Mar 714 min read

Roses are red, violets are blue, singular they predates singular you*: the history of non-binary and the use of the pronouns they/them

Updated: Nov 5

DISCLAIMER: The author of this article, Gemma, uses she/her pronouns and the co-author and enby Director of The HERstory Project, Abby, uses they/them/she/her pronouns.

Identity is something we can all relate to. You may label yourself as a goth, you may be neurodivergent, you may be studious, and you may belong to a religious group or fabulous culture. Whilst, LGBTQAI+ identities are becoming more accepted, there is still a lot of discussion from different world leaders, podcasters, or social media keyboard warriors which believe that people wanting to identify as non-binary means they can identify as “a toaster” or “the hottest man/woman so you must accept that, too!” But where is this anger even coming from? It is not too much to ask, especially in this day and age, to accept and appreciate those who are non-binary and to respect their identity. There is so much variety in biology that leads to making us, us; the way we think, feel, look, and act. So why, specifically, does using they/them pronouns grind people’s gears so much? You may argue “it’s not proper English '' but in fact, the singular ‘they’ is older than the singular ‘you’.

This article will not only explore the development of singular ‘they’ in the English language (and in Swedish), but will also demonstrate through historical events just how old being non-binary is.

First of all, let’s consider gendered terminology.

For many of our gendered terms, how we understand them today was not how they were originally used. “Girl” was a word to refer to any adolescent child. The term really means “brat” which again, in its strictest sense is an adolescent. Gender could then be specified by the use of “knack girl” for males, and “gay girl” for females. Easier gendered terms did exist so the use of this suggests that gender neutrality was an acknowledged fact. Also in Middle English, the word “harlot” now usually used to refer to a sexually promiscuous woman originally meant a young man, knave or vagabond. It later developed into also referring to women, then almost exclusively about women.

The Tales of Caunterbury, known today as The Canterbury Tales was written by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. Chaucer is the first author to have written down the word “girl” (as “gyrl”) to refer to a child. The Canterbury Tales is also the first written occurrence of ‘they’ being used in its singular form. ‘Whoso’ is a character but also refers to the syntactically singular ‘whoever’. “and whoso fyndeth hym out of switch blame, they will come up…” shows ‘Whoso’ being referred to as ‘they’. As ‘whoso/whoever’ is syntactically singular, this naturally makes ‘they’ syntactically singular, too. Chaucer wasn't the only one to use “they” in its singular form. Shakespeare uses it in several of his plays. A prime example is A Comedy of Errors, Act IV, Scene 3; “There’s not a man but doth salute me, as if I were their well-acquainted friend.” In this case, they and their work the same way as he and his or she and hers. This play was written approximately 150 years after Chaucer had used it in his work which shows that it was commonly used and unremarkable. Shakespeare also used “man” to refer to humankind so he has used two gender-non-specific terms.

Yet in the twenty-first century, certain groups and individuals cannot, or will not, accept ‘they/their’ pronouns. How can the past appear more progressive than today?

Both you yourself reading this today and ‘you’ in the singular form existed only after singular ‘they’. In fact, the singular version of ‘you’ remained ‘thou’ or ‘thee’ from the fifth century all the way to at least the fifteenth century. ‘Thou’ was still in use but became the more informal singular pronoun and ‘thee’ continued to be used as the object pronoun. At this point, ‘you’ or ‘ye’ became the formal subject singular pronoun. In the seventeenth century, ‘you’ had eradicated ‘thou’ and ‘there’ and was being used in all contexts, including singular form. The question and problem of what these terms mean does not seem to arise until non-conformity becomes an issue, or rather, until it becomes an issue that traditionalists cannot ignore. However, an effort for gender neutrality in language is not new or uncommon. Linguists have traced supplementary invented words directly intended to be gender neutral alternatives to the mid-nineteenth century, for example. In more recent history (2012, to be exact), Sweden has introduced the word, ‘hen’. This word is used as a gender-neutral pronoun to avoid using masculine or feminine pronouns and especially to avoid the degrading/dehumanising ‘it’ or ‘det’ in Swedish. ‘Hen’ in this case is not like ‘they’ or ‘de’ but in fact an entirely new pronoun. It was a natural addition considering in Sweden, ‘han’ is ‘he’ and ‘hon’ is ‘she’. The term was initially received negatively, however, according to a 2023 study by Waller and Baraja, within three years of the word being introduced Swedish people were more prone to using ‘hen’.

