Photo via Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0), @ddlovato/Twitter
May 20, 2021, 1:02 pm
Following Demi Lovato’s public coming out as non-binary, right-wing pundit Candace Owens felt the need to tweet her opinion on the matter of pronouns. In spite of the fact that singular they/them pronouns have been widely accepted for years by multiple style guides such as AP and MLA, plus Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, Owens declared that declaring these pronouns for oneself is “bad grammar” and somehow tied it to “academic achievement”—all while making her own grammatical mistake.
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“Announcing that your pronouns are they/them is just poor grammar,” she tweeted. “I don’t care your [sic] reasons—please stop trying to make low academic achievement a thing.”
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Demi Lovato is not currently in school, having skipped college due to an already successful acting and singing career, so why they would need to be concerned about their “academic achievement” is beyond comprehension. Regardless, use of singular they/them has long been accepted in actual academics not just for non-binary folks, but for situations in which a person’s pronouns are unknown, such as when speaking on hypothetical situations.
Outside of academia, people of all political persuasions use singular they/them in this manner all the time without noticing it because it’s been normal ever since we as a society stopped defaulting to “he” for every person that isn’t specifically known to be a woman.
Lovato shared their news in a video announcement posted to Twitter early Wednesday morning, explaining with a smile that they realized they are non-binary and will be using they/them pronouns for themself from that moment forward.
“Over the past year and a half I’ve been doing some healing and self-reflective work, and through this work I’ve had the revelation that I identify as non-binary,” they said. “With that said, I’ll officially be changing my pronouns to they/them. I fell that this best represents the fluidity I feel in my gender expression, and allows me to feel most authentic and true to the person I both know I am and still am discovering.”
Cool people everywhere were supportive of Lovato’s announcement on their gender and pronouns while denouncing and mocking prescriptivist grammar nerds like Owens who can’t handle a type of pronoun that they use all the time anyway.
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*First Published: May 20, 2021, 1:02 pm
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