I GOT A LOVE JONES // a hearty beast: Using the pronoun "they" to refer to a single person is grammatically incorrect.

Jan 14 2:13 pm

a hearty beast: Using the pronoun "they" to refer to a single person is grammatically incorrect. »

in—circles:

satan-dennys-powerviolence:

Please stop doing it. It’s not progressive or cool, it’s just plain incorrect.

I’m not sure exactly what you’re referring to, but this is relevant to the topic of cisprivilege and respecting trans*people (note: I’m using this term because I…

it isn’t even grammatically “incorrect” in the first place.

i mean, at this point, i’m willing to just say that if there’s a large number of people using it — both in the trans community and in a general, better-than-using-he/she-or-just-he sense, as it has been used for centuries, at least as far back as the bible — then by definition that makes it grammatically correct. usage trumps dictionary. like most of the most commonly whined about grammatical issues brought up today, this one is still around because the dead old white guy who arbitrarily decided that it must be a rule rather than a preference was lucky enough to maintain his relevance over all the other dead old white grammarians who thought the rule ought to be the other way around.

why don’t any of the 8 billion “grammar nazis” (who in the fuck else would actually be proud to call themselves that!?) ever question exactly where these rules are coming from? at all?

but the fact that this specific butthurt pops up so often (always among people who grow up speaking the popular form of standard dialect and thus never have to think about these things) doesn’t surprise me, because it is SPECIFICALLY relevant to the oppression of transpeople and women. language policing is a form of oppression and rarely little else.

but STILL, remove that angle, and it still isn’t grammatically incorrect. that is a myth.