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 it's older than people think. Shakespeare used it for stuff like "Every knight grabbed their sword", and even for talking about a specific person it's not a new phenomenon to use singular they if the gender doesn't matter (so I was told in a linguistics sub over on r*ddit when I insisted it was new)
The only new thing is that people say, it's their prefered pronoun.
See my other comments in this thread, but Shakespeare did not use singular they to refer to a specific, known person. That is a new invention.
I inserted a comma to make my meaning more clear, I hope. I'm not a native speaker so sorry if it was ambiguous