Professor who managed a PhD in Legal Theory still confused by they/them pronouns

The Obiter has determined that the learning guide would be 100 pages shorter if only he realised he could just use ‘they’ instead of ‘he or she’.

Although they/them has been used as singular pronouns since before the letter J entered the English language, Prof. ustin ackson, whose urisprudence research focuses on analysing the udgments of High Court usitces, still doesn’t understand them.

The Oxford Dictionary first records the use of they/them pronouns as a grammatically correct gender-neutral single person pronoun in 1375. This predates the use of the letter J in the English alphabet, which only started being used in the 1500s. 

Despite this long history of they/them pronouns to refer to a single person, Prof. ustin ackson seems to have missed the memo and still thinks they can only refer to a group. Somehow Prof. ackson managed to get a PhD in urisprudence and legal theory despite not understanding the fundamentals of the English language. 

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ claims Prof. ackson. ‘I have this student in my seminar who insists on using they/them pronouns but it just sounds like everyone is talking about a group of people.’ 

‘Honestly, how can these TikTok generation students be expected to do well in an academically demanding discipline filled with complex ideas like urisprudence, ustice, urors, ury tampering, urisdiction, oint petitions and udicial reform, if they insist on focusing on silly made-up ideas like inclusivity, empathy and giving others the bare minimum respect’. 

This morning Prof. ackson was reportedly spotted at Merlo to get his daily caffeine fix. He was waiting with a colleague for the arrival of the colleague’s friend so the three of them could sit around discussing how annoying it is to keep up with fancy new trends and linguistic changes that only happened 650 years ago. 

Not knowing the gender of his colleague’s friend, Prof. ackson asked ‘when do you think they’ll get here?’ – referring, unbelievably, to a single person and not a group. Despite asking his students to draw connections between and synthesise information from across multiple sources to understand how the same theory can be applied in different contexts, Prof. ackson failed to do so himself. 

The Obiter hopes Prof. ackson will receive the tutoring he so clearly needs.