely to support the rights of LGBT people. Only hen is not really official in any meaningful sense, and Sweden was already socially progressive decades before hen gained prominence.

• A Brief History of Singular 'they'

  Jul 30, 2018 12:15 pm10300 views

  Singular they has become the pronoun of choice to replace he and she in cases where the gender of the antecedent—the word the pronoun refers to—is unknown, irrelevant, or nonbinary, or where gender needs to be concealed. It’s the word we use for sentences like Everyone loves their mother.

  But that’s nothing new. The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375 . . .