It just seems incredibly odd for there to be so many lines in a book about gender insisting that there is no way to refer to someone (in the English language, at least) without implying gender. She even mentions the possibility of using „it“ at one point!
I’m liking the book otherwise, but every time the narrators ponder about pronouns without even considering „they“ I have to ask myself if there is any point in ignoring it or if she genuinely just forgot. I don’t think it’s possible for her to have not known about it considering how well-read she was and how long it’s been in use.
“Why did a book published in 1969 not contain up to date thoughts of gender and gender terminology from 2026?”
I don’t know. It’s an absolute mystery to me. After all it’s a well-known phenomenon that language never changes, that popular and accepted terminology never changes, and that all text ever written is timeless and static and never drifts in expression or meaning.
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad, weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah, oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan. Þæt wæs god cyning!English has never changed even once in its history!
Singular they has been part of the English language since the 14th century.
It has not been part of style guides since the 14th century, however. Starting with the dumb “grammarians” of the 18th century it was frowned upon very heavily in the “professional” sphere to the point that for all practical purposes it was expunged from writing by the time of the early to mid 20th century. It still existed in the spoken language, sure. Kind of like “ain’t”. But it was viewed as an uneducated stance and people who wrote had its use practically beaten out of it. Kind of like “ain’t”.
“it was cool before so let’s keep doing it” can’t do all the heavy lifting here. You need something else.
seriously, when i see questions like OP, my instinct is to be like ‘because you’re a dumbass’.
but usually it’s because their a prescriptive, and they think their use of their language at this particular time, is and always was the only legitimate form of it. and all past or future uses, including their own, are faulty and wrong.
god i remember being in like 5th or 6th grade and arguling about the colloqual use of ‘they’ with my teachers and getting failed. then in college i got ‘lectured’ about using ‘he’ as a pronoun for a singular person was sexist and awful you must use ‘he/she’ no matter how stupid and weird that looks. and now if you don’t use ‘they’ you’re awful because he/she is binary exclusivity or something.
and i bet in 10 years it will be different, yet again, and people will tell you whichever of the previous pronouns or singular pronoun you use are ‘highly problematic’ because it’s not whatever what people have deemed to be ‘least problematic’. as if it really matters that fucking much, especially compared to the actual broader themes of the novel in question.
I have seen so many English linguistic trends and fads come and go I just don’t take them seriously any longer. If someone wants to be called any number of hundreds of special pronouns just for themself, fine. No skin off my nose. If it’s a stupid one (e.g. poppy/seed) or one that I’m just not going to waste my time bothering to clutter my brain with (e.g. xae/xaem), I’ll just refer to said person by name (if at all). Otherwise I’ll use the one they want me to use, knowing that within five years the fad will be behind us and a new fad will be plaguing users of English
As an irrelevant side note, the whole problem of gendered pronouns would go away if we, you know, just didn’t. Use gendered pronouns, I mean.
Persian (Farsi) has existed for ages without gendered pronouns of any kind, indeed without grammatical gender of any kind. So has Chinese until the humiliation of the Opium Wars made them adopt gendered pronouns … but only in the written form … as a form of aping their colonizers’ grammar. This leaves us with the irony of the Chinese making their writing more complicated because it diverges from their speech to please their foreign colonial overlords, only to now have those colonial overlords agonizing over gendered pronouns and making up hundreds of them for no good reason. So China imported a non-solution to a non-problem to appeal to colonizers who now think gendered pronouns are icky. This is hilarious to me.
I’m pretty sure (but not positive) that Finnish doesn’t have gendered pronouns as well. Turkish too, I think. There may actually be more languages without grammatical gender (or at least weakly gendered) than languages with.
Well English has “it” but apparently it’s impolite or something… Coming from French we don’t even have that
Bodine (1975) – Androcentrism in Prescriptive Grammar
Excerpt of AI-generated findings:
Though published in 1975, Bodine’s landmark paper relies heavily on field data and structural analyses of English third-person singular sex-indefinite pronouns conducted during the late 1960s (specifically citing frameworks from Postal, 1969). Bodine categorizes this phenomenon into two main types:
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Sex-unknown: e.g., “Who dropped their ticket?”
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Mixed-sex, distributive: e.g., “Anyone can do it if they try hard enough.”
