Having the nonbinary identity enter public consciousness seems to have caused the neutral pronoun to take on a weight and colour that makes it harder to apply it to non-nonbinary people. In English, since use in situations where gender is irrelevant is already grammatical, so I’d guess this has a negligible effect on usage (though it does seem to have caused a notable amount of brain inflammation in terfs and reactionaries that I must mention but probably shouldn’t go into depth about), but in a different place, seems like this might be more of a thing
This isn’t how I think the path of ‘they’ has gone in English? Using it where gender is irrelevant is super new (“my friend said they might be late”) and felt wrong to me ten years ago. Having there be specific individuals who go by ‘they’ feels like it has done a lot to get people to practice and be comfortable with ‘they’, though it’s possible I’m paying too much attention to my local communities?
It’s interesting to hear that, I didn’t realise that much change had occurred.
I would guess that the normalisation would have come from people spending a lot of time online/being in more situations where they don’t want to and don’t have to disclose a person’s gender. Hm. I can see how the “they seem queer, don’t want to assume their gender” might have promoted adoption by a lot.
This isn’t how I think the path of ‘they’ has gone in English? Using it where gender is irrelevant is super new (“my friend said they might be late”) and felt wrong to me ten years ago. Having there be specific individuals who go by ‘they’ feels like it has done a lot to get people to practice and be comfortable with ‘they’, though it’s possible I’m paying too much attention to my local communities?
It’s interesting to hear that, I didn’t realise that much change had occurred.
I would guess that the normalisation would have come from people spending a lot of time online/being in more situations where they don’t want to and don’t have to disclose a person’s gender. Hm. I can see how the “they seem queer, don’t want to assume their gender” might have promoted adoption by a lot.