Should English Change Its System of Pronouns?

The linguist John McWhorter, a frequent contributor to the New York Times opinion pages, reports with pride in his September 25 column that he was finally able, as he puts it, after “a bit of conscious effort,” to say in regard to someone whose biological sex was not in doubt, “It’s their turn to use the kite, don’t you think?” Most of us, of course, would have said “her turn” if referring to a girl or “his turn” if referring to a boy.

True, as McWhorter himself observes, the use of they to refer to a single individual is old in English. A sentence like “That person is so far down the street that I can’t tell in which direction they are walking” sounds perfectly normal to all of us. Since we do not know if the person in question is male or female, we use the third-person-plural pronoun to include both possibilities.

But McWhorter is talking about something else, in illustration of which he gives the additional example of “Roberta wants a haircut, and they also want some highlights.” Although Roberta is an obviously female name, the speaker of such a sentence counterintuitively (and laudably, in McWhorter’s opinion) says “they” rather than “she,” whether because he knows that Roberta does not identify as female, or does not know but fears offending her if she doesn’t. In our era of LGBTQ politics, this is considered the progressive thing to do.