In addition to this New York Times column on the use of “they”, “them” and “their” as singular pronouns, come these examples from Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter (Gotham Books, New York, 2008)
- 1400’s, Amadace — “iche mon in thayre degree”
- Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors–“There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me / As I were their weel-acquainted friend”
- Thackery, Vanity Fair — “A person can’t help their birth.”
I guess it’s official.
It was a long weekend. We piled into the remtal car, and drove north out of Manhattan.
But not to go to Woodstock. Already we knew that was going to be mass confusion (by the time we were on the road, it was already impossible to get to the site). No, we six young gay men were going to Vermont. East Burke, specifically.
So we had our own Woodstock, right there in East Burke. We thought about going to Woodstock, NY; but it seemed to us to be so totally, well, straight.
August 1969–this was just after the Stonewall riots. Nothing loomed larger in importance, that gay lib; which is what we talked about, what we did, in Vermont, and could not have done in Woodstock. It was simply so important to establish our identity as gay men, we were in the vanguard of that movement, and identifying with the great mass of young people, who were still floundering around, establishing their own identity–no, ours was a different cohort.
A year later, we were at the front of the first Gay Pride Day parade.
While driving to the gym this morning, I passed by an intersection where there were quite a few young people holding up signs reading, “Jesus loves you” and “God Is Good” and such like. They were what? Witnessing? I guess.
At the time, I was listening to a recorded lecture on American history, specifically about The Great Awakening; the lecturer pointed out that both the Great Awakining, the movement for Abolition, the 60’s Civil Rights movement, all were begun, or at least were promulgated by, youth. Like the Salem witch triaols, where a few teenage girls led a community into mass hysteria.