Bodine notes that despite two centuries of intense prescriptive efforts by educators to enforce the generic “he”, singular “they” remained the dominant colloquial and written choice for nonspecific referents throughout the 1960s.
Actual abstract from that article:
Abstract
This paper demonstrates that prior to the beginning of the prescriptive grammar movement in English, singular ‘they’ was both accepted and widespread. It is argued that the prescriptive grammarians’ attack on singular ‘they’ was socially motivated, and the specific reasons for their attack are discussed. By analogy with socially motivated changes in second person pronouns in a variety of European languages, it is suggested that third person pronoun usage will be affected by the current feminist opposition to sex-indefinite ‘he’ – particularly since the well-established alternative, singular ‘they’, has remained widespread in spoken English throughout the two and a half centuries of its ‘official’ proscription. Finally, the implications of changes in third person singular, sex-indefinite pronouns for several issues of general interest within linguistics are explored. (Language change, sex roles and language, language attitudes, language planning, prescriptive grammar, pronouns.)
So you got AI to hallucinate a summary of a 1975 paper.
To talk about a book published in 1969.
Weird that the AI didn’t summarize what Le Guin herself said on the topic.
It’s almost as if reaching for AI isn’t the smartest idea.
I think you saw me say “AI” and replied too quickly. I didn’t cite Le Guin. I used AI as a search tool to highlight one example of a paper discussing how the neutral “they” was commonplace during the time. I know it’s just search results, which is why I disclaimed it was as such. Then I included the paper’s abstract, which stands on its own enough to make the point that talking about a hypothetical era without the neutral “they” is not applicable to 1969.
this is lemmy dude.
AI is evil and bad, no matter it’s use or context.
almost like your choice of pronouns for a singular person in written language… is also now problematic and offensive to whomever, and le guin is clearly was anti-trans or something for not knowing that in 2026 kids would be reading her 1969 novel and getting bent out of shape about her pronoun use not reflecting their own contemporary beliefs about it.
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In the afterword of the 25th anniversary edition of the novel, she stated that “The Left Hand of Darkness is haunted and bedeviled by the gender of its pronouns”, and that she no longer believed that the masculine pronoun in English is generic, as she had when she wrote the book.
From the Wiki-Article about the Book
she used masculine pronouns as generic pronouns, which is still often done.
I guess it’s a product of it’s time in that regard, simmiliar to Tolkiens use of “Men” in Lotr being read as “Humans” in many cases when it was first published.
She was already criticizing the generic „he“ while writing the book. It probably wouldn’t be bothering me so much if there weren’t entire passages debating it every few chapters without mentioning the possibility of the singular „they“.
there are many possible reasons for that:
- she might have thought that the general critic on gender roles is allready enough for the reader
- she saw singular “they” as something for written or formal language and not everyday talk, which is what most of the dialogue in the book is.
- she was not happy with “they” since it can lead to confusion around singular and plural or did not see it as better alternative than a generic masculin pronoun for someother reason
- she simply did not use “they” that way when she wrote the book.
I sadly don’t own the anniversary edition, so i don’t know if le guin elaborates further on that. It’s definitely valid criticism however.
e: english grammar hard.
or the pragmatic reason that for a book that is basically popular fiction, it would alienate and seem weird to the vast majority of her readers? and maybe her or her editor had this in consideration when it the book was almost published 60 years ago?
perhaps if she had done that… the book might have been been or successful or popular as it was because that construction would have been so alienating and ‘incorrect’ for people for the first 30-40 years of it’s publication?
do you think Newton was an idiot because he didn’t know about relativity?
you do know, that the majority of modern gender discourse… originated in the 1970s, and only became popular with non-academics in the in the 2010s, mostly thanks to it’s use on social media?
but don’t let these facts get in the way of how much a book written before most of any of what you are talking about, existed, let alone outside of a tiny tiny subset of academics who were originating most of what you take for granted as having always have existed?
perhaps you could, I dunno, give Le guin credit for what a trailblazer she was in her time?
Considering he forgot women needed to exist for a species to work, I’m not so sure that was intentional.
^
Didn’t read the book
It was written in 1969. “They” was always a plural pronoun, and to many people even today it sounds strange to apply it to a single person. She was correct: there was no pronoun equivalent to “he” or “she” in english that doesn’t imply gender. We’ve coopted “they” and “them” for the purpose, but it’s almost as much a new thing as if we had just invented a new word. There are quite a number of SF works where the society depicted has pronouns that don’t imply gender - the authors just made them up.
