It surprises me when someone says 'he or she' when they don't know the gender of the person they're referring to.
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My mom does, and it makes no sense, because 'they' is shorter, and more inclusionary.
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I've always used 'they', even before I knew about those that don't like gendered pronouns.
True. People are often very resistant to ideas of progressiveness in gender but much of it is just practical and not revolutionary. Accuracy favors the use of the pronoun that best describes the known condition. A gender neutral pronoun will generally be the most correct pronoun; and traditionally when dealing with a person who’s gender might not be obvious (not a transgender person but sometimes you just aren’t sure..) or when you can’t see them and have a name like “Alex” etc. and no information to confirm what gender Alex is- you’d wrote correspondence as gender neutral.
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My mom does, and it makes no sense, because 'they' is shorter, and more inclusionary.
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I've always used 'they', even before I knew about those that don't like gendered pronouns.