Any academics? Is this normal now?

I am an academic. Depends on what they meant. Did they mean refer to everyone you cite as ‘they’ even though sex is known? If yes, this person is off their rocker and you need to ignore them. If they meant use they instead of ‘he/she’ then okay although it’s often a feminist statement to use ‘she’ and specify that you are using it to denote a person of either sex. But personally, I hate reading stuff where ‘he’ is used to refer to both sexes so I think the singular ‘they’ is fine when you are speaking hypothetically. It’s not grammatically incorrect as it is recognised as referring to the singular when used in that context (as I have used it in this post when referring to this tutor whose sex I don’t know)

"Jane Austen was a great author. They had some issues becoming a writer because they were born with female bits, and people with female bits weren't really expected to be writers. Or at least we assume they did, they didn't make their gender identity known after all, all we can do is speculate."

Of course you must never make assumptions, that would not be academically rigorous. Since third person pronouns describe what the first person, the speaker, perceives, you ought to use neutral pronouns if you are uncertain about your perceptions or if your intent is to make your reader's perception unclear.

It has been demonstrated that readers will often give greater importance to the work of someone they perceive to be male (citation?), so, if you are contrasting the work of a female curator with that of a male curator, it may be highly relevant to avoid gendered pronouns. In this case you will want to prevent your reader making assumptions.

On the other hand, if you are discussing your perceptions, and you perceive Picasso's work to be angular and unsettling, you would state this. Equally, if you perceive Picasso to be make, you would state this. It would be inappropriate to assume that his work was angular because he was astigmatic (he wasn't, AFAIK!).

If a person's sex is relevant to their work, such as Charlotte Bronte/Currer Bell, then avoiding the correct gendered pronoun would be inappropriate.

At our uni we have those badges but no one is forced to use certain pronouns.
They do have those “do you identify with your assigned gender” tick boxes though and you’re not really given the choice to write an essay on the difference between sex and gender!

I'm a nursing lecturer and we still refer to people as he/ she. E may be asking the student to link to biology and like it or not- there are differences that impact upon health. So we can't just say 'they'.

So they want you to write in a grammatically incorrect (Or at least grammatically clumsy) way for fear of offending someone that won't ever lay eyes on you essay? And most likely is quite happy with the obvious he or she anyway.

What tosh.

I don't know if that's normal now but it's a bit rubbish.

However I would have used "they" a lot in essays because I would have been citing papers with multiple authors, and often didn't know the sex of single authors anyway. And mostly it would be completely depersonalised, "A paper by/A study by such and such (date) says blah blah blah"... But that's science. I imagine in arts and humanities you actually discuss people themselves more, so would use he and she when needed.

Imagine trying to write a history essay without gendered pronouns.

I should add that if you’re using “he/she” in a general sense rather than referring to specific people, then that is now considered by many publishers to be clunky, and a neutral form is preferred. But to refer to, say, Simone de Beauvoir (not that your tutor would ever have you read her, I’m sure!):as “they” is an ideological position.

Oh god. I went to Bristol (22 years ago), and it’s really dismaying to me that they’re like this now.

Not normal- and I'm at the University of Woker than Woke.

No it’s not normal, and I would simply ignore it.

At my uni I'm seeing a few title blocks on the bottom of emails with preferred pronouns. No-one has tried to police how I write, but I'm an engineer and we struggle with social concepts at the best of times.

Are you writing about real people? I suppose it's stylistic. in a round about way will it help bring and end to gender discrimination? I could live with it on those terms but equally I could chose to be offended that you disregarded my gender without consulting me. So on balance I'm going to have to go with bullshit. He/she unless the person has said otherwise?

FFS. No advice. Just... FFS