That’s not correct.
This use of singular they had emerged by the 14th century, about a century after the plural they.
(non English speaking, here)
- I doubt many English speaking people had any idea back then that ‘they’ could be singular. Had they, I doubt that many ‘singular’ they proponents would have needed to fight so hard to make it accepted, you know.
- Maybe She she just decided they was not right for the way she wanted to write.
The references accompanying the quote from Wikipedia, at last the Oxford dictionary one make it rather clear it’s a much more recent acceptation to use it as a ‘personal singular’:
2009–
Used with reference to a person whose sense of personal identity does not correspond to conventional sex and gender distinctions, and who has typically asked to be referred to as they (rather than as he or she). (…)
In the 21st century, other th– pronouns (and the possessive adjective their) are sometimes used to refer to a named individual, so as to avoid revealing or making an assumption about that person’s gender;Only mentioning a ‘generic reference’, aka mentioning an individual as a generic representative of some larger group (ie, a student) dating back from 1450…
OP isn’t asking about they as a personal pronoun, they’re asking about they as a generic (non-gendered) singular pronoun. That’s exactly the usage that is centuries old.
Singular they may not have been used as a personal pronoun until recently, but that doesn’t mean writers haven’t been using it to refer to persons. It was frequently used to conceal a character’s gender by Shakespeare, for example.
It seems odd to me for the thought of using it to refer to persons of a people without gender didn’t occur to Le Guin even while she was writing passages debating the biases of using the generic „he“ and its alternatives.
It seems odd to me for the thought of using it to refer to persons of a people without gender didn’t occur to Le Guin even while she was writing passages debating the biases of using the generic „he“ and its alternatives.
I consider her a real acute author. So, based on nothing but my intuition (I want that to be perfectly clear) I would rather question my own expectations and my own reading of her text than doubt she did not put in some serious reflection in it.
I mean, I would really not be surprised to learn she decided it was just not fit for the purpose she had in mind. Also, I insist on that aspect of the question, and that would need to be verified, but I doubt there were that many examples of such usage at that time and since she did not write the book for 2026 readers but for her contemporaries…
Hmm, true but it was used in the case where the specific person being referred to was unknown. “Somebody left their umbrella.” It was not used the way OP is talking about, for a gender neutral individual.
It was also used for someone known, but whose gender was not known or being hidden. Shakespeare used they this way. From there, it’s not a great leap to use they to refer to someone without a gender.
To the best of my knowledge it would be correct to say that English language style guides at the time treated they/them as strictly plural, but that was actually a more recent change (ie, within the last century or so). Singular they existed for centuries, only to fall out of style with the increasing formalization of the English language. It’s use today is not a modern invention, but a return to its original usage.
So yes, Le Guin was probably taught that it is not proper to use it as a singular, and that’s how anyone alive at that time would have been taught to use it. But that’s not the same thing as saying it was “always” singular.
The singular “they” predates the existence of the USA. By several centuries. The first known written attestation to it dates back to the late 14th century. It was probably in common spoken use long before even that.
“They” was not, in short, “always” a plural pronoun.
But wasn’t it generally for an unknown person, like “I heard someone but I’m not seeing them”? Not to make a non-gendered pronoun for a particular person?
Moving goalposts now?
The OP is about UKlG “forgetting” about “they” as a gender neutral, and they aren’t talking about for an unknown person, they’re talking about a specific person. I’m not moving the goalpost, this is the exact thing we’re discussing.
What I responded to said this:
“They” was always a plural pronoun…
It wasn’t always a plural pronoun. You were just plain wrong. So you moved the goalposts so you could be “right”. And I pointed that out. It’s not that hard to follow, you know.
Perhaps your original wording was just bad?
They bothers me for that reason. It obfuscates the conversation. Makes me feel like Abbot and Costello. Almost every conversation about my daughters non binary friends requires clarification about who we’re talking about and usually we revert to calling everyone by name. I’m all for personal expression and everything, but I wish we picked a new word.
