Thread by @AlexandraErin

I'm no longer going to argue with people who think singular they isn't grammatical. They can't stop it. It doesn't need to be spread - singular they arises each generation spontaneously because it fills a need in the language.

Those against it invariably use it themselves.

This doesn't mean I won't advocate for it. People who use singular they as a personal pronoun need support.

But the disingenuous "it's wrong" or "it's clunky" or "it sounds wrong"... nope. It rings so true, so correct, so natural that kids pick it up out of nowhere.

It fits the exact same pattern as singular/plural you. It fills a blank spot in the English language, and language abhors a vacuum. If you had a magic spell that would eliminate all knowledge of they as a singular pronoun from the whole English speaking world... it would pop back

If you could wipe out all knowledge of its previous use as a singular pronoun, five seconds later someone would use it. Casually. Matter of factly. And no one around them would be confused.

"Someone's at the window, go see what they want."

You can no more remove it from the language than you can hold back the tide. The less gender-restricted and gender-segregated society is, the more spontaneous they-ing we're going to see.

Appeals to grammatical authority or "clunkiness" are a disingenuous distraction. We should not be arguing about the (porous, elastic, and artificial) rules of language with people who really want to dehumanize and erase.