Over the past few years, I’ve gotten several questions about nonbinary pronouns and gender diversity in scenarios. Sometimes, people ask about using “gender neutral” characters in scenarios like in this question. This is based on a real question I received, but I edited it slightly to protect the sender.
“I’m wondering what you think about using gender neutral names in scenarios and keeping pronouns to they/them? I just created a course, and I decided to stick to gender neutral names and pronouns throughout so as to be inclusive. I wanted to avoid assigning characters with any negative attributes to a specific gender.”
I appreciated this question because I think this instructional designer is genuinely trying to avoid bias in her work. She had clearly thought about the issue and knew that she needed to change something in how she presented gender in her scenarios. While I believe she had good intent, I also think her approach is misguided. Using exclusively they/them pronouns and gender neutral names in scenarios creates a different set of problems.
I’ve heard this same idea from multiple people, so I don’t want to single her out. This is a misconception that needs to be addressed. Let’s dig into how to work toward gender equity and inclusive representation for nonbinary characters in scenarios for training.
They/them pronouns for hypothetical situations
I recommend reflecting diversity in characters for scenarios, so I’m in favor of including nonbinary characters. Nonbinary people should be represented in scenarios too. However, I think using they/them pronouns for every character in a scenario is problematic.
There are two general ways we use they/them pronouns:
- Gender neutral pronouns when we don’t know a person’s gender or we’re talking about hypothetical examples
- Pronouns for nonbinary individuals who use they/them pronouns. You know their gender–it’s nonbinary.
It’s appropriate to use gender neutral pronouns in hypothetical situations where we don’t know a person’s gender. For example, “When a new employee starts, they’ll need to get their badge on the first day.” We don’t know if the new employee is male, female, or nonbinary, so we use “they” and “their” as generic pronouns. This could hypothetically refer to multiple different people.
It’s also appropriate to use they/them as a gender neutral pronoun in some situations where you’re talking about a specific person whose pronouns you don’t know. “Hey, do you see that person sitting by the window? I love their hat!” When I’m talking about a person you don’t know, and you don’t need to interact with directly, it’s OK to use the generic they/them.
For generic, unknown, or hypothetical people, using they/them pronouns is appropriate. It’s more inclusive than the old-fashioned assumption of he/him for every generic person, and it’s less clunky than using he/she.
Problems with using they/them pronouns for all characters
But in a scenario, you’re talking about specific individual characters with names and genders.
We’re talking about specific individuals, we should get their pronouns right. By using they/them to refer to a specific character in a scenario, an ID isn’t avoiding gender or leaving it to the learners’ imaginations. They’re doing the second bullet point above: they’re identifying that character as a nonbinary person who uses they/them pronouns.
Using they/them pronouns for all characters in a scenario doesn’t avoid gender stereotypes. It just switches from stereotypes about male and female characters to stereotypes about nonbinary characters. It’s inclusion gone wrong. In the specific example from my reader, all the negative attributes of characters were assigned to nonbinary characters.
Using exclusively they/them pronouns for multiple characters is more likely to imply that you haven’t bothered to learn people’s pronouns. Think about it this way: do you refer to everyone on your team as they/them? Probably not–you put forth the effort to use the correct pronouns for the people on your team. It would be insulting to use they/them if that’s not their pronouns. It’s insulting in a scenario too.
This is also a question of equality versus equity. Treating everyone identically is equality. It’s giving everyone the same thing, including using the same pronouns for every characters. Equity is about giving people what they need, recognizing that people are different. For pronoun use, equality is using they/they pronouns for everyone, which doesn’t make sense. Equity is using he/him, she/her, they/them, she/they, they/he, ze/zir, or whatever pronouns someone asks you to use or you decide to give your character.
Equitable gender representation
Instead of misusing nonbinary pronouns, I recommend representing diverse characters in your scenarios. Use a combination of men, women, and nonbinary characters. Include trans characters in your scenarios. Just like you represent diversity in race and ethnicity in your characters, you can represent the diversity of gender.
When you have characters with negative attributes, try to mix that up. Don’t make all of the negative examples any single gender; add some variety.
In many workplace training scenarios, whether a character is trans or cis wouldn’t come up. A trans person would just be referred to by their authentic name and pronouns, with no reference to a deadname or misgendering. You might use a picture of a trans person for your character with no explicit mention in the script.
But in some situations, it is realistic and relevant to explicitly include trans characters. For example, I’ve seen several branching scenarios related to issues of updating people’s records after a name change and communicating with trans people respectfully in healthcare settings. In those scenarios, some characters were explicitly trans.
In addition to including characters of multiple genders, think about the roles those characters fill. Look for ways to subvert stereotypes, like having a woman doctor and a male nurse. If you have a series of several shorter scenarios with different characters, you can switch up the roles. If you have three scenarios showing managers and their teams, then you could create one woman, one man, and one nonbinary character for the three managers.
Names for nonbinary characters
I often receive questions about representation and inclusion after I post something about name generators for scenarios. The question from the intro to this post included a question about which generators would provide gender neutral names. While some nonbinary people do choose new names for themselves that aren’t as obviously feminine or masculine, many don’t. A nonbinary person can have any name. It’s fine to call your nonbinary character Casey, Sam, or Jordan, but it’s just as realistic to call your character Ella, Brian, or Theo. A nonbinary or genderfluid person could have a typical male name while presenting in typically feminine clothes and jewelry.
Nonbinary character images
I’ve written previously about customizing the illustrated characters from eLearning Art to create a nonbinary character by combining elements from several characters. I’ve used Vyond’s custom character creator to build nonbinary characters before too.
The Gender Spectrum Collection has photos of characters representing a range of gender identities.
With AI tools, you have more options for generating images of nonbinary characters. I generated the images below in Midjourney, but you could create similar images in Flux or other tools.
Additional reading and resources
My post on Diverse Characters in Learning Scenarios is about diversity more broadly, including gender, race, and disability. I’ve also written about the challenges of creating branching scenarios for DEI training topics.
Kayleen Holt’s post on How to Be More Gender-Inclusive is a great resource if you’re looking for a starting point to understand issues of gender inclusion in learning.
Pronouns: Why They Matter is a quick overview on pronouns, why they’re important, and how to use them.
Sign the Inclusive Learning Pledge to show your support for inclusive learning experiences.
Thanks to Kayleen Holt and Bela Gaytán for helping me think through my response to this question.