Understanding They/Them Skepticism

Honesty might have earned this pronoun preference a better reception.

There’s nothing remotely new about resistance, even hostility, towards proposed changes to language.

Not everyone loved split infinitives when we began to regularly split them.

The shift to using “hopefully” to mean “it is hoped” rather than “to do something with hope in the heart” was likewise controversial, even after it was familiar.

Things can be yet more fraught when there’s a political dimension to the change - Ms. rather than Mrs. and so forth.

But the moral of each of these stories is that, however weirded out we initially are by the alteration, we have at least the capacity to get used to it. So why are we stuck on they/them to refer to individuals who identify as gender non-binary?

It’s not the first time we’ve had the they/them fight, by the way, nor is it the first time progressives have been the ones pushing for change. It used to be about combating androcentrism; that is, centering the male identity/perspective as the default.

“Awwww, look at the cute kitty. Wonder whose he is,” is androcentrist, presuming we don’t actually know the cat’s gender. So is, “Man does not live by bread alone,” “Let he who is without sin…,” and “One small step for man…”

Traditionalists were perfectly content with, “If a student receives detention, he must report immediately to the principal’s office after school.” Progressives wanted “they must report,” and while this is noncontroversial now, it wasn’t always. It was considered by many to be bad grammar.

They/them for folks identifying as non-binary isn’t taking off in quite the same way though, and I’ve always been interested in exploring why. One, very obvious, explanation is an explanation that I’d prefer we ignore altogether for now, even if it likely explains a lot: some people don’t think non-binary is a real thing.

That’s certainly a part of this. But I don’t want to get bogged down in a sex vs. gender debate, nor to make or refute claims that are ultimately unfalsifiable.

If you say that being non-binary is a true condition of identity, essential to understanding a person’s nature, I can no more disprove that than I can your claim that indecisiveness is a consequence of your being a Libra, because “Libras be like that.”

And anyway, the truth of non-binary is a separate question to the one over language use. The social issue isn’t whether or not I privately believe you about what you say you are. It’s whether I’m going to be expected to take some action in response. Altering familiar speech patterns when I mention you may be regarded as a small action, but it is an action all the same.

It’s an imperfect example, but we use “sir,” in polite speech to confer respect, and we do it even in situations where respect is obviously not present. Police officers will call a man “sir” even when the man in question is drunk, and urinating on the sidewalk. They don’t do that to project esteem for pavement-pissing inebriates, they do it because it’s a social convention deemed important for them to observe.

Even people who doubt, or outright reject, the validity of non-binary identities could still be encouraged to use they/them pronouns for people who claim them, just as they can be encouraged to use “sir” when addressing a plain degenerate.

And just in case, no, I am not drawing an equivalence between publicly indecent winos and enbies. I’m only pointing out that the language conventions we observe are not always, or necessarily, tied to our true feelings.

From Pew, research snapshots taken in 2019 and 2025 paint a strange picture of this discussion. There’s been surprisingly little movement on public opinion either way regarding gender neutral pronouns, even through the most intense years of the “woke” era.

You could fairly view this in a few ways. You might say that no serious backlash has taken form to oppose these pronouns. Or you could say that they’ve gained no traction despite elite opinion being firmly on their side. Or you could say both, I suppose. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

On the surface, it looks like basically no one has changed their mind about this at all. If you were entrenched on either side in 2019, you’re probably still entrenched now, and still on that same side. If you didn’t really care back then, you probably still don’t care today.

It’s a stalemate, with a slight preponderance of adults viewing they/them pronouns unfavorably, but with momentum neither to kill this trend nor to codify it. We may be doomed to just keep arguing about this in perpetuity.

I’ll confess to having cringed mightily when Star Trek: Discovery introduced the non-binary character, Adira Tal, using language that felt lifted verbatim from 2020 Twitter. I thought, really? Spacefaring aliens a thousand years from now are going to be explaining their gender identities in the same terms college kids today use to explain them to their Republican uncles?

