Singular they in academic writing
By: Lee Crowell
Tags: Nonbinary, Academia, They, Gender Equality

By now, I would hope that the majority of us are aware that there are people in the English-speaking world who make use of they/them/their pronouns. In case this is new for you, here’s how you use those in a sentence. They went to the park to walk their dog, who was happy to play outside with them. There’s been some contention about they as a singular pronoun, but it remains that people are using it and is getting to be more accepted that they is the most commonly used neutral pronoun in the English language.

This piece is not here to debate the validity of they as a singular pronoun. Rather, the goal is to discuss the implications of they on standard academic writing.

In my personal experiences in academia, there’s been a mixed bag of responses by cisgender people to neutral pronouns but generally fellow academics do their best to respect people’s identities. There are plenty of mistakes in spoken and written communication, but for the most part I have seen genuinely good faith efforts to adapt and be respectful of neutral pronouns.

Those good faith efforts stop cold when it comes to giving feedback on academic writing projects. In the past, convention has dictated that when the gender of the subject is unknown, one should refer to them as “he or she” or the streamlined “s/he.” Growing up, I was even specifically told that using “they” as a substitute for “he or she” was incorrect.

The big boom in awareness of transgender people, nonbinary people, and people who use neutral pronouns happened while I was an undergrad. Suddenly, there was a big push to normalize they pronouns; I read so many thoughtful pieces about how damaging it is to assume people’s genders and about the burgeoning norm of using neutral pronouns for folks until told otherwise. When it clicked for me, I decided one of the ways to be an ally was to replace “he or she” in my writing with a singular they.

Inevitably, when feedback was given for my writing I was told, just like I was as a child, that singular they was incorrect. I learned that to get the grades I wanted, I would have to edit my every use of they back to the conventional he or she.

As the years passed, I noticed more and more people vocally supporting singular they and agreeing that it is a good thing to use when the gender of a subject is unknown. During that time, I also came out as nonbinary and began to use neutral pronouns for myself. I began to learn about neo-pronouns (such as ze, hir, ve, fae, and so on). I took a gap year between undergrad and graduate school to come to terms with all the things I was learning about myself and was excited to re-enter an academia that recognized people like me exist.

Socially, I was very comfortable in my program. Faculty and students alike were at least moderately educated about gender issues and there were very few times I had to deal with misgendering. Like I said before, there were some hiccups but overwhelmingly, I felt comfortable being a they in my graduate school environment.

Then, I got a comment back on an assignment from someone I considered to be a good ally that highlighted my use of singular they for a subject of unknown gender and simply said, “he or she.”

So let’s unpack that a little bit. I’ll gloss over the irony of a cisgender person telling a nonbinary person that the only options available are he or she. I’ll also avoid any commentary about performative allyship. Instead, let’s think about what is being said and what assumptions are being made when someone insists upon using “he or she” to refer to a subject of unknown gender.

The fundamental assumption at play here is that the person of unknown gender must be a he or she. In academic writing, a subject of unknown gender is most likely to be an author, a subject of a study, or a hypothetical person created by the author to make a point. To assert that nonbinary people or people who use neutral pronouns do not publish, do not participate in studies, or that a hypothetical person cannot be nonbinary or use neutral pronouns is, frankly, a bigoted assumption. It is true that there are far fewer gender neutral people who get published than there are binary people but they exist. The vast majority of existing studies do not acknowledge the existence of gender neutral people, but to say that gender neutral people do not exist in studies is, frankly, ignorant and unscientific. If it isn’t possible in your mind that a hypothetical person may be gender neutral, then I think you are not suited to try to make an argument using a hypothetical person- it’s obvious you have not considered the impact of your argument on a sufficiently diverse array of people and you should revise your argument to be stronger.

Another argument I see in favor of he or she is that using he or she instead of a neutral option shows that the author is mindful of both possibilities and that, as a consequence, whatever statement is being made is stronger. I think this argument comes from a good place, but it is not representative of the society we live in. There are not only two options. If you think it is important to list possible pronouns for an unknown subject to prove your own thoughtfulness, then by necessity you will have to list more than he or she. The logical conclusion of this line of thought is to have sentences like, “The author concludes that he, she, they, ze, ey, ve, xe, fae, or e have discovered….”

In the example above, I’ve only included pronouns that I’ve found to be most common for simplicity’s sake. Could you imagine how much of a struggle it would be to read a study or a book in which the author is obligated to list every pronoun option for a subject of unknown gender?

I can already anticipate comments at this point complaining that the example is absurd. That these pronoun sets are so uncommon that it makes no functional difference if they’re included or not. I would answer that criticism with a question: are your professional standards really so low? Having true academic integrity means considering a variety of social groups, backgrounds, linguistic variation, and more. Laziness and unconfronted bias make for bad research and even worse conclusions.

I won’t drag this out any longer than it needs to be, but I hope someday soon we can finally put “he or she” to rest. I hope my colleagues who are so considerate in our interactions understand the harm they do when they comment negatively about my use of singular they in my writing. We need to adapt our language and our thinking to be inclusive in order to push our respective fields forward and I hope this short piece shouting into the void draws someone’s attention to one way to accomplish that.