Enormously helpful and clear, even for those of us who are not versed in analytic philosophy or linguistics. From the start, you remind us what language is for: “the reason we have language at all is that it enabled us to engage in cooperative behavior that increased our viability as a species.” I also particularly appreciated your observations about cognitive load. I suspect many of us have experienced this in reading, for example, a news report that fails to identify accurately who is male and who is female. Thank you.
I very much enjoyed reading this essay. Your clarity and careful thinking are refreshing.
I’m curious - would you say that all the arguments you present against they/them pronouns apply equally to the use of she/her pronouns by males claiming to be women, and he/him pronouns by females claiming to be men?
Not really. One of the assumptions of analytic philosophy is that we don’t deliberately say things that are false. Now, there are social, non-philosophical reasons one might be willing to use a person’s preferred man/woman pronouns that are counterfactual, but that still wouldn’t make the declarative sentence “She is a woman” in the case of a man who “identifies” as a woman true.
There are three main arguments against using “they/them” pronouns:
1) Any metaphysical claims about non-binary gender identity are fictive. Everyone (even people with disorders of sexual development) is either male or female. No one is neither or both. So the entire justification for why one might use they/them pronouns for an individual is flawed.
2) Using they/them pronouns reduces the precision of the language. When language changes organically, it always does so by increasing precision. We invent new words (like the noun “email” and the verb “to Google”) so that we don’t have to be more prolix to get our point across, like “mail but on the computer” or “searching on a search engine called Google”. Because when we say “They didn’t like the pizza,” you wouldn’t know if that referred to one person or more without additional clarification, “They didn’t like the pizza, not both of them, but just Terry.” That destroys the function of the pronoun by requiring additional words to do the same work as “she”.
3) It assumes assent to a proposition one may not assent to. If one believes, as I do, that there is no such thing as “non-binary” because everyone is either male or female, if I were to use “they/them” for an individual when speaking to other people, it would be a nearly certain deduction that I agreed that a person can be non-binary. Depending on the relationship you have with someone, they can ask you not to use gendered pronouns for them whilst in their presence. That wouldn’t imply that you believed that they were neither male nor female, only that you knew that they believed that, and your relationship is such that you were willing to not say something they’d find offensive to them. But the request to ask you to use “they/them” pronouns when referring to that person with others is to ask for us to act hypocritically. Strictly speaking, it’s none of anyone’s business what pronouns we use when we are talking about them. They are not “their” pronouns—they belong to the user.
In all three cases, these problems don’t apply to men who are mimicking women, or vice versa. That’s just a falsehood. And while there are reasons to say things we know to be false on occasion, where the trans community goes wrong is when they claim that our agreement to do so has any existential import. Just because people call you “she” doesn’t make you a woman. What philosophy is interested in is the truth or falsity of propositions, so while most analytic philosophers would argue against using counterfactual he/him she/her pronouns, they would do so for largely other reasons than the 3 I’ve enumerated against they/them pronouns, above.
As you know, I agree with your basic premise and conclusions. I would take (mild) issue with point two-that organic language change increases precision. To take my own bugbear “Begging the question” is changing from meaning “To assume the conclusion in the premises” (useful admonition) to “prompts a further question” (something we already have a ln expression for. We are losing meaning.
Hmmm…as someone who taught critical thinking for a long time (and therefore taught the begging-the-question fallacy) agree that this is started as a misuse. That happens regularly in language and is called “semantic drift”. But I’d argue that semantic drift is different from becoming less precise. The only examples I can come up with of imprecision in language is postmodernist language engineering (“differently abled”, “birthing person,” “person of size”), examples of what linguist Stephen Pinker calls the “euphemism treadmill.” While these sometimes catch on, because the underlying reality doesn’t change, the new terms need to be further replaced.
Wow - thank you so much for that thorough response. This part of your last paragraph in particular got my attention:
“…where the trans community goes wrong is when they claim that our agreement to [use preferred pronouns] has any existential import. Just because people call you “she” doesn’t make you a woman.”
I agree, but my sense is that the gender ideologues are engaging in a cultural project of redefinition, specifically attempting to redefine the word “woman” to include men. So, I believe that by using preferred pronouns I’m furthering that project. This is what I find so unsettling, because the redefinition has made its way into our policies and laws, with bad consequences for girls and women. I used to believe that preferred pronouns were a polite fiction that made life easier for trans people. I now realize that calling men “she” and “her” is being taken as literally true, with redefinition being the strategy by which this fiction has morphed into a truth that women are being compelled to affirm in their daily lives. And if they don’t affirm, they face consequences.
That's right. Human society runs on a shared, objective reality. The language we use is critical to maintaining it. That courtrooms permit "her penis" nonsense is baffling and very alarming. Since when do we allow perjury to spare someone's feelings? Or to solidify their delusions about themselves? The use of preferred pronouns destroys reading comprehension. It creates cognitive dissonance. The wants of a tiny minority cannot prevail over the needs of the majority. We cannot rewire our brains for them.
Solid use of Anscombe's brute facts framework here. The distinction between descriptons belonging to the observer vs. the observed is key, and I've always thought philosophers underuse that insight whn dealing with linguistic conflicts. The point about closed-class words serving as anaphoric pointers rather than expressive ornaments is kinda what I saw working on NLP systems where ambiguity resolution breaks down fast.
