this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
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Literally you already do it without a problem. You have, and I would bet large sums of money on it, said in regards to someone well know to you “they forgot it at home” or something to that effect. You already do this without thinking, the only extra layer is that you’re trying not to get it wrong, not that it’s difficult to get it right.
Just practice some more. You still won’t be perfect but these people literally do not care at all so long as you’re trying and aren’t attempting to take their rights away. They have bigger fish to fry.
Oh, to be there when you say “they” haha
Or to watch you struggle to force yourself to say he/she so I “lose”.
It’s ok, we’ve only been doing it for hundreds of years; it’s just a passing fad, right?
Oh, go on then, explain it. I’d love to hear the nuanced differences between these two uses of 3rd person singular “they” for when he or she are not possible to use.
You so very very much did not. The only difference is that you simply don’t want to make a non-binary person comfortable.
There is absolutely no rule in the English language that states that if you know someone’s biological sex(of which there are more than two but let’s keep it simple) you must use the corresponding he/him/his or she/her/hers pronouns for them. You can 100% use “they” in reference to your own damn mother if you wanted to, it’s all above board.
So, please, explain the difference between the two things you mentioned before. I’m simply dying to hear what you have to say.
But explain how this is different in an actual grammatical sense.
Yes, it is incredibly minorly different in how it feels and guess what, it gets easier if you stop moaning about it and just lean into it. I simply refer to most people as “they” now and it both hasn’t caused any communication breakdowns and it’s made it super easy to not slip-up. Barely any mistakes these days, and it really didn’t take that long.
You’re making such a big deal out of it and for what?
Jesus Christ, why do you want to be the victim so bad? Are you getting off on this or something?
I’m literally saying that no one is mad at you for not being perfect, I specifically said that I’m not perfect either, and that the only reason anyone would ever be mad is that you seem to think it’s important to point that this simple thing is hard and this very grammatically correct thing “feels” wrong.