his past February I was invited to give a lecture at a Duke seminar called “LGBTQ Activism and History.” I arrived a bit late, and each of the dozen or so students had already filled out a name card, a folded piece of paper that indicated their full name and pronouns. I was puzzled for two reasons: First, why state your pronouns? Isn’t it pretty obvious who’s a man and who’s a woman, who gets “he” versus “she”? Second: Two of the students had put down “they, them, their.”