Halifax Bank

Sharing your pronouns is a thing where I work where it’s a recognised part of email signatures. It’s optional, and I haven’t done it on mine because my name and pronouns are straightforward and are not likely to misinterpreted.
If the BBS is reflective of society as a whole I think I’ll add it on Monday morning just to peeve people who complain to me. Might even make my pronouns they/them just to help people who don’t agree with it learn how to write emails to non-binary identifying folk.

 

I don't really know Merde Tete, but he seems really nice and he used to live in Russia.
I don't really know Merde Tete, but they seems really nice and they used to live in Russia.

I feel the need to claim I'm not transphobic now even though I've never said or done anything in my entire life that would suggest I am. Anyway, after using the first sentence above, my common sense, my "are you being a dick Jay?" senses all report back that I appear to have nailed that interaction, the language used seems OK, I haven’t said anything too controversial and I can go back to hiding under my desk without being too embarrassed.

The second sentence suggests to me that I'm talking about both one person and two people at the same time, or maybe a band called Merde Tete but some of the grammar is incorrect, or most likely, I'm a blithering idiot.

People can ask to be addressed however they like. I have no problem with that. But if someone chooses "they", I'm going to get it wrong, continually. Not because I'm purposefully being disrespectful, but because in English, in many situations, it makes no linguistic sense and I can't suddenly unlearn the language I've spoken for 50 years and use it in a way that breaks just about every rule I've learned, leaving the resulting sentence a group of randomly connected words that I can barely take any meaning from.

 

I admit it might be a bit clunky when spoken, but especially online when you might not know a person and all you have is a screen name to go on I think they/them is perfectly easy to use.
I have never met Jay in person and although they seem like a nice person and their choice of football team is great, I sometimes struggle to understand them.

 

That's because you wrote "they seems" which isn't how our language works. If you write "they seem" it will be fine, and there will definitely be instances where you use "they" about someone whose gender is known without even thinking about it.

 

You've had to use "person" twice to articulate that you're talking about a single person, not a group, and even while doing that and being ultra careful, you've ended the paragraph with "them", which meant it required rereading as the number of subjects appeared to be inconsistent. I don't doubt it's doable, and if it's more important than it taking half an hour to write and rewrite what would usually take a minute then that's what we do.

But you don't use seem for an individual, you use seems.

 

The thing for me is when I meet someone my brain tells me if they are a man or Woman. Then when I talk about them my brain after years of training inserts either he/she naturally into my speech. So I would have to make a genuine effort to use they/them for example. Now I don't mind doing that as its hardly a great hardship, I will however probably forget myself and do what I have always done.

As a aside my eldest son (who has autism) is completely baffled by the whole thing. He has a very rigid way of looking at things and he just couldn't accept it at all. I can't remember what he wss watching but it had a gender neutral character and the conversation just went around in circles.

 

I might be a bit thick but I'm pretty sure that I've used "they are" "they seem" "they have" etc all my life when talking about singular people and it hasn't been anything to do with inclusive pronouns I'm just sure I've used those terms in the past.

I could be completely wrong it just feels like I've used them before

 

No, it's already established in the language that "they seem" is an acceptable way to refer to an individual.

"There's a person loitering outside my neighbour's house. I can't identify any features from this distance, but they seem to be up to no good."

That's a perfectly normal and acceptable sentence. You'd say it without your brain flagging an issue and definitely wouldn't say "they seems"

 

They could quite easily have just put:
‘I have never met Jay in person and although they seem nice…’

 

Mansfield read seems to be mistaken - one person
She seems to be mistaken - one person
They seem to be mistaken - undoubtedly more than one person

 

Similar situation with the words further apart:
My boss keeps upsetting me but they don’t seem to care.

^ A completely made up sentence btw.

 

You do, we all do, but not in all situations. People are giving examples where it fits rather than examining when it clearly doesn't. Ignoring when it doesn't really isn't helpful.

 

Yes grammatically I thought you could use "they" to refer to a person of unspecified gender. E.g "ask a member of staff if they could help"
It just once we put a name in we are used to using he/she
"Ask Jay if he could help" as opposed to "Ask Jay if they could help"

 

A poster on the bbs argued with me about the grammatical rules for pronouns; they were bang on.

One person.

 

I completely understand she/her because it's saying I want to identify as a woman. Regardless of how they look I get that.
I understand he/him for the same reason.
I get they/them, it's someone who feels they don't want to commit or be labelled one way or the other.

What I don't understand is people who say "my pronouns are she/them" or "xe/xem" at that point I believe the person is seeking attention. You can't identify as she and them, that isn't how the world works.

 

As I said above, people are using examples of when it fits and ignoring examples when it clearly doesn't and concluding that it fits in all situations when it demonstrably doesn't.

 

I was err, waiting for a bus.

 

I'm not really sure I can think of any where it doesn't fit though. I mean in my head it FEELS like it shouldn't fit but then in basically every example I can think of it does. Even in the example you used about merde Tete it fitted because you wouldn't have written what you did without actively thinking about it and seeking to

 

When it's complex like that I have to confess that my first thought is it feels like a trap to deliberately manufacture faux offence