A letter with regards to explaining one's use of pronouns

[the_fantastic_ms_fox]

Here's another way of encapsulating my earlier point:

To use English to refer to singular humans in the gender-neutral requires either neologism or breaking grammatical rules. But why? School systems teach us English in such a way as to support some classes, ethicities and genders over others. For gender, this includes eliminating the singular "they," and designating "he" as the universal singular. Our language has already had its grammar and lexicon fucked with, but because we grew up with this, we see it as normal. We are taught that deviations are improper, or too new to use ("ze" is too weird, so people don't use it, so it's still new, so people think it's weird, repeat - but if you start using it, it starts sounding normal).

I'm not suggesting a particular pronoun, but a way of couching your choice and explanation thereof.

Comments

[mocks.livejournal.com]

I agree that 'they' seems like the one most likely to gain traction, practically speaking. I don't so much care about 'proper' grammar (I find it a bit awkward to use, but certainly far less so than any of the neologisms) but I am a bit annoyed by its ambiguity. Balancing crisp effective writing with clear pronoun use is something I find tricky already... but because I'm in the middle of all these writing projects this probably feels like a more of an issue than it really is. English contains all kinds of ambiguity and we mostly don't notice or care.

Alternative: what about reclaiming 'it'? I don't think I've really seen that bandied about much.