The way I put it to people who struggle with it is imagine you’ve invited a friend to dinner, and they ask “Do you mind if I bring a friend?” If you want to know what to cook, and you ask your friend, “Sure, but are they allergic to anything?” your friend will understand what you mean. Because you didn’t know the gender of your friend’s friend, you used “they” as a singular pronoun. Now just imagine you don’t know the biological sex of your daughter’s non-binary friends. It might help. :)
Okay, imagine you ask your teenage daughter what shenanigans she and her friends got up to on the weekend and try to track their happenings as the story progresses. Keep in mind there’s three Thems in the mix. “and then they went…” “who they?” and it’s either “oh, MJ” or it’s 3 of them. Its clunky, imprecise and interupts the flow of the storytelling. We should have done what English has done every other time it needs a new word, steal one from another language.
I’m all for neopronouns, and we do have them, but that would be even harder to teach people than the plural they. (Not to mention, it would face a lot more backlash.)
My perfect word would be something in between he/she so you could switch to it halfway through when you misspeak. I’m not trying to be ignorant but grammatical conventions are quite ingrained.
To be fair, I have the same problem when my wife is telling a story about her and her friends doing something. It’s all “the she told her that she wasn’t going to do that anymore” and I have to stop her and be like “wait wait, who told who that who wasn’t going to do what anymore!?” 😅
I agree that “they” being plural sometimes too adds another dimension of figuring out what the girls were doing as a group rather than a girl was doing, but it’s honestly already a shitshow. And (while I love my wife) made worse by a person who… maybe doesn’t have their audience’s interests in mind while telling a story. Because a well told story is structured to maintain a consistent use of pronouns and reintroduces by name when required. So, like, if we’re talking about Carmen’s story, she gets to be “she”, and then you tell me how “she said to Joan, that Tabby had blah blah blah”. That’s a little bit the orator’s fault.
New plan, we have first and second person pronouns (I and you), I think we need 5 new pronouns that correspond to “third person”, “fourth person”, “fifth person”, etc.
And those can be gender non-specific, because the same problem happens when a guy is telling a story involving multiple guys. Then it can come up in the grammar that “Johnny was talking to Peter, and A told B that Richard was mad at A because C didn’t go to B’s BBQ.”
Problem solved 😛
This would be just as much of a problem if they were boys or girls - multiple hes and shes instead of theys. The problem isn’t “they”, it always applies to multiple people of the same gender.
English could go the smart way and remove gender from the language entirely like pre-1910 Chinese or Farsi or the like.
My son is trans and, prior to transitioning, when through a phase where he just felt non-binary. So e went from “she” to “they” to “he.” I agree with you; though I felt it was important to refer to him in whatever was he felt appropriate, “they” always seemed awkward.
When my kid was still young enough to want me to, I would regularly read stories at bedtime, and one that we did was Adam-2 by Alistair Chisholm - and in that there’s a non-binary character who uses “ze” and “hir” pronouns.
Took me quite a while to get used to it, even though I was reading direct from the page. Was quite effective though, once I got past my brain’s hesitation.
Hmmm, I’ve never read that one, but I read an awful lot of SF and fantasy, and I’m fairly positive I’ve seen ze and hir used that way in another work. I don’t remember what though.
Ah ok, could be he’s borrowed it then 👍
Interesting read, thanks for sharing. That does put things into perspective, though I still disagree with her on some things.
It bothered me at first, but I interpreted it as part of the larger theme of the main character having difficulty truly accepting the people as genderless
I agree with Le Guin here, though only in hindsight. The singular they does imply gender, specifically a particular kind of nonbinary gender – it makes perfect sense for someone to say “I don’t use they/them pronouns; I prefer xe/xir.” It’s surprising she felt that at the time, though, since I don’t think it had as wide adoption at that point. I wonder if she felt the singular they did imply gender, but specifically an indeterminate or unknown gender, since that was its primary use at the time.
The singular version of “they” is “one”. Fite me.
it only works in passive constructions.
‘one bites the dog’ is a legit sentence, but in English it is passive/detached/non-agenic. one is not actively biting the dog here and now, it is a statement of possibility or frequency.
that construction works in other languages, for sure though. because they aren’t english and their use of ‘one’ does not have the same non-agentic interpretation. but that isn’t how english works, formally or colloquially. one is not a nominative pronoun in english, but it’s legitimate in dative or accustive cases, if it’s replacing him/her/it.
It just sounds unfamiliar. It’s perfectly grammatical, comprehensible, and avoids the ambiguities I deal with speaking with and about singular “theys” ten times every fucking day. In the realm of neopronouns, you’re not going to find one better.
