THEY/THEM ... she/her, he/him - the quiet revolution over pronouns

The way we address people is changing, and behind it lies a surprising linguistic, social and political history...

- Claire Armitstead

JAMIE FORSSTREOM IS EXCITED. TOMORROW THEY MAKE THEIR debut flight with Virgin Atlantic as part of the cabin crew on a plane to San Francisco. Forsstreom will be wearing a burgundy trouser suit designed by Vivienne Westwood, with their pronouns - "They/ them" -on a lapel badge. Forsstreom comes from Finland, a country where gendered pronouns don't exist in the language. "I've learned English since I was nine years old, so I've always known about them, but in terms of using them to define my own gender identity, I was quite late to the game," they say. It wasn't until Forsstreom moved to London six years ago in their mid-20s, and started to work exclusively in English, that they decided to make the change and honour a nonbinary identity that they have been clear about since early childhood.

In September, Virgin Atlantic became the latest company to throw itself into a quiet revolution sweeping through the institutional world. The airline's announcement that it would be possible for staff and customers to travel under the gender of their choice caused little media furore but a big run on its elegant pronoun badges. Within a month, the 10,000 printed out for distribution on planes and in its travel shops had been snapped up. A second batch is currently on order.

It was all different from the fuss that erupted last year when Marks & Spencer, that bastion of no-nonsense British values, announced that it was giving staff the option of adding personal pronouns to their name badges. A couple of months later the story rolled on to the British Library, with reports that the library ignored internal warnings that a similar initiative could make it seem too "woke". In the event, more than 100 British Library staff took up the option of pronoun badges.