Singular They and the balls of God.
Posted on 5 May 2008
Creating gender neutral pronouns in the English language has a long and inconsequential history; it is expectedly difficult to swap out the most commonly used words (shemself, hetself, sie, eir, cos never quite made it to market). Of the solutions that have begun to catch on though, there is one I particularly fancy that does not require the cumbersome ‘he or she’ game–the singular they form. When the gender is unknown you simply use the ‘they’ form: “The doctor had to leave because they were tired.” Not bad.
So, recently, writing gender inclusive liturgy and working with hymns, Scripture and other works of antiquity brought me to the following realization: referring to God using the singular they form is actually a rather profound acknowledgment of the Trinity. ‘They’ are many and ‘they’ are one and ‘they’ are beyond gender. Whether Christ’s penis made it into heaven or God is a Father, or the Spirit is female is not really the issue. Nor would we be better off abandoning God’s Fatherness, just as early feminism failed by annihilating gender difference. Neo-feminism has it right, the genders are indeed different and should be celebrated as such. To borrow from Reverend Wright, different but not deficient. The nature of the Trinity is complicated and diverse and mysteriously encompassing all-of-the-above genders. It may be awhile before I have the nerve to sing ‘They are exalted on high’, but I’m getting there. Zadok circa 2000 would have my head on a pike.
Greg
5 May 2008 (21:00)
Brilliant. I never thought a discussion of the pronoun “they” could be so un-mundane. They=plural/trinity and They=gender neutral/ambiguous…. how about also Royal We–>Divine They
I’m going to make Linda read this post of yours.
Carl
5 May 2008 (21:40)
It seems to me that the phrase “balls of God” should possibly be capitalized…Balls of God. Not really sure why, except for maybe they contain the seed of all Creation.
Zadok
6 May 2008 (10:36)
ooh, Royal We, you’re onto something Greg. I like God sometimes.
Amber
6 May 2008 (14:42)
Nice thoughts, Zadok . . and horrible titles are usually attention-grabbers :-)
Anonymous
13 May 2008 (04:49)
Oh my GOSH are you kidding me!? How on earth can you say that “The doctor had to leave because they were tired” is not BAD? Freakityfreak, I can’t take it! It’s just so lazy and wrong! I have nothing to say about the theological usage, because I have no problem with God being a “they.” But the editor in me can’t stand for a singular doctor being a “they” just because someone is too lazy to add two tiny extra words. That’s like having society embrace phrases like, “We was gonna call you, but…” just because it’s so fly. Seriously, is our culture all about the easy way out and the path of least resistance? Me thinks that’s a yes.
Sarahbro
13 May 2008 (04:50)
That anonymous comment above is from me; I accidentally posted before writing my name. I was in too much of a rush to throw my brilliant comment at you. –saz
Zadok
15 May 2008 (08:14)
Fine points oh Editor-in-Arms, but it aint bout lazy me thinks, it is about elegance and form; I think using ‘he or she’ everywhere is quite chunky. I am not a linguist, but I know that many popular languages have a gender-neutral pronoun and we’d be well served to follow suit. While we’re at it, the English units of measure are shit too: 4 quarts in a gallon? 5,280 ft in a mile. What feudal Lord lost a bet in 1380 to make this all come to be? I call for his or her head.
SuJ'n
17 May 2008 (04:40)
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/he-they-generic-personal-pronoun.aspx
“A student left their book behind.” I personally find this movement toward the generic singular pronoun thrilling. Philosophical discussions aside, I think it’s tighter English.
Zadok
17 May 2008 (06:19)
just noticed this on Facebook:
‘SuJ’n changed their profile picture’… we have reached critical mass.
Vanessa
18 May 2008 (18:58)
for various reasons which shall remain unmentioned, i have been frustrated by the lack of a non-gender-specific singular pronoun for over a decade. glad it’s being discussed….
Tucker
9 Jun 2008 (19:24)
While I hesitate to leave such an unwieldy (and temporal) link, I was reading about “yo” as a genderless pronoun the other day. http://www.bignewsday.com/story.asp?code=BZ345203T&news=yo_being_used_as_gender-neutral_pronoun#send
Ms. Grabarczyk used “ze” the other day.
ryanjdavis
1 Jun 2012 (12:00)
Here’s some additional grammatical support from Merriam-Webster:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/video/0033-hisher.htm
However, I don’t think this applies to your doctor sentence, unless you were to change it to “a doctor” rather than “the doctor.” If you know who “the” doctor is, then obviously you know the doctor’s sex and you can use “he” or “she.”
I will say given current English usage, using “they” for God does conjure up tritheism, which is what Christians have historically been accused of by the other monotheistic faiths. But that’s a deficient understanding of the Trinity. So what’s worse, running the risk of assigning a sex to God or suggesting that God isn’t one? At this point, I think fewer people would interpret “he” as assigning an actual gender to God than they would interpret “they” as implying multiplicity. But that could change.