That is entirely fair. I’m trans myself (though I transitioned 20 years ago and it isn’t really part of my identity) and constantly stumble on they/them pronouns. It can be hard, but people appreciate you trying, trust me on that.
As a native speaker of a language with only non gendered pronouns, I trip over with all of them. I regularly use the wrong pronoun of people who very obviously present as one or the other.
Still, I was once asked why I was being so woke for using ‘they’. I was really surprised, it was because I was referring to a person with a gender neutral name, what was I supposed to do? Assume they were male?
Yes. The “correct” behavior is to assume that people are male. That is what we are actually taught in grade school (at least when I went ~15 years ago)
In reality, using they when the gender of who you are talking about is not known has been a thing in English for over 600 years.
Singular “they” is actually older than singular “you”, which has only been a thing for about 400 years.
A fun observation is that both singular they and singular you are grammatically plural. E.g, you can never say something like “you is tall”, only “you are tall”, even when you are talking to a single person.
The same is true for “pants” and “scissors”; but somehow only seems to confuse people when it comes up with “they”
That is entirely fair. I’m trans myself (though I transitioned 20 years ago and it isn’t really part of my identity) and constantly stumble on they/them pronouns. It can be hard, but people appreciate you trying, trust me on that.
As a native speaker of a language with only non gendered pronouns, I trip over with all of them. I regularly use the wrong pronoun of people who very obviously present as one or the other.
Still, I was once asked why I was being so woke for using ‘they’. I was really surprised, it was because I was referring to a person with a gender neutral name, what was I supposed to do? Assume they were male?
Yes. The “correct” behavior is to assume that people are male. That is what we are actually taught in grade school (at least when I went ~15 years ago)
In reality, using they when the gender of who you are talking about is not known has been a thing in English for over 600 years.
Singular “they” is actually older than singular “you”, which has only been a thing for about 400 years.
A fun observation is that both singular they and singular you are grammatically plural. E.g, you can never say something like “you is tall”, only “you are tall”, even when you are talking to a single person.
The same is true for “pants” and “scissors”; but somehow only seems to confuse people when it comes up with “they”
Huh, thanks for a genuine answer, TIL.