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In a genderless and sexless society, what would pronouns be based on?
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
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They would all be non-gendered pronouns.
"I", "you", and"we" are singular pronouns with no gender specification. They/Them, while ~~technically~~ commonly taught as plural, ~~has taken on the role of~~ is being used more often as a singular pronoun. Whatever takes the place of he/she would be something we simply don't associate a gender or sex with.
Depends on timeline really, but short answer is you're still wrong.
Shakespeare era literature defaulted to the singular they, he/she was only used in specific and rare situations.
So compared to 40 years ago, the singular they is having a resurgence. Compared to 400 years ago and it's barely being used today.
What should make it obvious that English is becoming more gendered and not less, is other western European languages even have gendered nouns. Put a Spaniard, a German, and a Frenchman in a room with a table and they're just gonna argue what kind of genitals the table would have if it was a hypothetical living thing.
That also helps illustrate how a language can just drop gender, English just uses "the" while other languages use something like "die, der, das" all to mean the same as "the".
They had always been both singular and plural. Wiktionary says the singular for a person previously referred to where gender is irrelevant or unknown had been around since the 14th century
The only new singular variant is where the person identifies as non-binary
Alright, guess we need to add "they is plural" to that thread about lies school taught you from a few days ago.