> I’ve often wondered why nobody say, talks about removing gendered pronouns altogether in formal speech instead of adding 50 new ones for instance.
'They' instead of 'he/she' is one of the things people actually use, and it's exactly dropping the gendered pronoun in favor of an existing neutral pronoun. It's strictly simpler and smaller language. My teenage kids use this construction a lot and I'm getting used to it.
It is, but some people specifically insist on "he" and "she" and will get offended if you use "they". In one such case, when I asked why "they" is inappropriate since it is by definition inclusive of all genders, the question itself was declared highly offensive and "erasing".
I think there are multiple layers behind why someone might find "they" inappropriate. I don't think they're necessarily all valid but I think they're understandable.
1) Gender is currently a political topic. The use of gender neutral pronouns is, rightly or wrongly, associated with holding certain political beliefs. People who do not hold these beliefs are likely to reject their use on that basis.
2) Gender is a matter of personal identity. A fairly common desire for people is to be "good" at the gender they identify as. A fundamental part of that is being recognised by others as that gender. Gender neutral pronouns refuse to provide that acknowledgement.
3) They can be unfamiliar. Ultimately pronouns are something that, until recently, most people never actively thought about. Some people will reactively reject them as it puts into question their understanding of the world.
It was a conversation in a private setting with several participants, some of whom were trans. It started as a broad conversation about which pronouns should be properly used when. When we got to "they", one of the participants brought up a common pattern whereby people will use "he" or "she" consistently to refer to cis people whose gender they know, but "they" when they need to refer to trans people (with known more specific pronouns) in the context where they can't get away with misgendering. We all agreed that this is rude, but then I asked whether it would be problematic if the person used "they" consistently, without discriminating. That's when it blew up.
'They' instead of 'he/she' is one of the things people actually use, and it's exactly dropping the gendered pronoun in favor of an existing neutral pronoun. It's strictly simpler and smaller language. My teenage kids use this construction a lot and I'm getting used to it.
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