ALT TEXT:
- Panel 1: A person with the text “Singular ‘they’” written on them smiling with open arms.
- Panel 2: “Singular ‘They’” beaten up by others who said, “Singular they is ungrammatical. It’s too confusing,” “How can anyone use plural pronouns for singular,” and “Every pronoun should only have one purpose.”
- Panel 3: “You” hiding from the mob who was beating “Singular ‘They’”
- Panel 4: “German ‘Sie’” hiding with even more fear next to “You”
Actually, I was referring to ‘it.’
People don’t like using it for people, because it’s traditionally only really used for objects (“It’s a chair!” ) or creatures where the gender isn’t identifiable or doesn’t matter (“It’s a bear!”) , but that’s the exact use case here.
A nonbinary person is a creature whose gender is either not identifiable or doesn’t matter.
People just decided that it meant nonbinary people were objects, when in reality we use it for objects because they were the only truly nonbinary concepts we had.
Some people like to be referred to as “it”, me included. It’s not super common though and generally something you don’t assume for obvious reasons.