But maybe that made sense. Maybe Discovery was onto something.

It’s easy for me to understand why proponents favor broader use of these pronouns. It makes people with unusual identities feel seen and respected. And whether or not those in favor know someone actually in the non-binary category, respect is a common thing to want to project. But I don’t think it follows that opponents of this language use are necessarily disrespectful or dismissive. That’s not what the other side of the coin looks like. At least not entirely.

I think this was disingenuously sold from the jump, and that the folks pushing it lacked - and still lack - a clear understanding of how significant an ask they are making. They’d like for this to be considered alongside name changes, or the trend of using ‘literally’ to mean ‘figuratively.’ But that doesn’t cover it.

The they/them request isn’t just a plea to use different language, it’s a plea to use language differently. Those are two, separate things, and the latter is vastly more consequential.

The curmudgeons are accused of failing to appreciate that they/them pronouns are used all the time to describe individuals, and thus, that their use for non-binary people should be considered a small, easy thing.

Apologies to the activists and allies here, but that’s completely bogus. And you know it.

Sure, when a person’s gender is unknown or irrelevant, we sometimes use they/them as a stand-in.

Example:

“If somebody wants a really good burger, they should check out Dave’s Diner.”

Or…

“The flowers on my desk suggest that I have a secret admirer. I wonder who they are.”

Neither of these constructions feels irregular or stilted. On the other hand:

“Dave is the boss, so they is responsible for keeping people on task,” is odd. It’s unfamiliar. And not a normal use of they/them.

This doesn’t need to be disqualifying. We could still use the pronouns this way. But making the case for it is not helped by angrily insisting that it’s something we already do when it simply isn’t.

The tone of these requests isn’t typically polite either, it’s accusatory. I see it all the time. The rudeness is bizarre, because the charge (usually of bigotry, stupidity, or both) is predicated only on the charged having noticed something that is fundamentally correct and true: this is an abnormal use of the English language.

As to the name change comparison, there is a profound difference between asking that somebody address me differently and asking that they refer to me differently.

“I like to be called Dave instead of David.”

Is not equivalent to:

“I’d like you to refer to me as Dave, The Mighty and Dreadful when invoking my name.”

Pronouns in English are primarily used to simplify speech, not complicate it. We (mostly) don’t use them as honorifics. A number of languages do use pronouns that way, but English isn’t one of them. The Spanish ‘usted’ or French ‘vous’ both serve a purpose other than just avoiding noun repetition, but there’s not a clear English equivalent.

One that comes close is also one that may explain why critics read a degree of arrogance into demands that they use they/them for individuals.

If Charles III is our subject:

“He rode his horse.”

Is less formally correct than:

“His Majesty rode His Majesty’s horse.”

I doubt very much that non-binary people mean to be doing this, but the kind of demand they are making, made in the way they are making it - “do this, lest you be regarded as disrespectful, perhaps even worthy of punishment” - is asking, in effect, to be treated as royalty.

I have no pithy wisdom to conclude this. It might still work out for the non-binary activists and their allies. I’ve always found that you get more bees with honey, but that isn’t to say that brute-forcing this into becoming commonplace couldn’t also work.

Schoolboys gave up “that’s gay” and “retarded” only begrudgingly, but they gave them up all the same. And those terms are making a comeback now over the strong objections of the people who banished them from the lexicon in the first place. It’s not always clear who’s driving the car, or where it’s going to take us.

But a consistent theme in my views of TQ+ issues is that I reliably resent being lied to more than I feel inclined to be tolerant or inclusive. It’s a major dealbreaker for me. If you tell me to do something, even something I’d be inclined to do anyway, but then you lie to me about what it is or why I should do it, congratulations, you’ve lost me forever.

Activists and commentators might take note. Trying to convince people that they’ve already adopted a practice they haven’t adopted is unlikely to work. And projecting impatience at their ignorance of the thing you appear to have just made up is annoying.