Sigh. Help me out here. A friend of mine has been 1. insisting on going by "they" and 2. calling people out when they don't use someone else's preferred pronoun.
I asked her why she uses "they." She says she has masculine properties and therefore "she" does not apply to her. But doesn't this reinforce gender norms? This is equivalent of saying that women who have masculine traits are not true women. This seems extremely hypocritical to me. Also hypocritical: she has given birth to a child and has had vaginal sex within the last few months alone. Doesn't sound like an ambiguous or neutral person to me...
Also, "they" is plural. There is no singular, neuter pronoun in English. "Do you know my friend Carl? They run marathons?" Shouldn't the correct conjugation be "They runs marathons?" It just doesn't work.
It's not hard to comply with the whole pronoun thing, but it seems trendy, the people who insist upon it are often obnoxious, and worst case, they use it to start drama.
The fact that I'm so turned off like this makes me feel like an asshole republican who thinks people choose to be gay or something like that. Am I just getting old, or is this bullshit?
I asked her why she uses "they." She says she has masculine properties and therefore "she" does not apply to her. But doesn't this reinforce gender norms? This is equivalent of saying that women who have masculine traits are not true women. This seems extremely hypocritical to me. Also hypocritical: she has given birth to a child and has had vaginal sex within the last few months alone. Doesn't sound like an ambiguous or neutral person to me...
Also, "they" is plural. There is no singular, neuter pronoun in English. "Do you know my friend Carl? They run marathons?" Shouldn't the correct conjugation be "They runs marathons?" It just doesn't work.
It's not hard to comply with the whole pronoun thing, but it seems trendy, the people who insist upon it are often obnoxious, and worst case, they use it to start drama.
The fact that I'm so turned off like this makes me feel like an asshole republican who thinks people choose to be gay or something like that. Am I just getting old, or is this bullshit?