First of all, let me make a few things perfectly clear. This post is not a complaint about people’s use of the singular they, especially since I’ve blogged about that before, and I’m all for it. (Suffice it to say that I believe language is a living, breathing, changing entity. To find out more, you’ll just have to read the post.)
And this post is absolutely, positively not about people’s choices of pronoun to indicate their gender identity. It’s not up to me to make those kinds of decisions for others, and I’m quite content to respect their choices. It’s absurd to me how many people get worked up over it. Every single day, every human on the planet makes at least a dozen choices about who they are and how they present themselves to the world. Why should pronouns be some sort of a no-fly zone? You be you.
No, this is about a bad habit that seems to be increasingly prevalent, at least here in the US. I am just as guilty of it as the next person. To wit: I have this lazy way of not fully describing whom I refer to. I have a friend who likes to point this habit out to me whenever it pops up in one of my blog posts. Here’s a really scary example:
I was at my doctor’s office the other day, and because I was wearing sandals, she noticed my swollen feet and asked about them. (I get that a lot from doctors, because swollen feet can be an indicator of heart disease. I appreciate the medical field’s due diligence in this regard, but my horrid feet have nothing to do with heart disease.)
I reassured her that, although they’re unattractive, my feet are not a cause for concern. They’ve been that way since I was 19 years old. I was out with some college friends, and I got really drunk and jumped off a sand dune that was a lot higher than I expected. I felt a sharp pain in my bare feet upon landing, but thought nothing of it at that time. The next day I woke up and my feet were swollen, and they have been ever since.
“They told me I damaged my lymphatic system,” I said.
“Oh. Okay,” my doctor said, and then moved on to other topics.
After I left her office, I realized she hadn’t even bothered to inquire who the “they” was (were?) who gave me that diagnosis. (Okay, I’m too tired to even try to parse that sentence. So sue me.)
That’s problematic. For all she knew, “they” were the Three Stooges. Or maybe they were people who don’t believe in science. Or they could have been my dear departed (and entirely fictional) Aunt Gertrude, who got all her information from Fox News, bless her heart.
How could my doctor determine the value of that diagnosis without knowing who made it? But I said it with conviction, and so she just assumed “they” were people who knew what the hell they were talking about. (And they are.)
“They” is lazy shorthand for the absence of facts. “They” is vague. “They” could be Merlin the magician, for all anyone knows. And yet we all seem to be giving “they” more power and legitimacy with each passing day. Is that due to its mystery, or due to the fact that none of us can be bothered to find out who “they” are (Is?) whenever they make an appearance?
People often try to lend weight to their convictions by saying, “They always say that…” (blah, blah, blah.)
If more than one person says it, it must be true. But who is saying it? The lunatic fringe? ChatGPT? Russian hackers? Your friendly neighborhood book-banning anti-vaxxer?
Perhaps, as in the cartoon below, “they” is a mutual hallucination that we’re all choosing to have for lack of any motivation to do otherwise. Context is everything. And yet we seem to be losing our ability to think critically even as we discard our desire for accurate details. And you know what “they” say. . .
It’s a slippery slope, dear reader.
“They” say that my book is worth reading, so check it out! http://amzn.to/2mlPVh5
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