The English language distinguishes between singular and plural, and “they,” “them,” and “their” are always plural. “He” and “she” are singular, and when sex is not specified, “he” stands for either. If some hoyden claims that “he” excludes her, ask her if she really thinks the expression “he who hesitates is lost” does not apply to women, or that even if man cannot live by bread alone, woman can.
A sentence such as “No one did their homework” actually means something, but not what the ignoramuses and fanatics think it does. It means that no one in one group did the homework assigned to a different group, as in “Everyone did his homework but no one did their homework.” On the other hand, a sentence like “If you have a friend, tell them to come” can never be anything but hopelessly wrong. It is as wrong as “he are sick” or “we is lost” or “she likes themself.”
Are questions of grammar only small points, not worth fighting over? No, they chart the course of decline just as surely as legislation or demographics. One of the ways ideologies prevail is by tampering with speech. American cities no longer have bums; they have “the homeless,” as if the wino sleeping in the park had just lost a $300,000 split-level to a tornado. No one is shiftless or lazy anymore; instead he is “downtrodden,” as if someone forced him at gunpoint into a life of loafing. And, of course, there are all the newly invented words for newly invented crimes that didn’t exist a few decades ago: homophobia, sexism, racism, xenophobia, etc. This sort of thing, repeated over and over, shackles the mind.
Conservatives, especially, should not let their speech be pushed around by self-righteous lunatics. They should know that language, like behavior, has rules for right and wrong, and these should almost never be changed. Talk like a man, not like a eunuch. Be on the lookout for an opportunity to drop this sentence into your conversation: “Man, being a mammal, suckles his young.”
