Trouble, Indeed: John McWhorter, Stuffy Grammarians, and Gender Ideology [Firebrand Big Read]
Photo by Tim Mossholder
Smart people often make bad arguments. John McWhorter is a smart person. Many aspects of his new book, Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words (Avery, 2025, 223 pp.), demonstrate just that. When it comes to linguistics, McWhorter knows his stuff. By the end of the book, however, one realizes that this isn’t simply a waltz through a particular neighborhood of linguistic history. It is also a moral argument, and that is where the trouble lies. To come to the point, the use of “they” as a pronoun for a single, specific individual is not simply an example of the way in which languages change in organic and unforeseen ways over time. Neither is it a matter of common courtesy. It is a philosophical matter, or, for people of faith, a matter of theological anthropology. More simply, it signifies a shift in our thinking about the nature of human beings. This is a weighty concern.
Each chapter deals with a different pronoun, or, in the case of she/he/it, a group of pronouns. McWhorter struts as he walks through the ways in which our pronouns finally took on the shape they have today. His writing is engaging, even funny at times. For those with an interest in linguistics, but who may not wish to wade neck-deep into the development of the English language, the first four chapters (I, you, we, she/he/it) offer lively analyses.
He holds that pronouns are “less words than traffic lights of a kind” (4). What he means by this is never entirely clear. He specifies that “language is always drinking in new nouns, verbs, and adjectives” (4) but not pronouns. He later refers to them as “workhorse words” and “language’s nails and screws” (6). Because of their persistence over time and their load-bearing function, “to mess with our pronouns is to mess with our sense of the order of things, what’s up and what’s down—life itself. This is especially true with matters controversial, which is why pronouns so often lead to various kinds of agita. All, especially in our times, intuitively get that pronouns have a way of stirring up trouble” (6).
I don’t remember pronouns stirring up trouble until a few years ago when they became the symbols of an ideological movement to deconstruct traditional gender-identity norms. Prior to that point, they were simply words that stood in for nouns. Formal writing required a basic mastery of their use, particularly as singular and plural, subject and object. Other than grammarians and editors, no one spent much time thinking about pronouns. That changed when academic arguments meant to degrade the male-female binary found their way into left-wing culture. McWhorter’s warning that “to mess with our pronouns” is to disturb our sense of the order of things presages arguments he will make in the final chapter of the book. If the Western world is indeed inflamed by “pronoun trouble,” McWhorter is stoking the fire.
Throughout the first four chapters, he demonstrates ably how English pronouns have changed over time. He shows how English pronouns are like and unlike pronouns in a wide array of other languages. Additionally, he provides specific examples of ways in which informal usage tends to differ from, and influence, formal usage. His disdain for “sniffy grammar guides” (31) is apparent throughout. McWhorter is interested in the ways in which language functions in the warp and woof of everyday speech. He has no use for “blackboard grammarians,” the guardians of English’s formal structures. Thus he offers pronouncements such as, “the idea that a language must corral its pronouns according to whether they are subjects or objects is, from a broader perspective, a tad flat-earther!” (38).
By showing how our pronouns have changed over time and arguing that actual usage should trump the restrictions of hidebound grammarians, McWhorter creates a sense of the instability of language that will serve his purposes in chapter 5, which deals with “they.” He notes correctly that the singular “they/them/their” is already commonplace in common English usage. Sentences like “Everyone has their opinion,” or “Each person should pick up their trash” are part of normal, everyday speech. Some grammar guides now affirm “they” as a singular pronoun. (Maybe the grammarians aren’t so stuffy after all.) One could view this as a normal example of linguistic development. Our pronouns have changed in the past. The singular “they” is just one more example.
Further, McWhorter argues, the alternatives to the singular “they” just don’t work anymore. Once upon a time we used “his” to refer to both men and women, as in, “Let everyone state his name.” In more recent years, we have moved to “his or her.” According to McWhorter, “The idea of processing both men and women when hearing he is an absurdity” (170). The problem with “his or her” is that “none of this has ever worked gracefully” (170). It sounds clunky. We need an alternative, and the common usage of “they” as a singular pronoun provides us with the obvious choice.
This is where things get sticky. He holds that the rejection of the singular "they" has never made linguistic sense. Hence its common use for nonspecific referents: “Someone left their laptop in the classroom, but they can pick it up at the front desk.” Note that the antecedent of “they” is “someone.” It is not a specific person. In recent years, however, we have begun to see “they” as a pronoun referring to a specific individual: “Professor Smith won’t hold class today. They are sick.” As McWhorter, acknowledges, this is a different matter.
In formal writing, the singular, non-specific they is like wearing flip-flops with a clergy robe. It is not simply gauche, but downright improper. In time, however, this use of “they” very well may become universally accepted in formal English (just as flip-flops have become tragically ubiquitous), and I will take my place among McWhorter’s “stuffy grammarians.” With regard to the use of “they” for specific singular referents, however, there is more at play than grammar: “What made the difference,” McWhorter writes,” was the increasing visibility of people resisting the gender binary” (174). He continues, “[T]he new acceptance of singular they has not been driven by a critical mass coming to understand that there was nothing wrong with it grammatically. Rather, a more explicitly gender-neutral they was recruited by a newly visible segment of the population whose acceptance had, blissfully, become a sign of moral enlightenment” (176).
