They/them
I’ve used they/them pronouns for a good long while and know more and more people doing the same. I also spend a lot of time in multilingual communities, where English is often a second language and first languages don’t have a gender-neutral pronoun, like French or Polish. In both queer and multilingual circles use of they/them can be confusing, and after a couple of conversations I found my use, and what I find to be both empathetically and grammatically correct use, is subject to a lot more rules than I first thought so I would outline a few usages we talked about in a post.
Multiple people
They. Easy, no question.
A singular unknown person
Someone left their jumper here. They, again, this is a common usage that anglophones have used since long before us wokerati.
A singular known present person
Still easy, but requires you not to be a dick. Someone is present in the conversation and has a stated preference for they/them pronouns. Use they/them because it’s basic respect.
A singular known not-present person
Here lies the complexity. If someone’s stated preference is they/them, it’s easy, that’s what you use in all cases. However, for people whose preferred pronouns are different, such as she/her, I would argue that unless they are known to everyone in the conversation or their pronouns are relevant, actually you should still use they/them, because it’s the pronoun used in English when the person’s gender is unknown (“Someone left their jumper here”). In French, you use the feminine pronoun elle because une personne is feminine, regardless of how that person actually identifies.
This can be tricky, because depending on the context it could conflict with the known-present case, depending on who else is present, so you need to pay attention. You could use their preferred pronoun, and people often do, but in the interest of sharing only the minimal information necessary (I am a writer and a programmer) this has always felt incomplete to me. When recounting the anecdote of my friend being chased down a mountain by bears, what does it matter their pronouns? On the other hand, if they’re your friend too, it would be weird for me to not use them.
I think overall I am operating on a principle of privacy. They/them operates a bit differently to he/him or she/her out the box, and being trans I feel that gender is something for me to know and you to not to interrogate me over, so a least-trust policy seems a natural fit. I am not going to change the English language on my own, but by thinking about how I use it I can at least hope to be a conscientious influence on those around me.