Eli5: Why do you use “they” for non-gendered speech instead of “it”?

Question

I’m not a native speaker, but as far as I understood, for singular objects and animals “it” was used. Why use “they” for individual people then?

In: 1400

Answer 1

“It” is not gender neutral as such.

In many languages, you have three gramatic genders: masculinum, femininum and neutrum. Latin did this, German has this. In those languages, you use the same gendered pronoun for both male persons and words that are masculinum. In German, dog (“Hund”) is masculinum and cat (“Katze”) is femininum. In effect, you can call any dog “he” and any cat “she” – even a bitch and a tomcat. Of course if you know the animal, you would probably use gender specific pronouns for it.

In Danish (my native language) masculinum and femininum have merged. We have two gramatic genders, common gender and neutrum. All kinds of human as well as most kinds of animals are common gender, because neutrum is mostly for inanimate or abstract words (ironically, both “human” and “animal” are neutrum, which is probably because of their abstractness).

All that means that using the equivalent of “it” would be weird and mostly offensive. You’re basically saying that whoever you’re talking about is more akin to an inanimate object than a human being.

Now, while English doesn’t have gramatical genders any more (Old English had three genders), it retains the pronoun structure. Which means that “it” is specifically used about non-persons. You could use it about ex-humans – “the corpse … it”. You could also use it about very small human beings, like “the infant” or “the foetus”. Maybe even “the toddler”. But even when you start talking about “the child”, saying “it” starts being weird. And try saying “the youth… it” or “the teenager… it” – that would be very inappropriate, because they have come into their own personhood.

Now, if it was the only option… but as others have pointed out, it’s not. There is a pronoun that is used about persons of undetermined, ambiguous or irrelevant gender – and that’s “they”. “‘Somebody has been here! They’ve eaten all my porrigde!” This use of “they” go way back, and is uncontrovertial. The controversy only appeared when some people decided they preferred to be referred to that way, instead of by he or she.