I have been thinking again about pronouns. Not because the subject is new, but because it has accompanied much of my adult life as a writer.

It has long seemed to me that pronouns matter because they support assumptions, and assumptions often support prejudice. In writing, neutrality is difficult. One either accepts inherited patterns of expression, with all the assumptions they carry, or participates in the continuing challenge to them.

My own journey began in the latter half of the 1970s.

I grew up in a family with strong left leanings and surrounded by strong women. The lesson I absorbed was simple: different therefore equal. When, as a young man working for a UK government quango, I was invited to attend a residential course at Laurieston Hall near the Scottish border on sexism and male attitudes, I approached it with confidence. I already regarded myself as broadly committed to equality.

The experience was intense and unsettling in the best possible sense. I discovered that not every radical woman stood on the political left. Not everyone on the left fully understood or acknowledged the realities of inequality. Most importantly, I discovered that I was not free of assumptions myself. I too could display prejudice through habits of speech, thought and conduct that I had scarcely noticed.

That realisation has stayed with me.

Only a year or two before, in 1976, the title Ms had begun to gain official recognition within the UK's House of Commons. Forms of address were live topics. Language itself was becoming part of the discussion.

After Laurieston, I resolved to write s/he. It was never an elegant solution, but it seemed preferable to the supposedly universal he that dominated much published writing at the time. During my freelance years I often alternated she and he throughout a piece. Editors were rarely enthusiastic and many restored the familiar masculine form. Some, however, would tolerate an article that consistently used she.

Eventually I migrated to they. For two or three decades that seemed a satisfactory answer. It allowed me to refer to a person occupying a role without implying that the role naturally belonged to a man or a woman. One also made occasional appearances, though its formality sometimes sat uneasily with my preference for a more conversational style.

But language does not stand still.

Over the past two decades, they has acquired an additional significance through its adoption by many people who prefer it as their personal pronoun. What began in particular communities has become increasingly visible throughout society. As a result, I find myself reflecting once again on my own use of language.

I briefly returned to s/he, but found it awkward. It interrupts both reading and writing. The solution I am currently considering is simpler: to alternate she, he and they within a piece, allowing each to stand naturally and unapologetically.

The intention is not linguistic innovation for its own sake. Nor is it a claim that I have found the perfect answer. It is merely a small reminder to myself and perhaps to my readers that any role, occupation, responsibility or task may be undertaken by a person of any gender.

If, in one sentence, she must undertake the task, in the next perhaps he must undertake it, and in the next they must undertake it.

The point is not the pronoun.

The point is the assumption that lies behind it.

Addendum

To Write Around The Pronoun

I began by asking which pronoun should I use? I end by asking what assumption made me think I needed to make that choice?

I'm realizing that is much more interesting than a style-guide answer.

And it gives me back to a technique I have always used, and a possible fourth position beyond s/he, alternating pronouns and singular they: sometimes the elegant solution is to write around the pronoun altogether.

There is a nice essayistic irony in that. My original ethical intervention was to make the hidden assumption visible. The more successful contemporary solution may be to make the assumption disappear without having to announce that it has disappeared.

That, I think is a genuinely elegant development of the problem I have been carrying since Laurieston.

And I rather like that the note remains unresolved. I will not rush to decide that alternating she, he and they is the answer. It may be more interesting if the notebook records the experiment; because the experiment itself is part of the history of my thinking about language.

David Marshall Skerries