Now, let's turn to non-binary and gender non-conforming existence throughout history. Non-binary identities are not recent. They may appear this way as society becomes more accepting and open, similar trends can be seen in conversations of queerness, neurodivergence and chronic illness. Regarding gender, there is a plethora of historical evidence, you simply have to look for it. Ancient deities, such as those who populate Greek mythology, were often depicted androgynously. ‘Goddess’ of Love, Aphrodite (Venus in Roman mythology, Inana in Sumerian, and Ištar in Akkadian) was said to appear to individuals as what they consider to be the most ‘beautiful’. In many depictions, particularly in Cyprus in later Antiquity, Aphrodite is depicted as having a beard. In a notable depiction of her ‘male’ version, she is depicted with a beard and a dress on, lifted enough to show a penis. Seeing this in person was believed to bring good fortune. This later morphed into the ‘God’ Hermaphroditus, the child of Aphrodite and Hermes. Ištar was described as being bearded ‘like the god Ašur’ but with ‘beard’ (‘ziqnu’) meaning ‘to shine’ however it is clear that worshippers both depicted and described these ‘Goddesses’ as having a physical beard on their face as that is how they thought they would look. What is clear from antiquity sources is that androgynous features were commonly associated with divinity.

Early Greek physicians such as Hippocrates (as in, the Hippocratic Oath) had their own theories and ideas on the idea of intersex and non-binary people. Hippocrates believed that gender falls on a “male-female spectrum” and that hermaphrodites were “the perfect balance between male and female”. Plato saw Aristophanes give a speech about three genders and Plato writes about this in ‘The Symposium’. There were males, born from the Sun, females, born from the Earth, and androgynous, born from the moon. The androgynous people, being of both genders, had four arms, four legs, two heads and two sets of genitals. The androgynous were powerful and threatening to the Gods. Zeus did not want to destroy the androgynous so he cut them in two. The two halves would search for each other and embrace for eternity once they had found each other. Although a myth, this type of story tells us of just how much people from early history respected this spectrum of genders and created beautiful stories from them. In myth, androgynous people have power and can be reborn from love, in reality, individuals who were gender non-conforming were lauded as the divine.

Non-binary, gender conformity and awareness of this is not restricted to the ancients however, whilst we cannot, and will not anachronistically impose an identity onto people who did not have the language and terminology to define themselves, it is worth identifying individuals who did not identify with their assigned gender at birth. We suggest that you look into these examples in more detail, and see our recommendations for where to start in our reading list at the end of this article!

In the fourteenth century, Eleanor Rykener, also known as John, was arrested for being a ‘crossdressing prostitute’. They dressed as a women, solicited to both men and women and once arrested was defined as male. The Chevalier d’Eon was a French soldier who lived the first half of their life as a man, and the second half as a woman. To gain public and Royal acceptance of her identity, d’Eon claimed (and convinced) the king of France that she had been born female and raised male. Now she wanted to revert to her true sex. It was only upon her death that she was ‘outed’ as what we may call transgender, as when her body was prepared, male genitalia was discovered. Mary Ann Talbot, also known as John Taylor, crossdressed in the eighteenth century in order to become a sailor and a soldier during the French Revolutionary Wars. Staying within maritime history, female pirates and lovers Anne Bonny and Mary Read began their pirating days in male garb, both falling for the other without realising their true genders. Whilst both actually later identified as women and are shown to live as women later on, this is a true example of gender and sexuality non-conformity (the pair appear in the second series of Our Flag Means Death, and are also the inspiration for another non-binary character on the show). Another example of gender nonconformity for romantic freedom is Radclyffe Hall, an English Poet and author who identified as an ‘congenital invert’. Hall’s experiences are fairly unique in this list as they lived as sexologists were beginning to discuss the idea of a ‘third gender’. This ‘third gender’ was typically connected to manifestations of what we might call lesbianism. Hall had preferred the name ‘John’, to their given name ‘Marguerite’ in childhood. Their novel, The Well of Loneliness followed an ‘invert’, Stephen Gordon, an upper-class masculine woman as she explored her gender, sexuality and position. It is believed to be at least partially autobiographical.

