Who do they think they are?
The battle over the singular use of “they” has been waged for centuries

GRAMMAR HAS rarely produced as much public acrimony as in the battle over pronouns being waged around the world. In one skirmish in 2015, the University of Tennessee offered guidance on referring to non-binary students on its website, only for political blowback to lead to a legislative ban on spending public money to support non-traditional pronouns. Jordan Peterson, a controversial Canadian academic, has refused to use invented pronouns or “they” in relation to people who identify as neither male nor female. Many fulminating commentators spy political correctness running amok yet again.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Who do they think they are?”

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