The costs of trans visibility

it's kind of wild to argue one should assume that "they" is the correct pronoun to go with when it's unstated

What else would you call someone where you don't know their name, what they look like, or what gender they are?

you act like people misgendering others is an endemic to the point where you should go with the "other" option which is going to be wrong far more often than your best guess would be

which is hilarious because the entire argument behind using they/them is that you don't want to misgender but using they/them will dramatically increase the chance of doing so

which shows this is about virtue signaling and little else

While using "they" is going to be wrong a lot it's also going to be unobjectionable in almost all cases. People often don't even notice if they're referred to as "they", even to their face, and if they do notice generally won't give it a second thought. Conversely a man being referred to as "her" or woman as "he" will almost always notice and be likely to have negative feelings about.

If you know it's a woman running against women in top of the world athletic competitions...

Yikes.

"They is a doctor" vs "They are a doctor". The former should stand out like a sore thumb as being OBVIOUSLY grammatical nonsense that any grade school kid could tell you is conjugated wrong.

I don't really believe you don't see how incredibly jarring the first is in any normal situation. I think it is just that when it comes to trans people, your blinders somehow come off and you forget basic conjugations.

I use singular "they" pretty commonly with my students. I have big classes of young people, even though I do some stuff like surveys to know names/pronouns of as many as I can but I'm just not going to know the pronouns of every person. So I'll often use the neutral they when I don't know someone's name like "oh I really like their question, because blah blah blah". This isn't really about trans people specifically, but it helps those students too.

Yes you use "they" often because you work in a sector that is at the 98th percentile of marxism

I'm glad you discovered this for yourself! I'm not sure why you think anyone but you is confused about this, but I guess it's just one more opportunity for you to play that tired game where you get to make up pretend reasons to pat yourself on your back.

Assuming you're a native speaker you have frequently used "they are" (or some other analogous grammar) to refer to a singular person without it having sounded weird to you for your entire life. The thing that probably has changed is using it when you definitely know the singular person you are referring to. That genuinely does take some getting used to but the grammatical use of "they are" to refer to a single person is entirely natural for a native speaker and has been forever, which is why lozen's "confusion" is so absurd.

I'm not sure it's right to assume that the 'they' used when the identity of the person is unknown is the same 'they' that is used when it is known.

Partially. But also, I remember my grade 9 english teacher (so 25 years ago) being a big fan of singular they and pointing out that it is already common in the english language. Nothing at all to do with non-binary people. Where I think it can feel grating is the distinction between familiar and unfamiliar. When most people use the singular they, they do it in contexts where the person is unfamiliar. Like I told you a story about my doctor, but either didn't tell you their gender or you forgot, and so when you repeat the story you say "uke_master's doctor said they thought the prognosis was good". Where it feels more grating is when it is a familiar person where you do know their name and that they look male - say - and are being asked to use this gender neutral construct in that circumstance.

Anyways, my point here is the grammatical conjugation is "easy" in the sense as being the same as what everyone already does. It's not that it is a nothing ask, but it shouldn't be a big ask.

If we're talking about how it sounds/feels when using the grammatical form then I don't see why they should be treated any different. A native speaker will find "they is" awkward in any scenario while they will find "they are" natural in all scenarios. We even have "you" as a direct analogue - no native speaker would use "you is" in any context (excluding dialectal slang).

Why would you think it conjugates differently? I feel like the natural assumption would be that it is the same.

Language evolves but you can and should refuse to accept "evolutions" that stem from horrific anti human ideologies which are objectively disastrous for society, like literally everything based on radical leftist preferences.

There is no mandate of heaven for the arc of history, we can burn it down and stop the non sense

Or we all just laugh at your desperate hyperbole.

also, do you think dante was bad for writing in italian?

unrelated but... mandate of heaven is a fake concept that doesn't exist in the real world and just got latched onto and promoted by the jesuits who were strongly hoping to find an intrinsic belief in a higher power from the chinese who staunchly ignored their missionary roles

Exactly. And I'm not disagreeing with anything you wrote. But if we are to use "they" as a pronoun for a specific known person, shouldn't we follow the normal convention for verb tense? "They is" seems right to me in an academic sense, but I also know that would be even more grating. I'm actually a fan of non-gendered language. But ingrained habits die hard.

If a person is not he or she (although all humans are either he or she, but I’ll play along) wouldn’t the gender neutral form be “it” for a singular person?

No. "It" in English is felt to be dehumanizing.

Personally, I issue bans for this use of language for exactly the reason gangsta just said.

“It” references a thing, not a person.

Ban? For asking a simple question? I’m not saying it in the sense that they’re not people. I’m saying, in the linguistic sense of gender, if a person is not a he or a she, why would that not be the alternative? Until recently, we never used “they” when the gender was known. They was exclusively plural except in cases when gender was unknown, such as when the actor was unknown, “They stole my car last night” etc
If you can accept an alternate reality where men can become women and women can become men, why can you not accept a reality where a person is an it?

There is a large community of people far more educated on the topic than you and I, eminent psychiatrists, who disagree with you. IÂ’m saddened that anyone on this forum would close themselves off to points of views that have solid foundations for how they were formed. I wouldnÂ’t thought this would be a place of open and honest discussion. Sounds like you just want an echo chamber for views you agree with.

If we were starting fresh one could maybe argue either way. However, as singular they has been part of our vernacular for ages and used regularly nothing to do with trans people, it seems by far the most natural thing to do is to just keep using the same language we’ve always been using.