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’

It’s much too early in the morning to be this angry about this. Are you ok?

Use of they/them as a singular pronoun is normal, but some people just like to get their knickers in a twist over such things.

You go into a restaurant, you go to your table...

"Oh no, someone has left their coat behind, they will probably come back. I'll hand it in at the bar for them to collect when they realise"

Perfectly acceptable.

I think @TheCountofMountingCrispBags must be having a bad day. They will feel much better with some coffee inside them, I'm sure.

They/Them means more than one. Being used for single pronouns really grates my gears and can’t stand trends trying to change the English language. It just sounds moranic.

I am keeping the gender a surprise
Why the big deal?

Fucking hell the they/them brigade have been triggered here 😂

Of course what you're saying makes sense OP, just any sort of sense around those pronouns has been thrown out of the window

Fuck me some of the comments on here, telling a new mum how she can refer to her own unborn baby it's mental

Why not just say "when the baby is born"? Even "when it is born" wouldn’t bother me.

If you have found people are getting confused and that is troubling you, as it is obviously troubling the OP, what is the point of standing on principle and just becoming angry and insulting? Either she changes how she speaks because she wants people not to be confused, or she says what she wants and doesn’t care if they are confused. Her choice. No need for insults.

The majority of the mental replies must be bots. They have to be.

Perhaps people think it’s strange because ‘they’ and ‘them’ makes it sound like you’re having twins? I didn’t know the sex of two of my three DC so I just referred to them as ‘baby/the baby’ or ‘he or she’. I think that’s by far the most common way to talk about a baby whose sex is unknown or secret, so maybe people are also just confused by you using different terminology, or, as said above, think you’ve suddenly been told you’re having twins.

What the fuck has it got to do with you?

PFB?

As this thread shows, many people aren’t bright enough to understand that they/them can be singular.

Pronouns have always been a thing. it is a pronoun, I is a pronoun.

*I am keeping the gender a surprise
Why the big deal?
@BallerinaRadio
What the fuck has it got to do with you?

I'm on a conversation thread. I'm allowed to ask questions.

Why be so aggressive in your tone?

This thread is insane! I’m as gender critical as they come but they / them is the grammatically correct pronoun to use in this instance when OP refers to baby, whose gender is unknown because OP has chosen not to find out. It’s clearly nothing to do with gender politics.

I didn’t know what I was having and called the baby they/them, people were really annoyed by it, which I found odd but I kept using it anyway. I don’t like calling the bump baby or he/she, that felt weird to me

She means she hasn’t found out the gender, not that she knows and is keeping it as a surprise.

I’d just say ‘when he or she is here’.

You’re not being unreasonable. They/Them is a perfectly normal way refer to something you don’t know the gender of!

”A friend of mine is visiting this weekend”
”oh that’s nice, how do you know them?”
”I met Kath at university, she’s an old friend”

People have just got brain worms from hating trans people and are deliberately obtuse about using they/them. Carry on!

Some fucker stole my car? Or something like that. But that's because I'd be angry - I don't usually swear.

It's funny, now that I run through in my head what I would tell the police in that situation, I might actually use "they/them". Never considered that before because in any other situation I definitely don't use use those pronouns as singular. Maybe it's because I'm referring to a stranger? If feels unnatural and incorrect to refer to someone I personally know as they/them.

If I'm referring to someone's baby (my sister is currently pregnant), I call the baby just that, "baby". When I was pregnant myself DH and I had genderless nicknames for them (2 babies), but occasionally used whatever pronoun we imagined baby might be.

People are so obsessed with the trans argument that they forget that “they/them” has been used when not knowing someone’s gender long before pronouns became political.

Call it what you want. Nobody really cares except you but they is not a singular pronoun no matter how much some folk want it to be.

Bit clunky isn't it, if only other was another word you could use in place of he or she 🤔

There is no rule broken. If we don’t know a persons gender we refer to to them as ‘them’ all the time.

Where is the postie? They aren’t normally this late.

I found this coat, I hope whoever lost it cones back, they must have paid a fortune for it.

People are being obtuse.

Nobody cares, its unnecessary and precious