Is Arts Council Wales sniffing glue?
Gendered pronouns will be purged from official documentation by the Welsh government’s primary arts body, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
The Arts Council of Wales, the taxpayer-funded body responsible for supporting the arts on behalf of the devolved government, is set to purge male and female pronouns like “he/him” and “she/her” from the body’s official documentation, the Telegraph understands.
In place of gendered pronouns, the Arts Council will use gender-neutral pronouns “they/them”.
So no more “gendered” pronouns in the language of the Arts Council at all? Surely that’s insane? (And don’t call me Shirley.)
News of the policy arts comes after the Welsh government this year rolled out an LGBTQ+ Action Plan for Wales, which pledged to ensure public bodies were “sensitive to gendered language”.
Information from the Arts Council of Wales states that the public body is “currently undertaking a general update across our policies amending any specific references to gender (eg she/he/his/her) to ‘they/them’”.
Because nobody is a she or a he any more? Is that the new rule? Why weren’t we told?
Comments
14 responses to “You are all now neuter”
Eh, singular they can be used to mean “he or she”, and is less clunky than keeping on saying “he or she” all the time (plus saying “he or she” means putting “he” first, and saying “she or he” is harder for people to parse because they’re so used to it the other way round). Like “If someone wants to become a member of the Arts Council, they should blah blah blah” instead of “he or she should”. I think that’s fine.
But it’s not clear that they’re changing just “he/she” – it’s not clear whether or not the Telegraph is saying “pronouns like he, him, she, her” or just specifically “he/him” and the like. It seems more as if they’re saying it covers all third person pronouns. In short it’s stupidly written.
The link seems to go to a copy of the wrong Telegraph article.
What I’ve been able to find is no clearer than what is described in the OP: are they changing “he or she” to “they”, or are they changing all uses of “he” and all uses of “she” to they, or what?
I have sworn off of using “singular they” for all situations, just because I’m pissed off about people demanding its use. I’ll rephrase, use names, use a plural subject, or use “he or she”. I will especially not use “they” for a person (known or not) of known sex: “she had an abortion”.
The link at the top of the post? It goes to the right article when I click on it.
I’d fix it if I knew what’s wrong with it but I don’t so I can’t…
How about “it”? Will inanimate objects now be “they/them” from now on, as well?
You’re an inanimateobjectsphobe for asking that question. I’m shocked and appalled.
They should just switch to Turkish or Farsi or one of the other thousands of languages that lack grammatical gender.
@8:
No! That would be cultural appropriation! How dare you suggest that!
How about Klingon then? Would that count as cultural appropriation?
@10:
I’m not sure. Maybe we should ask the Grand High Court of Woke Sensitivity and Incloosion.
A word for 3rd person that is ambiguous about sex but definitely singular would be useful.
Too bad ‘it’ implies something less than a person, and that none of the suggestions for such a word from a few decades ago caught on.
How about ‘wossname’? :)
bascule
Is it starting to look like the English language contains the words “he-him” “she-her” “and “they-them”? Seriously, can we just give examples of pronouns as “he, she, they”? Those are the words, and we all know how they work.
(Maybe intermittent reminders about how to use “myself” would be useful though)