Wendy Palmer on Nostr: nprofile1q…d6nn7 that’s a really good question, there’s quite a few articles ...
nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqd62z0nl8twfw37nrdr3cfrr66pq8a3nclmmkqp6prrtqgjjen85sad6nn7 (nprofile…6nn7) that’s a really good question, there’s quite a few articles floating around about the long history of singular they and I’ve never seen any of them address that.
Wikipedia helpfully suggests theirself as a third option, previously unconsidered (by me, at least).
Natasha Pulley’s The Mars House has the majority of the cast as gender-neutral*, and I never once noted what she was doing with the themself/themselves. Which makes me think she used themselves, because that’s more usual for the eye to skim over. Or perhaps she even wrote it to avoid the use of it entirely. I don’t have a copy to check.
(*when I reached three gender-neutral characters, I ended up using zheir/zhem to make the differentiation clearer between singular and plural, but Pulley managed multiple singular theys in the same paragraph with aplomb)
Wikipedia helpfully suggests theirself as a third option, previously unconsidered (by me, at least).
Natasha Pulley’s The Mars House has the majority of the cast as gender-neutral*, and I never once noted what she was doing with the themself/themselves. Which makes me think she used themselves, because that’s more usual for the eye to skim over. Or perhaps she even wrote it to avoid the use of it entirely. I don’t have a copy to check.
(*when I reached three gender-neutral characters, I ended up using zheir/zhem to make the differentiation clearer between singular and plural, but Pulley managed multiple singular theys in the same paragraph with aplomb)