Give They an Inch and It Takes a Mile: The Misgendered Cisgendered

By Bryan A. Garner

Thursday, May 16, 2024

 

In 2017, the newly released 17th-edition Chicago Manual of Style contained this statement: “They and their [with singular antecedents] have become common in informal usage, but neither is considered fully acceptable in formal writing, though they are steadily gaining ground.” The same year, the Associated Press ceded lots of ground by allowing they to have not just a singular antecedent (like anyone) but a singular sense (by referring, for example, to Bill Jones). AP announced that its stylebook would accept the singular they “in limited circumstances,” primarily when a non-binary person prefers that pronoun. But the guidance said that “rewording usually is possible and always is preferable.”

 

Mind you, this AP they is a new thing. It’s not the old indefinite they having a singular antecedent (If anyone wants to join the group, they should sign up here). That’s what the Chicago Manual discussed. This new singular they is referential: It denotes an identifiable human being (Bill Jones is on tour promoting their new album).

 

By 2022, Newsweek was editorializing that the AP should progressively yield even more territory: “While . . . the AP’s decision to allow they as a singular pronoun was a step in the right direction toward encompassing the spectrum of pronouns, five years later, more needs to be done. . . . It’s hard to fathom that the Stylebook’s decision was at one point viewed as an ‘embrace’ when followed by a reminder of caution and the blatant dismissal of neopronouns.”

 

In the past two years, things have gone much further. People are widely being given the singular pronoun they regardless of whether it’s their preference. It’s happening even to me.

 

Last month, I sent a book to a friend using Stamps.com. Almost immediately I received this message from him:

 

You would raise a grammatical eyebrow at the message I just got from Stamps.com about the mystery package you shipped: “This message was sent to you at the request of Bryan Garner, to notify you that they have shipped a package to you.” That’s a singular they with the singular referential noun phrase Bryan Garner as antecedent! Completely ungrammatical in Standard English up till some time around 2010, when nonbinary activists started agitating in favor of people being allowed to stipulate the pronouns by which they wished to be referred to — and angrily condemn people for “misgendering” if they failed to use the right ones. Stamps.com has caved to the woke! 

 

What’s happening, then, is that “cisgendered” people are being misgendered on a massive scale. Get used to it.

 

If Stamps.com handles 500,000 packages per day, then 500,000 of those messages are automatically generated day in and day out. The more you see it, the more accustomed you get to it.

 

That day, I ordered lunch for the entire office, using a food-delivery app. Soon I got a message: “Scott has picked up your order. They will reach you in 25 minutes.” Then: “Scott is getting near. They will leave your order at the door.” Then: “Scott has received your tip. They appreciate it.” Good old Scott.

 

Talk about going viral. Everyone ordering a meal anywhere — there might be millions per day on this app — will receive these three automatically generated messages.

 

After lunch, I decided to answer a few emails. One was from a partner at a hedge fund. I don’t know her, but Sheila wanted a sympathetic ear. She explained that she was one of two people participating in a firm-wide meeting who didn’t announce their pronouns in advance. You know: “Sheila Robertson, She/her/hers.” (She left off the last three words.) The other was “Bob Johnson,” who omitted “He/him/his.” What happened — and what occasioned the message to me — was that the agenda said: “Sheila will report on their portfolio returns and short-term moves.” And: “Bob will discuss their ideas for improving efficiency within the office.”

 

The hedge-fund administrator had decided that participants who didn’t announce their pronouns in advance would be assumed to be “They/them/their.” That’ll teach people: If you don’t announce your pronouns, you’ll be considered a they. I commiserated with Sheila, who said that even though she’s a partner at the fund, she’s hesitant to say anything for fear of being seen, in some way, as bigoted.

 

In the middle of the afternoon — this all happened in one day — I checked emails again, only to find that a friend of mine, a restaurant owner, was complaining to me that she had been nonconsensually transformed into a they on a countywide website. She had submitted copy that read: “Since 2008, I’ve owned the restaurant and been the principal cook. Over the past five years, I’ve won two regional awards as a short-order cook.”

 

The website coordinators changed the first-person pronouns in her statement: “Since 2008, they’ve owned the restaurant and been the principal cook. Over the past five years, they’ve won two regional awards as a short-order cook.”

 

I asked her whether I might mention it in my NR column. Her initial response: “Touching this stuff in my circles is radioactive.” But then she agreed.

 

From a corporate point of view, defaulting to they may make some sense. Consider the food-delivery app: The business managers needn’t inquire into the gender of each delivery driver. Or make possibly inaccurate assumptions based on first names. Is this efficiency, or laziness? It’s in the eye of the beholder.

 

It’s conceivable that in the end, they will come to be viewed as something like Ms., which made it unnecessary, when addressing a letter, to inquire into a woman’s marital status. If the default they catches on, it won’t be necessary to inquire into a person’s gender.

 

We’re a long way from that point. For the time being, many will object — not so much on food apps but certainly in the intimate setting of a small meeting with colleagues (as in the hedge-fund example).

 

The they-defaulters who generate mass emails and texts are assuming — perhaps correctly — that few customers will object, or object strongly enough to take their business elsewhere.

 

When the lunch was delivered, I didn’t have a chance to ask Scott, the deliveryman, what he thought about the messages that rendered him a they. Maybe I’ll send him a letter using Stamps.com. If he writes back announcing his pronouns as “they/them/their,” I’ll know that my stereotyped assumptions were off base.

 

Meanwhile, if the millions of automatically generated they-messages keep going out, day by day and hour by hour, this column may come to be seen as quaintly old-fashioned in a matter of months.