It’s not so much mis-gendering as de-gendering, so yes.
And if the large majority of people are perfectly fine with still being “he” and “her” and calling everyone degendered pronouns makes you The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party? Because it sure as hell does.
I’m going to guess that a fairly large majority doesn’t care deeply whether you refer to them with their customary gendered pronouns or with an ambiguous “they”, especially if they aren’t there when you do it.
So the people to concern yourself with are the ones who DO care. There are some of those on both sides of the issue. But I’m pretty sure they aren’t a majority, either way.
I’ll agree with that. But I expect a fairly large majority would roll their eyes at the profoundly stupid-looking/sounding ones like “e, eir, em, emself”. And it doesn’t help that there are several competing sets of made-up gender-neutral pronouns in use:
There are a wide variety of novel, gender neutral pronouns that have been proposed. But in fact, “they” has decisively won that battle, and the novel pronouns are unusual to hear in the wild.
I’m sad about that. I would have preferred (exactly) one of them to have won. But that’s not what happened.
It’s like the 2016 Republican primaries. A wide range of somewhat acceptable options blown away because they were competing with each other to leave the moronic choice as the last one standing by default.
No it’s exactly the opposite. These made up pronouns are the moronic ones, “they” has already been in use in exactly this way for at least a hundred years and is perfectly natural for English speakers.
“The doctor will be here soon. I hope they can figure out the issue.”
I really hope s/he can
That’s fine in writing but not spoken. Then you get awkward constructions like “he or she” which sounds sound weird.
People keep saying that but it’s not true. Other than some snippets of poetry or works from 14th centrury or so, they has never referred to a single definite person, only plural and generic.
“It’s never been used that way historically, if you don’t count the times it’s been used that way historically.”
Really old works are the “wild west” from before there were rules and standards. It’s not even really English as such. Poetry sometimes uses non standard language to make it flow. Neither are indications of valid non-poetic language now.
I’ve been doing this at work when referring to people I don’t know. Because, you know, I don’t know. I think probably 5% or 10% of employees are no longer using traditional gendered pronouns, and you’re right, “they” is not misgendering, it’s just side-stepping. I wouldn’t even notice if someone referred to me as “they,” let alone take offense.
What is a generic person if not a person whose gender is unknown to the speaker?
“Who is ringing the doorbell?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, answer it and find out what they want.”
The construction is perfectly normal, it isn’t tainted or odd sounding, it’s using a plural pronoun instead of a gendered singular because gender isn’t known.
The step to using the plural instead of gendered singular because you don’t want to specify gender is much smaller than the step of inventing an entirely new ungendered singular pronoun, because we already have a word we use as an ungendered singular pronoun.
Option A: Everyone has to learn something new to be more inclusive of a minority.
Option B: The large majority would rather not change, and does not care about that minority.
I think Option A is better. You’ve clearly chosen Option B. It’s not my battle to fight, but I think the argument for being less inclusive because tradition (Appeal to Tradition) is an uphill one.
It’s happened to me a few times in my life (notably, when I was a young man and had long hair and a slim build - there were a few times when I was standing in the way or something and someone tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘scuse me love’, only to realise their mistake when I turned around. It was probably more embarrassing for them than it was insulting to me.
But I’m a cisgender person - I’ve not had the experience of having to navigate all of the life stuff that comes with a change of gender. I’ve never had to assert my gender to a resistant and argumentative set of peers; if someone gets my gender wrong, I don’t have to wonder or worry if it is more than a simple accident - I can be reasonably sure it was. A trans person doesn’t automatically have the luxury of that certainty I have, that nobody is getting it wrong on purpose, with motive.
This does put me in mind of an incident a few years back when a group of people, for whatever reason, decided to try to establish an online narrative that I am Jewish. I’m not. I don’t have anything against Jewish people, but it’s simply not a true fact to say I’m one of them.
It was quite disturbing to have people repeatedly and persistently claiming and arguing a patently false detail about my identity.
The identity doesn’t have to be deplorable - it is enough for someone to be asserting it falsely, with force (and some implied agenda for doing so).
I am a Jew, and i would find it pretty upsetting if a group of people persistently claimed that i was Christian, fwiw.
Well, it was used historically as an “i don’t know this person’s gender” pronoun, except for a couple of decades (that happen to be when many board members grew up) when the powers that be pushed really hard to deprecate that use.
Also, it really is new to use they for a particular known person. “I went to the mall with John and they bought a new suit”. Shakespeare wouldn’t have written that.
But mostly, my generation was screwed by the grammarians who held sway in our youth, who were trying very hard to enforce gender segregation and gender standards. I suspect it was political then, too, as men were trying to regain the power they gave up when Rosie the riveter could support herself. The 50s were a weird time, and a historical outlier in terms of women being kept on a tight leash. And i think the grammatical rules, designed to enforce that men are normative and women aren’t, were stricter then than they were in most other eras.
As I said, I would prefer to use degendered pronouns unless corrected. However it is tricky to break the habit of a lifetime.
But in a century or so I expect we’ll all be using degendered pronouns as a default, unless the Powers-that-Be make it illegal.
I think ppl are just too frickin sensitive these days. Just call ppl by their correct pronouns and identity. If someone gets mad cuz you assumed, than that’s their problem. You’re not a mind reader, so don’t get discouraged if they treat you like one.