McWhorter’s blissful celebration of moral progress has long been at home among Ivy-League denizens, those who wish they were Ivy-League denizens, and at wine-tasting parties where people dish about who was wearing what at the Met Gala. More recently it has seeped into pop culture. Yet despite his insistence upon the ubiquity of this perspective, many people have a different take on the “they/them” phenomenon: a divisive ideological sect within Western culture has attempted to impose and popularize a revised anthropology through the manipulation of language.
He admits that the new “they” can create confusion, and in many cases it simply sounds wrong. He also notes that the grammar breaks down when using the singular “they.” Should we say “they is” or “they are”? Perhaps, he suggests, we should adopt “they’s” (with more derision of blackboard grammarians). He knows how linguistically awkward this is, but apparently the criterion by which he rules out “he or she” doesn’t apply here. The culture has changed in its understanding of gender and identity, and the language must follow suit. Moreover, with a bit of practice, we can all catch on to the way in which we are now supposed to speak. It should become “a matter of etiquette” (197). Those who won’t get on board will be like people who wear tube socks in the summer and use aerosol hairspray. He even reaches for the “right side of history” argument, suggesting that we invite the derision of future generations if we don’t change our language to suit the new gender ideology.
At the risk of sounding like a tube-sock-wearing grammarian, I don’t find McWhorter’s arguments for the singular “they” compelling. The rules of formal grammar are not simply stuffy pedantry. They facilitate both clarity and elegance. They may also prevent the kinds of ideological predations that the use of “they” for a particular singular referent represents. While we may at times use the singular “they” in a non-specific way in informal speech, to dispense with the formal restriction of “they” to plural referents can be both confusing and clunky. The grammatical and stylistic difficulties underscore that we are not dealing as much with a natural development of language as an ideological campaign.
The matter is not as simple as the common courtesy of using “they” with reference to a person with gender dysphoria. It is this same ideology that has given rise to the listing of pronouns in email signatures and Zoom accounts. Depending on the setting, those who do not do so may be marked out as regressive bigots. To be identified in this way could have negative implications for career, schooling, and other opportunities. It is this same ideology that has told us that “some men have uteruses” and that we should use “birthing person” rather than “mother.” It is, moreover, this same ideology that has given rise to the Kelly Loving Act in Colorado, which categorizes “misgendering” and “deadnaming” as discriminatory acts. Calling a biological male who identifies as a female “he” is now a legal matter. The problem for traditional Christian institutions, including colleges and universities, should be immediately clear. This movement is not about courtesy or kindness. It is about power and forced ideological conformity.
McWhorter speaks as if the rejection of the male-female gender binary is a foregone conclusion. Were that the case, however, its proponents would not have to push so hard for its acceptance. The very argument of the book presumes that its claims are in dispute. Otherwise there would be no reason to write it. As the 2024 election showed, many Americans do not affirm radical gender ideology, including the rejection of the male-female binary. There is good reason for this: radical gender ideology is a lie. It is simply untrue that sex and gender are entirely social constructs. Biologically, you and I exist because of sexual dimorphism. Is it realistic, wise, or even safe to sever biological reality from social identity? The AP reports the case of a hospital patient who presented as a man with stomach pains. As it turns out, this person was a biological woman who then gave birth to a stillborn baby. Had the hospital received proper information about the sex of the patient, things might have ended differently.
Christians should be particularly resistant to these claims that McWhorter believes we should all uncritically adopt. Language shapes thought, and to describe a single, specific individual as “they” presumes a certain claim about the nature of personhood: some people are neither male nor female. This is not primarily an argument about intersex people. Most Christians would affirm that, in the case of people born with physical characteristics that do not fit the normal gender binary, we should show compassion and sensitivity. Rather, the argument is about people who identify as neither male nor female. Their gender identity relates to an internal perception of themselves, not their biology. Who they are is determined by how they feel. This vision of the self is inconsistent with a properly Christian theological anthropology.
As Christians, we must reject the culture of radical self-invention. We do not create ourselves. Rather, God has created us. Our vision of created existence involves the affirmation that “male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27, NIV). Jesus himself affirms this vision of male and female in Matthew 19:4. Whatever else we wish to say about the nature of human beings, we must also affirm that creation as male and female is part of it. A single, specific human being is not “they.” Men do not have uteruses. People who give birth are mothers. Parents who refuse to go along with a child’s gender dysphoria are not harming them, but helping. We resist the spirit of the age when it so clearly rejects the understanding of humanity that God has revealed.
We may be told we are unloving simply because we hold such positions, but this accusation is off base. We cannot sever love from truth. When it comes to people with gender dysphoria, the question, "What does love require?" is not easy to answer. Kindness matters. Empathy matters. Yet truth matters as well, and if we do not accept the presuppositions of radical gender ideology, if our anthropology is informed by our faith, then honesty and love require us to speak and act out of our convictions.
Language shapes our understanding. It gives us categories for making sense of the world around us. How we speak matters. McWhorter is entirely correct that pronouns play a major role in our self-understanding, but he errs in his moral judgment. In so doing, he not only describes “pronoun trouble,” but perpetuates it.
David F. Watson is Lead Editor of Firebrand. He serves as Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. Starting July 1, he will begin serving as president of Asbury Theological Seminary.