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I wish we could all just agree that sex is biological and gender is a social role. So if someone wants to say "Some days I feel masc, but other days I'm more femme," okay, whatever Demi Lovato. I'm even willing to use whatever pronouns you prefer, even if that means changing them from time to time (so long as you let me know what they are today and aren't going to throw a tantrum if I sometimes make a mistake). If attention-seeking teens want to claim they are Ψ-gendered today, you can accommodate them if you wish without agreeing that their physical bodies are in some Ψ state that is neither male nor female.
The real problem is not with teenagers who are trying to carve out special, quirky new identities for themselves, it's with the grown-ass adults who take this shit seriously and then run conflict theory on it.
This is a level of permissiveness that I cannot fathom. If someone asked you to address them differently depending on their mood, would you? Like if they were in a good mood they want to be called Jonathan Sunshine, but if they're feeling a bit down it's Gloomraven, Lord of all Sorrows? Because I don't really see how it's any different.
I think it's different for the reason that switching from "he" to "she" does not discommode me much, while switching from "Jonathan Sunshine" to "Gloomraven, Lord of All Sorrows" would be ridiculous and asinine and is fortunately something that only happens in ridiculous and asinine straw man what ifs.
I'll note that even the first example is hypothetical, since I don't actually know any people who change their pronouns on a recurring basis.
Obviously there is a limit to my tolerance. I don't respect neo-pronouns like "xe" or "xir," and I have yet to be forced to use "they" as a singular third-person pronoun in person. (That one offends me more on grammatical grounds than any feelings I have about gender identities.)
If someone were actually changing their pronouns on a daily basis, I would stop trying to keep track and tell them they're being unreasonable to expect me to.
I don't want to comment on the neo-pronouns, but I have a question about this bit:
The singular they goes back to at least the 1300s, at least according to Merriam-Webster. What kind of pedigree are you looking for in your english words above and beyond a word usage that literally predates modern english? Is it just that the same word can refer to singular and plural? Does the word "deer" bother you in the same way?
Trust me, I am familiar with the linguistic history of "they" and with this argument.
The problem with it is that in the past, "they" has been used (somewhat inconsistently) as an indefinite gender pronoun (such as when the gender of the person being referred to is unknown, or when you are talking about a generic person of either gender). And even in those cases, it sometimes leads to grammatical ambiguity.
The new usage, where it's used to refer to individuals even when their gender is known (see what I did there?) is both awkward and frequently unclear.
"They're waiting for me in the car."
"I called my friend and they were very upset."
"They told me I misgendered them."
It's becoming more common for me to be reading an article where people use a singular "they" and I have to backtrack to figure out if we're talking about one person or multiple people. I would almost prefer that we actually adopt some neopronoun like "xe/xir" just to disambiguate the grammar, but since I don't recognize that "xe/xirs" exist, I just mentally roll my eyes at people who identify as a singular-they.
Could you expand a little on this? I'm not sure how, once you've accepted the singular they for a person of unknown gender or perhaps an abstract person without gender, applying it to different individuals causes more ambiguity.
Or is it just that this previously rage edge-case is becoming more common which is leading to problems?
I thought my examples above gave pretty good examples of the problem. What's still unclear?
I think the issue is that I'm still unsure of your position on the singular they for use with a person of unknown gender (old definition).
Specifically the paragraph that starts with:
"it" here seems to imply the new definition, otherwise contrasting with the past is odd (or I'm just parsing something wrong, always an option). I interpreted this as the old definition was fine (if not ideal), and the new version was a problem.
But later there's talk about ambiguity, and as far as I can tell, both definitions do that to roughly the same degree, so I'm not sure why contrasting the old and new definitions comes up beforehand.
Between:
"A person should always look both ways before they cross the street."
and
"A person should always look both ways before he or she crosses the street."
I prefer:
"A person should always look both ways before crossing the street."
In other words, a third person singular "they" may be acceptable according Webster's and historical precedent, but it's still ambiguous and there are usually better grammatical constructs you can use to avoid it.
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