It/He/They/She: On Pronoun Norms for All, Human and Nonhuman

Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9 (2022)
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Abstract

Many people in animal studies favor the use of gendered pronouns for nonhuman animals, even in cases where the animal’s sex is unknown. By contrast, many people in gender studies favor the use of the default singular they for humans. Our aim is to show that the most obvious ways of fitting these pronoun norm proposals together—a hybrid option (“he”/“she” for animals, “they” for humans) and a uniform one (i.e., default to the singular they when gender identity is unknown, regardless of species)—have serious costs. Animal advocates will worry that the hybrid approach marks animals as fundamentally different from human beings, while advocates for gender justice will worry that preserving gendered pronouns for animals will also preserve gender essentialism. However, switching to a universal default singular they—that is, where we use “they” for all individuals, both human and nonhuman—may set back animals’ interest in being seen as sentient individuals. Our aim is not to defend a solution to this problem, but simply to argue that this is a problem that deserves consideration when assessing candidate pronoun norms.

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reprint Spiehler, Alyse; Fischer, Bob (2023) "It/He/They/She: On Pronoun Norms for All, Human and Nonhuman". Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9(n/a):

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Author Profiles

Bob Fischer
Texas State University
Alyse Spiehler
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

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References found in this work

He/She/They/Ze.Robin Dembroff & Daniel Wodak - 2018 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5.
Intuitions about consciousness: Experimental studies.Joshua Knobe & Jesse Prinz - 2008 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (1):67-83.
Glass Panels and Peepholes: Nonhuman Animals and the Right to Privacy.Angie Pepper - 2020 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (4):628-650.
The mind club: who thinks, what feels, and why it matters.Daniel M. Wegner & Kurt James Gray - 2016 - New York, New York: Viking Press. Edited by Kurt James Gray.
Valuing animals as they are—Whether they feel it or not.C. E. Abbate - 2020 - European Journal of Philosophy 28 (3):770-788.

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