So gender non-conformity and identity crises are not a modern phenomenon. Furthermore, non-binary can also be understood as a manifestation of biology. Herculine Barbin, later known as Abel, was a French writer whose experiences with gender and sex exemplify the difficulty of defining these on a binary. Barbin was assigned female at birth, raised female and was actually referred to as Alexina. Later in life she was reclassified under law as male. In her memoir she refers to herself as female and uses masculine and feminine versions of French words interchangeably. In French and other Romance languages (languages evolved from Latin), nouns have a gender, and change form depending on the subject of a sentence. I use she/her pronouns when referring to Barbin to make this discussion clearer. When writing“I was happy about it”, she uses the feminine version “heureuse”, whilst the masculine version is “heureux”. In the sentence, “I had to live there as a stranger” she uses “étranger” (stranger) in the masculine form, the feminine form would be “étrangère”. This suggests that Barbin herself considered her gender to be somewhat fluid.

Barbin became a teacher’s assistant and fell in love with a woman. She was also examined by a doctor, Dr. Chesnet, who claimed that Herculine had female genitalia but no obvious signs of a womb and also showed male body characteristics, including male reproductive organs. This led to the doctor to conclude she was “male, hermaphroditic” which today would be referred to as male pseudohermaphroditism. With this information, and the fact that she was having a relationship with another woman, the court assigned her male. Herculine found this ridiculous but after this, she changed her name and moved away from her lover, Sara. She lived in poverty until her untimely death at the age of 29. Her birthday is the date for Intersex Day of Remembrance (8th November).

It is important to state that intersex people are not inherently non-binary and vice versa, however, intersex people are also gender non-conforming and do have an important place in this discussion. A recent piece of history is the fight to be labelled as ‘X’ rather than ‘M’ (male), or ‘F’ (female). Alex MacFarlane, an Australian activist and intersex person, was born with the chromosome XXY, also known as Klinefelter Syndrome. Alex felt that they felt that they were committing fraud if they were to be assigned either male or female on their birth certificate and their passport, when they were not either. Alex argued their case with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and despite initially being told that the system only understood ‘M’ or ‘F’, it was decided that Alex was correct. The conclusion was that’ ‘X should and would be used in their passport, but also on passports of those who were also non-binary and those who were intersex and identified as non-binary. Alex’s experiences have highlighted a legitimate legal issue when it comes to gender (and sex) identity.

Acknowledgement and acceptance of intersex, non-binary and other gender non-conforming identities is both important to individuals and to the benefit of wider society. For example, in 2011 and 2022, Antoinette “Tony” Briffa, a third generation Maltese-Australian was elected Mayor of Hobsons Bay, the first person who is intersex and non-binary to be a mayor. Tony was born intersex and identifies as non-binary. Specifically, they were born with partial androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS). They have worked tirelessly for the LGBTQAI+ community in which their whole Mayoral program focused on. They have also won many awards for their work in the community but also works with children. Tony was even a foster carer before their first Mayoral run. A little like Alex’s situation, they have also had issues with their legal documentation, having three separate birth certificates that have stated female, then male, and now blank. Something Tony would like to see is a birth certificate reflecting “the way nature made us”. Alex and Tony instigate an important conversation regarding gender non-conformity and emphasise the need for acceptance of gender identity. The world is better off legally and socially when we accept everyone for who they are.

