The pronoun 'they'...

[heartbroken22]

I find it hard reading articles with they. I'm not sure if I've got a disability or something but if the article is talking about one person and it says they, my brain automatically inflates trying to make sense of it and I turn off like I'm confused. Not here to offend. But it's just hard trying to process it.

Yes....but when an article is talking about a known person, even if they only known thing about the person is that they are female, then it's incorrect.

For example:

"The suspect is known to be female with long brown hair. She was last seen wearing a blue coat and red gloves".

As opposed to

"A person was heard running away from the scene. Judging from the sound, they were wearing hard-soled shoes".

Unlike this sentence where it's confusing:

"After work, we all sat down to discuss the travails of the day. Shelly was particularly upset after speaking to someone who had been very rude. They exclaimed "I wish people could just be nice!!" before dissolving into tears".

@heartbroken22 it's not a disability to know how grammar and sentence structure works.

oh yes, it’s bad writing - that was the point I was making

It is confusing. And an awful lot of effort required to write so badly.

The gender binary is actually a pretty Eurocentric view

Which cultures don’t have language or social structures which distinguish between men and women?

Most of us manage with other relatively sudden changes to the way we use language towards and about other people, when those other people “insist” on it for reasons of identity, self-determination and respect, don’t we? Such as not calling Black people “coloureds”, or people with cerebral palsy “spastics”, or when Ms Smith gets married and tells us she’d now like to be “Mrs Jones”. I don’t recall it being an acceptable argument not to try to change our language because people will trip up or misunderstand unless it’s allowed to evolve gradually over thousands of years.

I might not believe in the reasons somebody asks me to use a particular pronoun or word or name for them, but I find it perfectly possible to hold my own personal beliefs or opinions and still show respect and politeness, without pretending it’s too difficult for me to understand all these sudden changes which supposedly don’t make any sense.

It's when certain people use it when their gender is blatantly obvious (as it is for 99% of people who have gone through puberty) that it is incorrect. Shakespeare wouldn't have referred to Juliet as a 'they' would he?

You don't look at Sam Smith or Demi Lovato and genuinely have a hard time distinguishing whether they are male or female, do you?

(I have used gender here just because you have, it should of course be sex)

@Bitofhelpoverhere Google is your friend here. It takes literally 5 seconds.

@ChiefWiggumsBoy back in the 16th century I am sure Juliet would have had little say about how people referred to her. Doesn't mean that if she were a 21st century person she wouldn't have had the right to ask that people refer to her differently if she so desired. As I said, basic manners - why would you want to hurt someone's feelings just because of your worldview?

Gender =|= sex, by the way. I'm surprised you are not aware of this.

I might not believe in the reasons somebody asks me to use a particular pronoun or word or name for them, but I find it perfectly possible to hold my own personal beliefs or opinions and still show respect and politeness, without pretending it’s too difficult for me to understand all these sudden changes which supposedly don’t make any sense.

@ComtesseDeSpair exactly this - bravo, so well put.

Why do people feel they have the right to be rude?

Hurts my head much more that you think because you struggle with reading somebodies preferred pronoun that you could have a disability . You're very ignorant and you say you don't mean to offend, you've failed I am offended

This

You are talking about changes in accepted vocabulary, mainly nouns. This is completely different to words like pronouns which are embedded into the language in a different way. You cannot change pronouns without rethinking your whole phrase and modifying it. It is very telling that you say that "most" people manage it. A lot of people don't including people with language processing disorders, dementia, prople using a ssecond (or third) language...so inclusive not to even consider them!

Assuming this has been brought up due to the whole Sam Smith attention seeking tosser thing 🙄
He is a man, therefore, grammatically speaking he is a “he” not a “they”
He can choose to be what he wants to be but don’t expect others to be grammatically incorrect to satisfy this ridiculous air of self entitlement.

30k+ people have perished in Turkey and Syria
A mum of 2 has vanished without trace
A 16 year old girl was murdered in a park
People can’t afford to heat or eat

Yet precious wankers like Smith get a pet lip because people don’t call him what he wants to be called 🙄
I despair - the world’s gone mad

Comparatively, it's dead easy to swap out one noun or phrase for another noun or phrase that denotes more or less the same thing but with different connotations, or to switch to nouns that categorise in a different way, or to swap to different adjectives or verbs (unless it's very common verbs like be or do or go, which have a lot of functions beyond what a less common verb is used for). It's far less easy to change things that are more basic and which form the framework that we drape our nouns and verbs over, like pronouns or word order or how different tenses are formed or other things that you don't think about when you speak.

And it's easy to switch from, say, "coloured" to "black", because unless you're pedantic about "black" meaning literally coal-coloured, the word isn't incorrect, or already in use for something else, or functioning as a claim that you believe something you don't believe — it's just a different noun that the people it refers to prefer over the old one.

I'm even less likely to take into consideration how a fictional person wants me to refer to them in the third person tbh.

And yes, you're right gender isn't the same as sex. But as not a single person other than yourself can identify all the floating nebulous parts of your personality, I tend to stick to reality and correct grammar. If you look like a female individual, you are a she. I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings. I get why journalists bow to this shit, but I'm not going to. Imagine being more upset that people won't call you 'they' rather than the fact they still treat you exactly the same as they would if you didn't insist on a plural pronoun. You can't opt out of being treated like a woman because you insist on 'they'.

Why can't pronouns just relate to your sex? It's all just attention seeking non sense because meaningless 'gender identities' are a big thing right now. You can be a feminine man or a masculine woman, no one cares, you don't need to rebrand yourself, you are still either male or female.

Remembering to refer to someone as 'they' all the time is not something I could be bothered to do. I wouldn't be rude at all, I just wouldn't mix with them. Fortunately the only people I know that buy into all this nonsense are kids.

Sorry, I mean a different adjective in that last part, obviously. Both coloured and black are pretty offensive if used as a stand-alone noun about a person…

'They' has been used for centuries where the gender is unknown or unimportant.

I think people like to pretend they find it difficult in order to shore up a right wing ideology.

I find they/them pronouns silly, but so is this post. Maybe you do need to seek a diagnosis for that inflating brain before it explodes.

It is actually pretty common to find it difficult. There are a lot of language processing disorders which would lead to this. Why do you find the fact that other people's brains don't work exactly like yours silly?

@SatInMySpottyOnesie ah, the zero sum thinking. The world is in a state so we don't need to bother with basic politeness. Sure.

If you don’t know whether a person is male or female you use ‘they’.
This has also been the case & I was educated in the 70s.

Yes, but again, that is not what this is about, is it? It's about Sam Smith* insisting people refer to him as 'they' when it's 100% clear he is a male.

Can you explain what you mean by this: I think people like to pretend they find it difficult in order to shore up a right wing ideology

*Other's are available. Just the first that springs to mind.

Yes, I pretend to have a disability that results in extreme difficulty with on-the-fly modification of basic structural components of my language which won't process smoothly because of their counter-factuality, purely because I want to shore up right-wingers, despite my far-left and socially liberal political views.

Always not also!