I’d like to see the eventual emergence of a new, definitive nonbinary pronoun (in proper linguistic terms, a definite third-person singular animate neuter). But I’m not waiting for that to happen to start treating people with respect. A shift in social understanding tends to be a messy thing, linguistically and otherwise. That’s no excuse not to engage in good faith.
As far as potential confusion, that’s something I’m always on the lookout for in beta testing, especially in games with gv characters other than the PC. I’ve suggested rewording sentences where it wasn’t clear whether “they” referred to an individual or a group. I’ve had to do this much less often than I originally expected - it’s usually pretty clear in context, especially when you’ve given yourself a chance to get used to it.
The sad thing is that “they” has already been this word for centuries. Singular “they” is almost as old as plural “they” (and quite a bit older than singular “you”). It was only relatively recently that people started trying to claim it was ungrammatical. Granted, this shouldn’t make a difference, as inclusivity is more important than linguistic prescriptivism, and the language will evolve over time no matter what, but it’s still frustrating to see so many people saying that a term that has been in common usage for centuries is “not proper English”.
As an aside, part of me wants to write a story in a setting where people only choose their pronouns at the age of 10 or so, and would go by they/them pronouns prior to that…
I’m not arguing with you, but I’m curious - can you show me where singular “they” has historically been used to refer to a definite individual? I know it has been in use for centuries, but I thought historically it had been used in cases of indefinite identity. I’d be interested in seeing otherwise.
Eh, it’s pretty common for a man to feel uncomfortable about someone insisting he’s a woman even when he says otherwise and says he doesn’t like being referred to that way, or vice versa; what’s being talked about here is a natural extension of that.
That would lead to annoyance. A person shouldn’t be offended over what others think or believe in. As long as you understand and know who you are, you shouldn’t get offended by that.
Perhaps there is a misunderstanding in play about the differences between “offence” vs “annoyance” vs “upset”. Regardless of the word used, it tends to provoke a negative emotion if someone insists on calling “Mr Green” “Mrs Green”, no?
If it feels like a small or a silly thing, then it’s also an easy matter to be courteous.
I don’t think it’s wrong to be offended by deliberate disrespect. I’m cisgender, but I changed my first name as a young adult. When people didn’t know or forgot to use my chosen name, I was annoyed. When people looked me in the face and told me they didn’t care what I called myself, they’d always known me as Former Name and were going to continue to refer to me as Former Name, I was hurt and, yes, offended.
Okay, I guess I slightly misunderstood. While it is true that the first definite historically-significant nonbinary person in western society was born in the 1750s, the Friend didn’t really use any pronouns (hence my calling the Friend “the Friend” instead of “they/them”), and nonbinary people in general were so poorly known that there was no real occasion to use “they/them” pronouns; if you knew who you were talking about, you’d know what pronouns they used. (Note: Chevalier d’Éon lived slightly before Public Universal Friend, but the Chevalier only ever presented as either male or female, and could thus have been a binary trans person; the Friend rejected gender altogether, and was very clearly nonbinary.)
That said, I feel the difference is very minor: we use “he/him” to refer to both the generic man and a specific man, and we use “she/her” to refer to both the generic woman and a specific woman. Why would it be wrong to use “they/them” for a specific individual when it is already used to refer to a singular generic individual?