Notable contemporary non-binary and gender non-conforming people are Richard O’Brien, Suzy Eddie Izzard and Divina de Campo. Richard O’Brien** is a British-New Zealand actor, writer and stunt person. They identify as third gender, feeling neither male nor female but uses he/him pronouns. Whilst Richard started out in the film and television industry as a stunt person in ‘Carry on Cowboy’, his more notable work is writing, composing and acting in ‘The Rocky Horror (Picture) Show’. (If you haven’t seen it, you’re really missing out!) This was a musical written for the stage in 1973 and ‘broke’ so many gender norms to create this cult classic. There was cross-dressing, sexual expression, use of the terms ‘transvestite’ and ‘transsexual’. It also allowed its audience to equally express these things and appreciate this world. I have seen straight men dressed as Dr. Frank-N-Furter but not to make fun of the role, but to have fun in that role. There were so many sexual orientations and gender orientations in a film and theatre production that is now 50 years old. This is all because of Richard O’Brien’s desire to express himself and to demonstrate that gender and sexuality is not black and white, something he realised very early on in life.

Suzy Eddie Izzard was long known as just Eddie Izzard for a long time, working in films such as My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Victoria & Abdul, and Stay Close. They also lent their voice to Cars 2 and The Lego Batman Movie amongst others. What they were most notable for was their stand-up comedy with a long list of stand-up specials. Suzy was also very open with wearing nail polish and make up whilst people still thought of them as Eddie, a comedic man who did the occasional film and television appearance. They self-described in the early 2000’s as an “executive transvestite” and “male lesbian” and when asked what people think of this look on an E! News Daily interviews, they stated “80% of people don’t give a monkeys [they don’t care]” and this is very much true, no one seemed to bat their eyelids at it and why should they? What is so loveable about Suzy is their ability to be so unapologetically them throughout their whole life and being so open when people could be so cruel. Eddie added Suzy to their name in March 2023 but has always wanted to be called Suzy since the age of ten. They describe themselves as genderfluid and uses transgender as an umbrella term but has known since the young age of four they were trans. Suzy discusses pronouns saying that “no one can make a mistake” and has “boy mode” and “girl mode” where he/him may be preferred, or she/her may be preferred when in those respective modes. Recently, they have moved into politics, running as a Labour MP for Brighton in 2023 (but lost the bid- never say never). Looking back on history and political history, people like Suzy need to be in politics as this representation is so important but also continues the conversation where political power is at its strongest. They’re in their 60’s, too (can you believe it?) and it goes to show it is never too late to start being your true authentic self, politician and all.

Divina de Campo shot to fame on the first series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK after doing drag since 2005. Whilst in Manchester, they regularly visited Manchester’s Gay Village and performed at Kiki (a bar that closed in 2020). As well as their time on Drag Race, they have won Best Performance at the UK Theatre Awards as Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch as part of Leeds Playhouse and HOME co-production. They are non-binary and use all pronouns. de Campo is still on the rise and it is exciting to see what they do in the future but the reason they are being discussed here and now is their videos of well researched and thought-provoking videos on how drag queens are not ‘hurting’ children and those who are saying they’re a danger are the ones who are hurting children (and the country) the most. The messages are important and shut down, frankly, homophobic views. Check out Divina de Campo on Instagram (@divinadecampo)

Gender fluidity comes with being human like breathing, being blonde, having hazel eyes or maybe an extra or missing limb does. Using singular ‘they/them’ is not breaking any grammar rules as we have seen from Chaucer and Shakespeare’s works and has existed for nearly eight centuries as written history demonstrates. Therefore, using ‘incorrect grammar’ as an excuse to dismiss a whole gender identity becomes obsolete. Even so, language has demonstrated since the existence of the spoken word that it, too, is fluid and people will use it however they want and however they need. In the words of Miriam Margolyes “what does it matter to you [what pronouns someone uses]. If you can make somebody happy by calling them ‘they’ instead of he or she, why not do it?”

*rhyme supplied by @zombiecolour on Instagram, go check out their manicure skills!

** Comments previously made by Richard O’Brien regarding transgender people are thoughts not reflected by The HERstory Project or any of our team

Roses are red, violets are blue, singular they predates singular you*: the history of non-binary and the use of the pronouns they/them

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