Gender-Neutral Language

By Oak Hu

“Does inclusive language have to come at the cost of simple, honest, direct language? What if inclusive language is actually easier and more grammatical than non-inclusive language?”

These questions provided the basis for a new joint initiative from two of our school’s clubs: the STEM GSA (STEM’s Gender-Sexuality Alliance) and the STEM Dems (STEM’s High School Democrats of America chapter).

Like many clubs, the STEM Dems felt a slowdown in member engagement during the pandemic. Mitigated at first by excitement surrounding the 2020 election season, this lull began to really take effect after the inauguration. Club leaders wanted a reboot and decided to focus on political advocacy within the community.

I had always felt strongly about the issue of using “they” as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. In fact, I spoke about the topic for my freshman year World Literature midterm. To me and the rest of the STEM Dems leadership, inclusive language seemed like a perfect locus for political advocacy. We reached out to leaders of the STEM GSA and began planning a joint initiative on gender-neutral language. So far, we have held two meetings, one a discussion session and the other a research session.

In the first joint meeting, students discussed the benefits of gender-neutral language. We largely agreed that as more people began accepting themselves as outside of the gender binary, using “he/she” started becoming inadequate. However, we needed to resolve a few disagreements on how to implement changes.

Some participants in the discussion proposed that we should ask students to add pronouns onto their names in Zoom, but we realized that this might have unintended consequences. For instance, it might force “closeted” students to choose among appearing unsupportive, revealing their gender identity, or putting down incorrect pronouns.

Another proposal involved avoiding words like “freshmen” as potentially gendered speech. However, we reached the consensus that the initiative should focus on the more harmful instances of non-inclusive language. We felt that prioritizing certain information would also make things more adaptable for the general population.

The discussion group furthermore concluded that the benefits of gender-neutral language went beyond inclusion: using singular “they” made writing much simpler. For instance, take two versions of the following sentence:

“Though the first person on Mars won’t fly there by himself or herself, he or she will be more famous than his or her crew, who will get him or her to Mars in the first place.”

“Though the first person on Mars won’t fly there by themselves, they will be more famous than their crew, who will get them to Mars in the first place.”

We agreed that the second version seemed much less clunky, especially when read aloud. But did singular “they” feel more natural for everybody? Did style guides approve? Did the IB take a stance? To answer these questions, we next held a joint research session.

In the second meeting for the initiative, students split into breakout groups to conduct research. Topics included the stances of the IBO and various style guides, as well as the usage of “he/she” or singular “they” in school documents.

Students found that singular “they” might feel more natural than “he/she” for administrators, because singular “they” slips into documents that contain “he/she” elsewhere. In a DASD elementary school’s Parent Handbook, we even found an inconsistency within the same sentence: “Please have your child ready to exit your car quickly so he/she can proceed to the playground if not yet 8:45 or to their classroom if it is after 8:45.” STEM’s official documents have similar issues:

“The student receives an early dismissal pass from the attendance office which he/she shows to the classroom teacher.” (STEM Handbook)

“Parent must answer how they will support their child in preparation for the revision/retake of the assessment.” (STEM Handbook)

“After a student reaches 8 lates (excused or unexcused), he/she must have a doctor’s note for each additional late.” (Code of conduct)

“If a parent, guardian or other person having control of a student shows that they took every reasonable step … ” (Code of conduct)

As our club members found out, the IBO uses singular “they” in their documents. The breakout room focusing on the IBO’s stance discovered singular “they” across the board:

“A student may take as many or as few DP courses as they wish and their school allows.” (Website FAQs)

“The IB must have authorization from the candidate before an institute can download their results.” (University Guidelines)

“A candidate will be awarded DP Course Results if they follow the course of study and assessment for the selected subject(s) and/or one or more core elements.” (General Regulations)

Another group found that major style guides seem to either discourage “he/she” or actively support singular “they” as an alternative:

“Although it is an easy fix, the phrase he or she should be used sparingly, preferably only when no other technique is satisfactory.” (Chicago)

“APA endorses the use of ‘they’ as a singular third-person pronoun in the seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. This means it is officially good practice in scholarly writing to use the singular ‘they.’” (APA)

“MLA encourages writers to accept its use to avoid making or enabling assumptions about gender.” (MLA)

Where does the joint initiative from the STEM GSA and the STEM Dems go from here? We hope to discuss inclusive language with administrators and plan on running an educational campaign about gender and inclusive language. With exciting developments like expanding access to gender-neutral bathrooms, the clubs look forward to positive changes in the STEM community.