Enormously helpful and clear, even for those of us who are not versed in analytic philosophy or linguistics. From the start, you remind us what language is for: “the reason we have language at all is that it enabled us to engage in cooperative behavior that increased our viability as a species.” I also particularly appreciated your observations about cognitive load. I suspect many of us have experienced this in reading, for example, a news report that fails to identify accurately who is male and who is female. Thank you.
I very much enjoyed reading this essay. Your clarity and careful thinking are refreshing.
I’m curious - would you say that all the arguments you present against they/them pronouns apply equally to the use of she/her pronouns by males claiming to be women, and he/him pronouns by females claiming to be men?
Not really. One of the assumptions of analytic philosophy is that we don’t deliberately say things that are false. Now, there are social, non-philosophical reasons one might be willing to use a person’s preferred man/woman pronouns that are counterfactual, but that still wouldn’t make the declarative sentence “She is a woman” in the case of a man who “identifies” as a woman true.
There are three main arguments against using “they/them” pronouns:
1) Any metaphysical claims about non-binary gender identity are fictive. Everyone (even people with disorders of sexual development) is either male or female. No one is neither or both. So the entire justification for why one might use they/them pronouns for an individual is flawed.
2) Using they/them pronouns reduces the precision of the language. When language changes organically, it always does so by increasing precision. We invent new words (like the noun “email” and the verb “to Google”) so that we don’t have to be more prolix to get our point across, like “mail but on the computer” or “searching on a search engine called Google”. Because when we say “They didn’t like the pizza,” you wouldn’t know if that referred to one person or more without additional clarification, “They didn’t like the pizza, not both of them, but just Terry.” That destroys the function of the pronoun by requiring additional words to do the same work as “she”.
3) It assumes assent to a proposition one may not assent to. If one believes, as I do, that there is no such thing as “non-binary” because everyone is either male or female, if I were to use “they/them” for an individual when speaking to other people, it would be a nearly certain deduction that I agreed that a person can be non-binary. Depending on the relationship you have with someone, they can ask you not to use gendered pronouns for them whilst in their presence. That wouldn’t imply that you believed that they were neither male nor female, only that you knew that they believed that, and your relationship is such that you were willing to not say something they’d find offensive to them. But the request to ask you to use “they/them” pronouns when referring to that person with others is to ask for us to act hypocritically. Strictly speaking, it’s none of anyone’s business what pronouns we use when we are talking about them. They are not “their” pronouns—they belong to the user.
In all three cases, these problems don’t apply to men who are mimicking women, or vice versa. That’s just a falsehood. And while there are reasons to say things we know to be false on occasion, where the trans community goes wrong is when they claim that our agreement to do so has any existential import. Just because people call you “she” doesn’t make you a woman. What philosophy is interested in is the truth or falsity of propositions, so while most analytic philosophers would argue against using counterfactual he/him she/her pronouns, they would do so for largely other reasons than the 3 I’ve enumerated against they/them pronouns, above.
As you know, I agree with your basic premise and conclusions. I would take (mild) issue with point two-that organic language change increases precision. To take my own bugbear “Begging the question” is changing from meaning “To assume the conclusion in the premises” (useful admonition) to “prompts a further question” (something we already have a ln expression for. We are losing meaning.
Hmmm…as someone who taught critical thinking for a long time (and therefore taught the begging-the-question fallacy) agree that this is started as a misuse. That happens regularly in language and is called “semantic drift”. But I’d argue that semantic drift is different from becoming less precise. The only examples I can come up with of imprecision in language is postmodernist language engineering (“differently abled”, “birthing person,” “person of size”), examples of what linguist Stephen Pinker calls the “euphemism treadmill.” While these sometimes catch on, because the underlying reality doesn’t change, the new terms need to be further replaced.
All of those things are, I agree abominations. But then all post modernism is a self refuting abomination...
Wow - thank you so much for that thorough response. This part of your last paragraph in particular got my attention:
“…where the trans community goes wrong is when they claim that our agreement to [use preferred pronouns] has any existential import. Just because people call you “she” doesn’t make you a woman.”
I agree, but my sense is that the gender ideologues are engaging in a cultural project of redefinition, specifically attempting to redefine the word “woman” to include men. So, I believe that by using preferred pronouns I’m furthering that project. This is what I find so unsettling, because the redefinition has made its way into our policies and laws, with bad consequences for girls and women. I used to believe that preferred pronouns were a polite fiction that made life easier for trans people. I now realize that calling men “she” and “her” is being taken as literally true, with redefinition being the strategy by which this fiction has morphed into a truth that women are being compelled to affirm in their daily lives. And if they don’t affirm, they face consequences.
That's right. Human society runs on a shared, objective reality. The language we use is critical to maintaining it. That courtrooms permit "her penis" nonsense is baffling and very alarming. Since when do we allow perjury to spare someone's feelings? Or to solidify their delusions about themselves? The use of preferred pronouns destroys reading comprehension. It creates cognitive dissonance. The wants of a tiny minority cannot prevail over the needs of the majority. We cannot rewire our brains for them.
Solid use of Anscombe's brute facts framework here. The distinction between descriptons belonging to the observer vs. the observed is key, and I've always thought philosophers underuse that insight whn dealing with linguistic conflicts. The point about closed-class words serving as anaphoric pointers rather than expressive ornaments is kinda what I saw working on NLP systems where ambiguity resolution breaks down fast.
Where can I find out more about the NLP reference? That seems very interesting.