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My daughter just submitted a college app and said her pronouns were "she/they". I told her, in the nicest way that I didn't want to be demeaning, but your pronouns can't be "she/they", because that's grammatically incorrect.

So in the current milieu, is this just a "thing people say" and I'm uncool for not knowing that and I need a re-education or is she just wrong, even from a cultural perspective? Shouldn't it be "she/them"? I thought the second pronoun was always for possessive.

I just don't know what to say.

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    @Peter What do you mean by "possessive 'them' "? "Them" is the objective form of "they"; the possessive is "their" (determiner) or "theirs" (pronoun proper).
    – wjandrea
    Commented Aug 24 at 1:27
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    my mistake. I was taking the baseline as "she/her" like "her toothbrush" forgetting that what was meant in that pronoun was "I gave the toothbrush to her". In any event, the grammar police picking apart my mistake should also understand that something doesn't quite map up when you compare she/they with she/her Commented Aug 28 at 2:22

3 Answers 3

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In short, "she/they" is the most common way for a person to indicate that they go by "she/her" or "they/them" pronouns, likely with a preference for the former. It is not incorrect.

Note: While "she/they" is commonly used by feminine-leaning non-binary people, a great deal of women (both cis and trans) also go by it.


There is no governing body for the English language, and the bodies that do try to govern it (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago) do not have guidance on this because this just doesn't come up in formal writing. Therefore, we have to look at what usage is. In my experience, what's most common is:

  • Subject/object when the person is using one set of pronouns. For example, "she/her". This is what the Trevor Project uses.
  • Subject/subject when the person is using two different sets of pronouns, like "she/they". This has a nice parallelism to it. See also Washington and Lee University's article on the subject. (Note: The order may matter; usually the first one is what the person prefers to go by, though I also know some people for whom it is the opposite, usually listing a binary pronoun first but preferring "they", listed second.)

These two formats are what comes up for the vast majority of the results in searches for things like "pronoun pin", which brings up examples like the Human Rights Campaign.

However, there is variation. I've also seen the following, less commonly:

  • Subject/object/possessive, for a single set of pronouns, such as "he/him/his". Sometimes it's the reflexive instead at the end, "he/him/himself", like in this Columbia University article. According to an NPR interview (no relation to me), this format used to be the most common, before the two pronoun form (e.g. "he/him") became more popular.
  • More than two subject pronouns, to indicate more than two acceptable sets of pronouns. I just recently met someone going by "he/she/they", though it is uncommon.
  • In the case of "it/its", the possessive is used, probably because "it/it" would be extremely weird. (Note: This pronoun set is pretty rare, but some do use it: Here’s why some LGBTQ youth are now embracing the nonbinary pronoun ‘it/its’)
  • "Any" (meaning any pronoun), sometimes (very rarely!) paired with another pronoun which is usually itself in subject form. For example, I know someone who's going by "he/any", which means he prefers masculine pronouns but any pronoun works.

In the case of your suggestion, subject/object representing two different pronoun sets, I don't think I've ever come across this format before. However, it is evidently used albeit with little frequency; the Colorado government HR does list "he/them" and "she/them". I had to dig through Google to find this example.

Any of these options would at least be understood within English-speaking LGBTQ communities without question, and by a great deal of people outside them.

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    Nice info - thank you for digging up the Colorado HR stuff, I didn't think that seemed terribly rational in the first place. If I could make a suggestion to the trans community, it would be to propagate the use of she|they rather than she/they Commented Aug 23 at 17:56
  • It would be interesting to know what the relative frequency of the different formats is. Note that a recent question on this site was Why are pronouns in gender-like listings always come in threes?, and nobody on that page objected to 'always' in the question on the ground that something like she/they is also used. That may be an indication that the subject/object/possessive format is, in fact, the dominant one, which makes it all too understandable that the OP was taken aback by his daughter's use of the subject/subject format.
    – jsw29
    Commented Aug 23 at 20:11
  • @jsw29 I'd like to get hard data, but I'm not aware of any tool that will properly handle the slash. Additionally, the survey data I'm aware of (e.g., from the Trevor Project) is all about what pronouns people have and not how they format them. (As an aside, I objected to the statement about pronouns always coming in threes, and you may enjoy my most recent edit to better address that here.)
    – Laurel
    Commented Aug 26 at 17:09
  • @Laurel, fair enough, you are 'on the record' as having objected, but my impression was that your comment there was going more in the direction of the subject/object format than the subject/subject format. Somebody used to the subject/object/possessive format can easily understand the subject/object one, as its shortened version, but still be understandably confused (as the OP was) by the subject/subject one, which uses slashes for an entirely different purpose.
    – jsw29
    Commented Aug 26 at 21:04
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I think your daughter is comfortable being called either "she" or "they". She (they) is probably OK with both sets of pronouns, but didn't write out the third-person possessive pronoun. She (they) might have actually meant both "she"/"her"/"hers" and "they"/"their"/"theirs". "she"/"they" is probably just a shortening of the above. I'm not sure though, it's best to ask your daughter directly.

Here's a reference to a relevant post from (not so official) Reddit: What do she/they pronouns mean?

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It looks like this is a "thing people do":

who either are:

  1. trans allies or https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/996319297/gender-identity-pronouns-expression-guide-lgbtq
  2. use the second pronoun to imply their non-binariness is secondary to their binariness. https://www.lgbtqandall.com/what-are-mixed-pronouns-or-pronoun-pairs-like-she-her-and-he-they/

I don't know what the words imply if you go by #1 (since it appears to be just signaling), but #2 it appears as if the possessive form is implicit - which means "her" and "them" would be OK to use.

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  • @Lambie How do you be a bathing suit? Is that merely an error? Why do you claim that "their" is plural in that sentence?
    – PM 2Ring
    Commented Aug 24 at 5:39
  • @PM2Ring I meant bring but am going to pass. Too much bother. :)
    – Lambie
    Commented Aug 24 at 15:49
  • It is rather puzzling that this answer was downvoted, while the other two are upvoted (with no downvotes), even though all three are essentially the same.
    – jsw29
    Commented Aug 26 at 16:05
  • @jsw29 It's probably because point 2 is too specific. It's a very narrow, opinionated way to describe what is actually quite a broad array of reasons and perspectives. While yes, some people might use "she/they" to signal that their binariness takes precedence over their non-binariness (whatever that means), many more would reject that framing entirely. As an answer to the (implied) question "what is being communicated by 'she/they'?", this answer is simply incorrect (except for its last sentence).
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Aug 26 at 20:03
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    @PeterTurner It's not conveying the perspectives. All it's saying is "I would like you to call me this, please": it's not saying anything about the reasons. (If it were intended to, then I agree eight characters does a poor job.) I hope this helps explain #1 (which isn't just signalling… not always, anyway!). And I'm glad you don't mind the downvotes, because it's against the site's rules to use downvotes as a personal attack, so presumably the downvoters were only saying "this answer is not useful".
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Aug 27 at 1:07

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