In the 1970s, we tried to solve the sexist usage of deferring to male pronouns in mixed or ambiguous situations calling for a singular application. Before then, this sentence was standard usage:
An employee must understand a job requires that he ask his manager about problems unfamiliar to him.
In 1978, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) decided that since such usage excluded females, some workarounds were preferable. Thus, the following three sentences became standard, with the second and third ones being preferable to the wordy and awkward first:
- An employee must understand the job requires that he or she ask his or her manager about problems unfamiliar to him or her.
- Employees must understand the job requires that they ask their manager about problems unfamiliar to them.
- An employee must understand that the job requires asking a manager about unfamiliar problems.
Good enough. Fast forward nearly a half-century to gender-identification issues and preferred pronouns. Now we encourage employees to proclaim their preferred pronoun in the name of inclusion. The intention behind this usage addition is honorable, no doubt. But announcing preferred pronouns creates more problems than it solves. Imagine a project team of six employees:
- Allie, agender, prefers they/them/their
- Billie, female, prefers he/him/his
- Carlie, male, prefers it/its
- Dannie, female, prefers she/her/hers
- Eddie, male, prefers he/him/his
- Frankie, nonbinary, prefers no pronoun
In such a situation, you can see the confusion that will arise from referring to these team members in a business document. The NCTE has tried addressing this language bind through recommendations in a revised 2018 position statement, which falls short of solving the problem.
So this is what I say. The pronouns he/him/his and she/her/hers will not disappear from the language anytime soon. Regardless of the next step in our discovery of respectful usage, show patience. Respect those who "misuse" the new standards at the same level that you are trying to respect those you want to bring into the language fold. Things will evolve, but only with more patience and less finger-pointing.
