James – "Laid" (1993)

Dressed me up in women’s clothes

Messed around with gender roles

[NOTE: Today we present the second installment of the three-part interview of 2 or 3 lines by 2 or 3 lines.  If you missed part one, just scroll down to the bottom of this post to find it.]

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2 or 3 lines: I understand that 2 or 3 lines has declared war on the singular “they.”

2 or 3 lines: That’s a rather melodramatic way to put it, but you’re more or less correct.  

Q: Care to explain?

A: I’m happy to.  When I was growing up, “he” and “she” were the third-person singular pronouns used to refer to a male or a female person, while “they” was the third-person plural pronoun.  When you were talking about a person of unspecified gender, you used “he,” which was eventually viewed as sexist – so we began to say “he or she” to cover our bases instead.  “They” or “their” was also used as a singular pronoun in everyday speech when you didn’t know the gender – e.g.,  “Someone left their coat in the office,” or “A lawyer can keep communications with their clients confidential” – but I always viewed such usage as not really correct because “they” and “their” are plural . . . not singular.  At one time I would have replaced “their” in the previous examples with “he,” but more recently I would have said “he or she.”

Q: But that doesn’t work for people identify as non-binary – meaning neither male nor female.  Many of those individuals have asked to be referred to as “they” rather than “he” or “she.”

A: Correct.  So the singular “they” – which was many years was viewed as not really correct, but was tolerated for the sake or convenience – has taken on a politically correct aspect.

Q: Are you sure you have a problem with the use of “they” to refer to a non-binary person because you have a problem with the whole concept of non-binary individuals?

A: Not at all.  What I have a problem with is not knowing whether “they” is being used to refer to one person or to two or more persons.  I see “they” in a sentence and I assume that it refers to more than one person.  So when I’m reading about a non-binary person – who may or may not be otherwise identified as such – and “they” is used instead of that person’s name, I assume “they” refers to two or more people . . . not just to one person.  The use of the singular “they” to refer to a non-binary individual introduces an unnecessary element of ambiguity into communication, and God knows we’re confused enough already.  

Q: Just about everyone uses the singular “they” these days – and for good reason.  Here’s what a Washington Post editor had to say about the singular “they” a few years ago:

“[T]he singular ‘they’ [is] the only sensible solution to English’s lack of a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun. . . . ‘He’ once filled that role, but a male default hasn’t been palatable for decades.  Using ‘she’ in a sort of linguistic affirmative action strikes me as patronizing.  Alternating ‘he’ and ‘she’ is silly, as are ‘he/she,’ ‘(s)he’ and attempts at made-up pronouns.  The only thing standing in the way of ‘they’ has been the appearance of incorrectness — the lack of acceptance among educated readers.”

You don’t agree, I assume?

A: First of all, heaven forbid that we give any weight to the opinions of highly-educated people – such elitism is not to be tolerated!  Seriously, I’m not going to argue that we should go back to “he” as our default gender-neutral third-person pronoun.  I personally use “he or she” in some contexts, which gets annoying if you have to keep repeating it.  But now we can forget “he or she” – I’ve come up with a much better solution for this problem.

Q: Pray tell us, what is that solution?

A: The editor you just quoted talks about “English’s lack of a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun.”  Has he never heard of the word “it”?  If that’s not a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, I don’t know what is.

Q: So you want non-binary individuals to call themselves “it” instead or “they”?  “It” is usually used to refer to entities that are not regarded as persons – inanimate objects  or lower life forms, for example.  Isn’t it a little insulting to refer to a non-binary person as an “it”?

A: I’m not saying that we use “it” only in reference to a non-binary person – I’m saying that we should use “it” to refer to male and female and non-binary persons alike.  

Q: Wouldn’t that be just as ambiguous as the singular “they” is?  You wouldn’t know the gender of  a person referred to as “it.”

A: That’s exactly the direction the language has been moving in for years.  Most gender-specific nouns have been replaced by gender-neutral nouns.  We used to say “waiter” or “waitress.”  Now we say “server.”  “Flight attendant” has replaced “steward” and “stewardess.”  The term “server” and the term “flight attendant” don’t tell us whether the person is male or female or non-binary.  Usually we don’t need to know that.  

Q: But what if we do need to know the gender?

A: We can say “male server” or “female flight attendant” if we need to specify the person’s gender for some reason.  And if that’s true for nouns, why isn’t it also true for pronouns?  When we replaced “waiter” and “waitress” with “server,” we did so to emphasize the nature of the job rather than the gender of the worker – which rarely is significant.  If we use the gender-neutral term “server” to describe male and female and non-binary servers alike, why wouldn’t we also use a gender-neutral third-person pronoun?  In other words, why do we use “he” and “she” when we don’t use “waiter” and “waitress”?   

Q: You do have a point.

A: Using “he” for males and “she” for females and “they” for non-binary individuals emphasizes gender differences when our goal should be to treat members of different genders equally.  And one other thing: we have gender-specific pronouns, but we don’t have race-specific or religion-specific or marital status-specific or sexual preference-specific pronouns.  If you’re telling someone about an interaction you had with a teacher, or a doctor, or a letter carrier, or a flight attendant, that person’s gender is usually as superfluous as that person’s race or religion or marital status or sexual preference – or hair color or height and weight.   There may be times when it’s relevant to say “married teacher” or “African-American doctor” – if so, it’s simple enough to add an adjective that does the job – but usually “teacher” or “doctor” is all you need to say.  

Q: As I understand it, you’re questioning why we routinely specify gender through the use of gender-specific third-person pronouns when we don’t specify any of those other characteristics – and when the nouns that these pronouns refer to are almost always gender-neutral?  

A: Exactly. Why do we use pronouns that specify the gender of the teacher or the doctor when “teacher” and “doctor” are gender-neutral nouns?  

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One of my young grandsons insisted on dressing up as Princess Elsa (the protagonist of the Disney movie, Frozen) for Halloween this year.  

His parents gently tried to talk him out of it, but he had his heart set on trick-or-treating as a princess this year – he didn’t want to be one of the Power Rangers, or a member of the Paw Patrol, or any of the other choices offered.

One close family member who shall remain nameless has already decided that the boy – who hasn’t even reached his 3rd birthday yet – is a nascent transgender woman.  

I think that person is jumping the gun a bit.  My guess is that my grandson was so taken with the Princess Elsa character that he wants to be her for Halloween.  Her gender probably has nothing to do with it.

It’s interesting that none of his day-care friends nor his older brother has suggested that there’s anything wrong with his choice – no one has made fun of him.

That surprises me a little because kids seem to jump on anything out of the ordinary at a very young age.  But the kids he hangs out with don’t seem to think that his costume choice was odd.

Neither do I.  But I once dressed up as Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and lip-synched “Sweet Transvestite” from that movie’s soundtrack at a party I was hosting.  (There might have been alcohol involved.)

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The band James was formed in 1982 in Manchester, UK.  

Its original name was Venereal and the Diseases.  (I kid you not.)

“Laid” was the title track from the band’s fifth studio album, which was released in 1993.  Brian Eno produced the album and persuaded the group to release “Laid” as a single – the band’s members  viewed it as a B-side at best.  The song later became the theme song of the American Pie series of movies. 

Click here to listen to “Laid.”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: