Them, he, or she — gender neutrality, pronouns, and rabbit holes

Image Steve Johnson Unsplash

​​​​​​​If you know me, you’ll know that I have a habit of diving deep down the rabbit hole to solve an issue related to writing or grammar, especially when the rules seem to defy common sense. As a kid, Alice in Wonderland was my favorite story and the bizarreness of the world Lewis Carroll created for his heroine is a fitting setting for the nonsense of possessive pronouns.

The French are lucky for many reasons, but when it comes to singular possessive pronouns, they are fortunate because they use the same words irrespective of whether the subject is a he or a she — his and her are the same. His eyes (ses yeux) and her eyes (ses yeux) — the gender of the object dictates the form of the possessive pronoun not the gender of the subject. English, on the other hand, has no such gender-neutral possessive pronouns for the singular case.

In 2015, the Swedish Academy (Svenska Akademien) — who is responsible for the advancement of the Swedish language — added the genderless pronoun hen to the list of accepted Swedish words. Today, Swedish has three subject pronouns han (he), hon (she), and hen, and three possessive pronouns hans (his), hennes (her), and hens. Apart from addressing sensitivities related to gender neutrality and people who do not wish to be identified as he or she, such neutral pronouns tend to make writing easier. I should add though, that the addition of hen led to much debate, rolling of eyes, and general jadedness toward anything that could be labeled as politically correct. By now though, some six years later, I think the initial skepticism is beginning to die down and acceptance of hen is growing.

Working at Tobii, I often find myself wanting to express these kinds of ideas:

The user controls the interface with his eyes.

The user controls the interface with his/her eyes.

The user controls the interface with her eyes.

The default position in English writing was to use the male possessive pronoun in such cases. As gender-equality awareness grew, we switched to the awkward he/she construction, which too became jaded. And some writers will use she in all cases — often as a question of style or quirkiness rather than a political statement.

The problem gets quite absurd when using indefinite pronouns such as anyone, someone, or everyone. And in speech, we don’t think about it, because we incorrectly use the plural possessive pronoun.

Think about a classroom situation, where the teacher wants each kid to raise a hand. The teacher might say:

Everyone raise their hand!

This sounds correct because most native English speakers will say it that way. But everyone is singular, so ‘their’ is grammatically incorrect.  

The teacher could instead say ‘Everyone raise his hand’, but then we’re back to the gender issue, and because nobody ever says this, you might be left wondering whose hand is ‘his hand’, and why does he (whoever he is) need everyone else’s help to raise it. And down the rabbit hole we go!

You can often get around the problem by rewriting the sentence or using a plural. So instead of everyone raise their hand, you could be more specific by saying something like: could all the kids in the class raise their hand! Kids plural, so ‘their’ is grammatically correct.

Here’s a good example of rewriting from the AP Stylebook.

Instead of:

The foundation gave grants to anyone who lost their job during the pandemic.

Write:

The foundation gave grants to anyone who lost a job during the pandemic.

Over the past couple of years, most style guides have adapted their rules on the use of ‘their’ as an acceptable use of the singular possessive pronoun. The most commonly used style guides are more or less in agreement, however, that it’s better to rewrite if you can because they kind of want to reserve ‘they’ and ‘their’ pronouns for people who identify as nonbinary.

But I would say that it’s okay to use ‘they’ and ‘their’ in cases where you are referring to people in the singular. So, in the first example above, I would opt for:

The user controls the interface with their eyes.

Or you could rephrase:

Users control the interface by moving their eyes.

A word of warning

Be careful, however, when you have a plural subject and a singular object. I would advise you to re-read your sentence a couple of times to check that your sentence makes sense (unless of course you are writing literary nonsense).

Take a look at this sentence:

Users control the interface by moving their eye.

It might just be me, but at first glance, I think this sentence is okay. But then ‘users’ (plural) do not have a collective eye (singular), even if I think most people will get what the writer means.

Interesting articles on this subject:

They — Merriam-Webster’s word of the year 2019

What is the singular They, and why should I use it? (Grammarly)