Timeline for Gender neutral reflexive pronoun — equivalent to "himself" and "herself"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
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| Jul 2, 2020 at 18:18 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Merriam-Webster has this 2019 update: 'Themself: is it ever okay to say 'themself'? ... As singular they becomes more widely accepted—and increasingly adopted formally by even traditional news outlets—the reflexive pronoun that logically goes with it is gaining traction too.' | |
| Aug 17, 2019 at 3:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglish/status/1162559838406303744 | ||
| Nov 3, 2018 at 7:17 | comment | added | herisson | Closely related: The hidden flaw in “singular they”—what to do about reflexive pronouns? | |
| Jan 15, 2017 at 14:58 | history | protected | tchrist♦ | ||
| Jan 15, 2017 at 14:56 | comment | added | 41st | I'm a native speaker of the UK and an English language teacher, and I have always used, and will continue to use 'themselves' and 'they' for the singular gender neutral reference: "The child can count themselves lucky they didn't cause a fire." It's fine by me, and widely used. | |
| Jan 26, 2015 at 2:46 | comment | added | user107443 | Everyone saying you can just substitute "him or herself" is missing the fact that some people use gender neutral pronouns. Ie.) trans* and genderqueer individuals. So...the correct pronoun to refer to someone who uses gender neutral pronouns would be neither "himself" nor "herself." And sorry...but working with "the queer community" doesn't entitle you to choose a pronoun for someone else. There are a whole lot of genders and pronouns out there. You can no more use "hir" to cover all your bases than you can use "him." It's not a cover-all-your-bases with a randomly selected pronoun kind of sit | |
| Sep 11, 2012 at 16:59 | history | edited | tchrist♦ |
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| May 26, 2012 at 16:23 | comment | added | Henry | The Oxford Dictionary may cast aspersions upon "themself", but the Oxford English Dictionary mentions the use of both "themself" and "themselves" with singular antecedents, with no suggestion that the use is problematic. ("Themselves" is used in constructions where it is paired with things like "Every one", "themself" in constructions like yours.) | |
| May 23, 2012 at 19:51 | answer | added | Peter Shor | timeline score: 18 | |
| May 23, 2012 at 18:41 | history | edited | RegDwigнt | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 24, 2011 at 21:15 | vote | accept | Charles Goodwin | ||
| Jul 21, 2011 at 21:18 | answer | added | Shad | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 19:23 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Maybe it's an age-related thing. I don't think I particularly interpret himself here as implying the perp is a male. The fact that I do think "he" is more likely to be male is mainly because in the real world more males than females are so classified. "If person could die if he ate rat poison" implies very little about gender to me. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 18:41 | answer | added | Caleb | timeline score: 9 | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 18:39 | comment | added | nohat | I, personally, would just use themself, wide acceptance in standard English be damned. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 18:31 | history | edited | Daniel | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 21, 2011 at 18:29 | answer | added | Daniel | timeline score: 23 | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 18:23 | history | asked | Charles Goodwin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |