Calling my unborn baby they/them

[Irish24]

I am keeping the gender a surprise and the amount of people that are confused when I refer to the baby as they/them’ is starting to aggravate me. I don’t like referring to them as ‘it’ or just ‘baby’. They/them is a word and has been going around for centuries. It also is a singular pronoun and does not always mean multiple. My friends say they can’t get their head around it. I don’t understand. I know they/them is a controversial topic these days and more people are perhaps finding out the gender. I still don’t find it confusing at all and it never even occurred to me that it would be. Anyone else experienced this or am I being over dramatic here? It’s just tiresome having to constantly explain to people, I don’t know the gender so that’s why I’m calling the baby ‘them/they’

Literally my mind is blown that people ask you to use this rather than they/them.

yep... attention seeking. you've had a couple of chances now to clear up any grammatical blunders and you've ignored.

you are doing this purely the attention.

congratuations on they/them

You’d still med a pronoun to avoid sentences becoming tortured. And they is the grammatically correct one.

I mostly used ‘it’ when I was pregnant and didn’t know what sex my baby was. The baby was not offended.

As are you. You're claiming it's gender ideology issues causing people to object to / fail to understand the correct use of 'they' as a singular pronoun. Reading the posts here, it would appear that it's ignorance of grammatical rules causing the confusion rather than any ideological reason.

I called my baby they/them until their sex was determined at the 20wk scan, and it was hilarious how many people didn't grasp that they/them can be singular and assumed I was having twins haha. Really shocking to see how many people have such a poor grasp of the first language they speak. Of course YANBU. I didn't like 'it' either, they were a growing human, not an object.

Ooooo you've caused a proper frother here OP.

@Irish24 I've had exactly the same thing, I'm 21 weeks and we're not finding out the sex.

I've been using "they/them", sometimes "he or she", sometimes "it" pretty interchangeably and not really thinking about it.

My mum made a weird comment the other day about they/them and I had to explain simple grammar to her and that what I was doing wasn't a political statement 🙄

Just keep doing what you're doing. People are weird and have weird hang ups, that's how it is through pregnancy and parenthood. You just have to let it run off you - ignore it.

My mum actually used "they" the other day when referring to the baby, when it made grammatical sense. She just hadn't realised/ thought about it.

I think I’ve posted more than multiple on the thread on whatever ‘grammatical errors’ I have made. If people still dont understand then that is their issue not mine

Yes you are being dramatic

So many people, so easily triggered.

Some of the more intellectually minded contributors to the gender critical boards on here will be mortified at some of the contributions on this thread.

How some of you have managed to contort a discussion on the singular and plural uses of a word in to a sex/gender debate is really astounding. The mental gymnastics on display are Olympic level, congratulations.

My eyes twitched every time healthcare staff referred to me as 'mum' when we had our baby. And they weren't talking to the baby (as in 'let's give you back to mummy'). For example they'd be discussing my care in front of me and one would say 'blah blah due to mum's comorbidities blah blah' and I'm just sat there thinking wow, I've already been reduced to just 'mum', they couldn't be bothered to ask my name. It's so naff.

What's wrong with baby? Or you could give it a neutral name. A friend of mine named all her babies in utero in this way (we none of us knew the sex as it was not common at the time to tell parents even if a scan revealed it).
Using 'they/them' and also 'gender' sends a message that you may be into gender woo, too. Probably better avoided!

Do the people on this thread aghast at they/them being used pull people up in real life you reckon?

When they hear someone say 'It was nice to see Auntie Batshit, I haven't seen them in ages' they pop up with

Actually you haven't seen her for ages.

No fucking way they do you wouldn't have time for anything else in the day! 🤣

I suspect the reason you don’t remember is because it’s so very normal and unremarkable to use ‘they’ for a single person of unknown sex.
’Someone’s on the phone’ - ‘what do they want’? type of thing.
It didn’t used to be any more remarkable than using ‘you’ as a singular rather than (as it originally was) a plural.

I think we’re noticing the use of the singular ‘they’ nowadays because of a few people of known sex wanting it to be used for them.

"when the baby comes come, the baby will be sleeping in a Moses basket in our room until the baby is ready to go into its own room, probably when the baby is around six months old"

(quoting from @JassyRadlett as an example).

No one speaks like that. It's natural to substitute a pronoun.

No! No it fucking doesn't what is wrong with people?!

I wasn't referring to Virginia Wolfe's writing, I was referring to the fact that she had both male and female lovers at the same time as well as being married to a man, often all co. habiting. Regardless of the sex of the lovers,it's commuting adultery.i live very near her house, some her husband knew about,some not. She was eccentric and pretty much lived in the shed.

People probably think you do know the sex of the baby but are not telling them, which is a bit irritating.

I suspect it's common to refer to the mother as 'mother or mum' as it makes it clear who is being referred to rather than using a forename. One of the team may also have this name, or be confused as to who is being talked about. A bit irritating, but better than being referred to as 'the birthing parent' - yuck.

It's singular if you do not know the sex, not the gender. I.e. who's that person by the lake? They look like they're going to jump in - can't tell sex.

Well it can only be one or the other. Why us it confusing?

Her name is Woolf, not Wolfe. She was bisexual. That’s not gender fluid.

Their problem then. They can think what they like