Why do we give our pronouns with more than one pronoun?

May 20, 2022 3:38 PM

Why is the standard to say she/her, they/them, he/him, etc. and not just she or they or he?
posted by Sock Ray Blue to Human Relations (16 answers total)

I think the two pronouns are for two different parts of speech. "She is going to the store. Give her the shopping list." "They are giving a speech so give them the talking points." "He has the children so did you tell him about the playground."
posted by RoadScholar at 3:44 PM on May 20, 2022

If someone is using less common pronouns than they/them, he/him, or she/her, people are likely to need that additional guidance on what the correct subjective and objective forms (and possibly the plurals thereof) are.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 3:49 PM on May 20, 2022

For example, ki/ker :)

[trying to spread the word about ki/ker. Thanks for the opportunity, BJE!]
posted by amtho at 3:50 PM on May 20, 2022

The first word in these pairs are when the pronoun is the subject, the second is when the pronoun is the object of the sentence.

I think any preferred way of stating these preferences is too new to label it a standard. A convention among a certain demographic, yes, to be sure. But not universally known or even understood, at this point.
posted by Rash at 3:52 PM on May 20, 2022

It may have started when people were using newly created gender neutral pronouns where just telling people the pronoun in one form doesn't give them any clue what to use for the others. If their subject pronoun is ze, is the object form zir or zim or something else?

It also help people hear it correctly if spoken. "she" and "he" sound very similar but "she/her" and "he/him" are much easier to distinguish.
posted by metahawk at 3:52 PM on May 20, 2022

Someone could also be she/they meaning both are good.
posted by bleep at 3:52 PM on May 20, 2022

You can look up the word neopronouns to learn more of the pronoun sets people might be sharing in this way.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 4:05 PM on May 20, 2022

Agreed with the above - it's necessary for newer/less-familiar pronouns, and using she/her and he/his is kind of a back-formation from there. I mean, speaking strictly from a practical perspective, 98% of the people I know who share their pronouns don't really *need* to share their pronouns at all in order for other people to use their pronouns correctly.

I find with neopronouns though people very often give the possessive as well - with the example above I would guess ki/ker goes with ker(s), but without looking it up or asking I can also imagine it could be kis or keir(s) or something else entirely.
posted by mskyle at 4:15 PM on May 20, 2022

I'm sorry to dampen enthusiasm, but "ki/ker" looks like it has a religious slur inside. I wouldn't write that out around any Jews (or say it if that's an "I" sound, not an "ee" sound).
posted by kingdead at 6:31 PM on May 20, 2022

Following on to what metahawk said, people in queer and trans spaces used to give triples, particularly because there isn't consensus on some sets--I have ze/zim/zir, but other people have ze/hir/hir and I believe other combinations of those two are also in use.

98% of the people I know who share their pronouns don't really *need* to share their pronouns at all in order for other people to use their pronouns correctly.

I purposely say "I use pronouns like x, y, and z" for several reasons, but one is that people specifying pronouns they receive by default often end up saying "he/him" or whatever really fast and sounding bored or dismissive whether they intended to or not.
posted by hoyland at 6:58 PM on May 20, 2022

A lot of nonbinary people will have something like "they/she" or "he/she" or "he/they". This usually means either pronoun is acceptable, but if there is a preference it'll be for the one that's listed first (so a "they/she" person likely either has no preference between they and she OR prefers they but still accepts she). Or, some people like the two pronouns shuffled - so you might refer to them in one sentence and her in the next - but there isn't really a way to know if someone wants pronoun shuffling like that unless you ask or they volunteer it.

Anyhow, in the context of mixed pronoun sets existing, a matched pronoun set conveys that that's the only pronoun set, no others. So 'they/them' emphasizes that the person is only to be referred to with those pronouns, no others. It at least feels (to me anyway) like it specifically excludes he and she more than just saying 'they' would.

Otherwise, maybe just a linguistic marker for talking about the pronouns as words vs using them in a sentence? It sounds less weird than saying "hello my pronouns are he". "Hello my pronoun is she?" I don't even know whether to make that plural or singular, whereas a pair of pronouns like he/him is clearly plural.
posted by Zephyr at 7:58 PM on May 20, 2022

I would conjecture that when people started listening pronouns, there were no designated fields for doing so in virtually all software. Having she/her after your name makes it a little clearer that you're specifying pronouns rather than just one of them.
posted by Candleman at 8:13 PM on May 20, 2022

Sometimes people also say he/him/his. That's becoming less common, though.

I actually think it's not a grammatical thing. If you're talking about what you see in like email signature blocks or social media profiles, I think the multiple pronouns serve to signal that you're talking about pronouns at all.
posted by J. Wilson at 8:33 PM on May 20, 2022

It also has mundane clarification purposes. If my signature says “Taylor, he” it kind of looks like maybe it is a typo. “Taylor, he/him” is much more obviously a declaration of pronouns.
posted by Vatnesine at 8:44 PM on May 20, 2022

Technically, personal pronouns in the English language have five different forms: subjective ("I"), objective ("me"), possessive adjectival ("my"), possessive nominative ("mine"), and reflexive ("myself"). If you're given a pronoun you've never seen before (which if someone uses a neopronoun, you might not have), it's helpful to have an much information as is necessary to work out all five of these forms. It's almost never necessary to provide the reflexive pronoun explicitly, because its formation is very regular (it's either the objective or possessive adjectival, depending on euphony, followed by "self" for singulars and "selves" for plurals*). Possessive nominative is also very regular; with the notable exception of possessive adjectival pronouns ending in "y" (e.g. "my", "thy") one just adds an "s" to the possessive adjectival (leaving it off if the adjectival already ended in "s", so that "his" stays "his" instead of becoming "hiss"). So really if you know three forms, you can derive the other two pretty easily. There are definitely standards where all three are included; the subjective/objective only form admittedly doesn't provide needed information on a reasonably esoteric pronoun (e.g. if my nametag says "e/em", how many people are going to know what adjective to attach to an object belonging to me) but is, I suppose, a space-saving compromise.

*Incidentally, I've followed with interest the choice of reflexive for semantically-singular "they" over several years. It looks to me like "themself" (following the semantic singular form) is more common than "themselves" (following the grammatically plural form), but both get a fair bit of use.
posted by jackbishop at 5:10 AM on May 21, 2022

I do think ze/hir was a root for this specifically, combined with the bonus effect of ‘if there’s a slash it looks more like a pronoun declaration than a typo’ effect mentioned above.
posted by lokta at 8:07 AM on May 21, 2022