I'll all for Sweden doing this. I can think of nowhere better to experiment with the lives of children than somewhere over seas. You never know, it may even work out ok.

I'm okay with it. If you're still stuck in traditionalism you won't be, but hey, that's why it's called traditionalist.

Live and let live.

No, don't live and let live. Be open to it. Don't make it so that you have to hide and cover.

"Girls are not urged to play with toy kitchens, and wooden or Lego blocks are not considered toys for boys. And when boys hurt themselves, teachers are taught to give them every bit as much comforting as they would girls. Everyone gets to play with dolls; most are anatomically correct, and some are also black."

Revolutionary. Don't think my kindergarten was any different than this. Then again, I sort of went for lego by default without being "urged" there. It has dolls too. You can change their pants to any primary color, replace their right hand with a stick and put different types of pirate's hats on top of them. Clearly, lego > prefabricated dolls.

I liked prams because you could turn them into obstacles to jump over and block people with when playing chase :).

pram?

NM, googled it :-)

uh. i get the initiative, and it's a good one, but i'd think the solution isn't dropping a widely-used, incredibly convenient lingual function (the pronoun). rather, be more precise about its use

especially since people get all huffy-puffy about "it." if you could use "it" then sure, drop him/her/etc. but dear god there is nothing wrong with a pronoun

PE, To be fair, in colloquial English (for several hundred years now), we have been using "they" as a third person singular anthropocentric (anthropophilic?) neuter pronoun as opposed to "it," which is the "proper" pronoun to use for the third person singular neuter, but it has been related to the non-human (the misanthropic?). The Swedes using "hen" is no different. Our use of "they" is "artificial."

In modern English there is no neuter gender for people--Everyone is he or she. That's one reason we run into problems with impersonal pronouns, such as "Every student should pick up (his or her?) (their?) anatomically correct doll and dress (it?) (him or her?) in a non-gender-biased manner."

Sorry, for singular persons. For plural, yes: they-them-their-theirs.

Although that's not really a neuter gender, but a set of non-gender-specific pronouns. And that's enough of this for me.

There's no trouble constructing a neuter sentence in colloquial English. For a prescriptive grammarian, it is impossible. We'll use your example.

The Prescriptive Grammarian says, "Every student should pick up his or her anatomically correct doll and dress it in a non-gender-biased manner." (The doll, being a non-human and having no gender, is an "it." Even if the doll of is of a woman, the doll is still, technically, an "it" unless one's imagination assigns it a gender.)

The Colloquial Speaker says, "Every student should pick up their anatomically correct doll and dress it .."

We do this all the time with friends. "I went over to a friend's house and they showed me a movie." I don't see anything wrong with it.

No one close to me refers to me as 'he' or 'she' they all call me they. dubmdell is right its been around forever, its even in shakespeare. Gender specific pro-nouns is something I've always hated about english. makes me glad I dont speak spanish. (except I wish I could speak spanish and am learning it but you get what I mean)

Yeah but "they" to describe a single entity, whether a person or an object... eh. I do it sometimes but I try to avoid it because 'they' is plural. I'm not a super-strict grammarian by any means, but I've certainly been confused by someone referring to a single person as "they."

In any case, the focal point of the article is a more general setting aside of traditional gender roles, and I'm fine with that. I guess I just think the dropping of he/she/etc. is a bit ticky-tacky, but it's not me dealing with it and more importantly I'm certain if I mistakenly used the wrong pronoun that I could clearly communicate I meant no offense in so doing, and the situation would be fine. So whatever works.

@dub, I wouldn't bother trying to argue with you on linguistics, but isn't "him" just as acceptable in this instance?

@ PE if singular they is too cumbersome for you theres always the persons name. I see where you're coming from though, I have never been huge fan of they, its just the best available IMHO. Ive never been able to pull off using the alternates (Xe is one example) outside of small insular groups of radicals.
Also if the person is likely to be called by the wrong pro-noun, theres a good chance they are more sensitive to it than you are. Among my circles its at best a hurtful faux paus and at worst an ass whoopin. Now my circles are certainly not most circles, but I would be willing to bet even if someone doesnt bring it up or shrugs it off, it stays with them longer than with you. I'm not saying at all you mean to offend, just trying to convey that being mis-gendered is a hurtful experience even when nothing bad was intended, even when the offender apologizes, and even when they mean it.

Also you've been here forever idk how I just noticed this but is your name a fallout reference?

"We do this all the time with friends. "I went over to a friend's house and they showed me a movie." I don't see anything wrong with it."
I agree, for colloquial use among people who accept it. But there are occasions and situations where "they" would be considered incorrect and therefore inappropriate.

Fun topic though. Plus 1

@Sic - I don't doubt it does. I recognize my last post there kinda comes off as a bit dismissive/apathetic with the "I guess"'s everywhere but it's mostly out of ignorance. I have two trans acquaintances, I'm not about to pretend I know what I'm talking about - I welcome being corrected on the matter. (And yes, it is a Fallout reference. A supercomputer claiming to be the president and reviving America with an explicitly fascist political bend struck me as the perfect character for Diplomacy.)

I just have this urge to confront privilege for some reason lol. Perhaps I'm trying to deny my own, who knows. You should ask them about it, I highly encourage you to do so. Ask bout their experiences being misgendered.

Ahh I knew it. Ok I guessed. I agree though its a great diplomacy moniker. Mine is 1. a concealed dagger 2. a genus of "assassin" sand spider and 3. a group of jewish assassins trying to expel the romans by assassinating them with concealed daggers

@ghug, certainly, the masculine form has been the default "neuter" for several hundred years (er, thousand years). In many Indo-European languages (which include the Romance languages, for those unfamiliar), when speaking to a group of mixed biological gender, the default grammatical gender is masculine (there's a difference, for those unfamiliar). Increasing in popularity in American academic or just PC writing (you'll see this in newspapers or online articles sometimes) is the use of "she" as a neuter-gender singular pronoun, mostly because "they" is still prescribed to be wrong. Which it isn't.

Singular they is older than this country

It's definitely important to have gender-neutral roles in kindergartens. Boys can cry and girls can be tough, no doubt. But I wonder if changing words does that. One of the largest difficulties in most countries is simply that there is no proper male role-model - almost all the teachers are women, and all the men doing the same work are becoming more suspect with every passing year. No newspeak will counter that.