[vidarh]

They/them already exists and have centuries of use for that use-case. The people objecting to that are just as likely to object to an entirely new one.

There also are already multiple "neopronouns" [1], and they are frequently ridiculed by those taking issue with "unexpected" (to them) pronoun use). This is also not a new debate, with variants (other than singular they) being in use in limited contexts since the late 18th century. None of the attempts have met more than very limited success, as you can tell from the fact this is still a debate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopronoun

[xdennis]

> They/them already exists and have centuries of use for that use-case.

This is just gaslighting. People use "they" when they talk in the abstract. No one said sentences like "This is Tom. They is happy." until a few years ago.

[vidarh]

Apart from being grammatically wrong (it'd still be "they are"), this is entirely besides the point, which is that the people who object to (the corrected version of) this construction are just as likely to object to a neopronoun, and so there's little reason to assume a neopronoun will stop people from getting worked up over this even if you could get people to use them.

[dragonwriter]

> No one said sentences like “This is Tom. They is happy.” until a few years ago.

No one still says that, because even when semantically singular, “they” remains grammatically plural.

[int_19h]

You'd be surprised. I've met people with preferred pronouns like xe who were outright offended at the use of they/them, because "that's not my pronoun".

[vidarh]

Different category of objections, so not really relevant to the point, which was about the objection to their use in general, not about any given person.

[int_19h]

But it's not really a "universal pronoun" if you can't use it to denote any random person without offending them.

[vidarh]

That's moving the goalposts.