I don't know of a way to avoid the confusion you mention, because when the singular 'they' is used, it doesn't eliminate the plural 'they' from the English language. There are, in fact, at least a dozen sets of neopronouns, with xe/xer being the most common outside of the singular 'they', but it hasn't gained widespread acceptance. I agree that a separate set for individuals not identifying as male or female works be the best linguistically, but I'm not nonbinary and it may not be that simple. To give you an idea of how even someone generally open to using 'they' in this way can get confused, consider this article I read earlier this year: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/01/amanda-gorman-white-translator-quits-marieke-lucas-rijneveld Ignore the issue of whether the outcome was fair or not, but the author originally chosen is nonbinary, which is mentioned near the top of the article. I may have missed or skimmed over it, not sure, but note the author and publishers names: The ward winning author is Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. The Dutch publisher is Meulenhoff Neither of these were known to me when I first read the article. So I was confused when I first read this sentence: But in a statement, they subsequently announced their withdrawal from the project. It's obvious in the full paragraph that sentence is referring to the author, not the publisher, but when I first read it, I thought it was referring to the publisher, which a plural 'they' would be more expected. To @Oscar Leigh if you don't intend on using an alternate set of neopronouns (which makes sense, since there are many nonbinary people that don't use them) or use some color coding system, you could maybe try and use the challenges readers may face to your advantage (not saying it would work though) by having a preface that says something like: This book includes several nonbinary characters, some which prefer an alternating use of 'he' and a singular 'they', or 'she' and a singular 'they'. If you are not familiar with a singular they, this book will be difficult at first, but enjoyable. Respecting nonbinary individuals' wishes can be difficult at first, but like any change it will be easier the more you try.
I understand the confusion but actually singular "they" predates plural "they" (and both co-existed for a long time) and furthermore is not being used "willy-nilly", it's for a very serious purpose. It's also a very obvious one. Even outside of non-binary people you can use they when you don't know, or when referring to a hypothetical non-specific person. Which is why singular they existed in the first place. Furthermore, the second-person "you" actually has no distinction between singular and plural in English and no gendering, even though this is not the case in other languages. Somehow, this is not a great and terrible barrier anyone has been forced to solve, except for the somewhat colloquial and dialect dependent youse and ya'll. There are many syntactic and contextual clues you can use to tell when someone is referring to a group or individual with "you" or "they". The simplest one being names, it's very natural when dealing with a group to highlight which individual you are referring or talking to by name, even if you don't have to. There are unique non-binary pronouns though, like xe/xem and ze/hir. However, J.D does identify as "a he" (a non-binary man) so committing solely to a neo-pronoun would be somewhat of a change, and that stage I would just use singular "they". It's actually quite easy to use and is more common. Also, J.D is not actually a native English speaker, he is Colombian, and the translation of the Spanish gender-neutral pronouns he would be using is probably "they/them". Translating it as "xe/xem", a novel English modernism, would certainly seem strange. So in the narration and in English dialogue, it just makes more sense to me than "xe/xem", if he's introducing himself to his English-speaking colleagues "they" is going to be a word he is more familiar with than "xe". Especially since I wanted to portray the experience of non-binary people who are not agender, hence he/they.
My wife’s native tongue has no gendered pronouns at all and she is constantly misgendering people. She calls her mom “he” and our son “she”. She will even switch it in the same sentence. “He went for a walk with her dog.” I have no issues whatsoever with the singular “they” and find it preferably to the clunky “he/she” and the impossible to pronounce “(s)he”. I do find it odd referring to someone be a gender neutral pronoun if their gender is known, and that someone would go by two different pronouns. I also find a lot of things odd so who gives a shit what I think?
Well, in the case of he/they or she/they people, using "they" for them is a recognition of their known gender identity, not because of a lack of knowledge. So its equivalent to calling someone he or she, not the functionalist use of singular they for unknown.
My face-to-face writers' group tried a 'they' neutral pronoun thing a couple of years ago. One of our writers was writing a story in which there were multiple beings who were genderless characters, as well as a few characters who were conventionally gendered. The writer was anxious to respect her non-gendered characters, so she adopted the 'they' pronoun. By the end of the story, which she read out loud to us, we had no idea who was doing what, or how many entities were appearing in each scene, or who left the room, etc. She found another way around the dilemma, using a made-up pronoun and more direct use of names, edited the story, and when she read the new version to us at the next meeting, the confusion had cleared completely. (I'm pretty sure she used Xe and Xey and Xem, pronounced zee, zey and zem, but it was a while ago and I'm not 100% sure those are the words she chose. But whatever the new words were, they worked.) As a writer, of course you can do whatever you like. And, as you say, you is a plural as well as a singular pronoun, and they/them is sometimes used as a singular pronoun. But that CAN be confusing! When I use 'you' in my writing, I always make it clear how many 'yous' are involved if there is more than one person being addressed. Such as 'all of you,' 'any of you,' 'none of you,' 'you people,' 'both of you,' etc.' As for the collective 'they'—used as a singular when the gender of a person is not known—I always find another way to express it. "When a person goes downtown today, they will encounter road closures." I would rewrite that, in an instant. "If people go downtown today, they will encounter road closures." And so forth. Mixing up singular and plural pronouns is confusing, no matter what the benign intent might be. Break that convention if you want, but the consequence is likely to be confusion. Saying it WON'T be confusing, and we should just accept it, doesn't prove the case. Certainly the experience my writer's group had with that broken convention sent us straight back to the original convention—with the addition of a brave new word. For me, clarity in writing is always my first concern.
I've carefully read the walls of text comprising this thread, and remain unconvinced. The singular 'they' will remain an error in my mind, and I'll continue to suspect that an author who uses it will likely also be prone to errors in other aspects of storytelling. I also think that the term 'non-binary man' is self-contradicting, and therefore meaningless.
But it can entirely be done. It's not like people don't already use it. I use it. Others around me use it. Beyond non-binary people. Again, it was literally invented for general singular use. So why not? You can just write it the way you described with "you". If it can be done for that, why not for "they?" Is it really even hard? Plenty of writing decisions and techniques have their own challenges, that's not really a reason not to. There's a give-and-tale and a level of calculated risk. I want to be interesting, I want to be fun, I want to make relevant points and explore real issues. And dammit, if people can ready Cormac McCarthy and his run-on comma-less sentences and give him awards, they can handle singular they. If non-binary couldn't include that, it would be binary. But it's not. It's not binary. It's variable. It can be mixed. You don't be one thing or another, you can be neither, you can be a third or fourth option, you can be any kind of mixture. If every non-binary person was treated as agender or third-gender it would be obscuring those who identify as something in between. And that's the whole point of being non-binary. Since gender is a social construct, the rules can be flexible and variations can come or go according to the culture. There's no magic book were everyone is assigned a gender and the rules are inextricably laid down. We made it up.
Actually I'm starting to realise the problem here. If you go down this route, you'll be going down the route of assigning discrete meaning to something that is actually a probability of meanings. This ends up with actually goes against the true nature that you want to convey. So while this gender neutral person prefers to be called he/she and they, it occurred to me that you could view them actually like a direct metaphor of quantum mechanics. They actually live in "states" rather than discrete values. So by assigning discrete values like "they", "he/she" you are actually going against spirit of the meaning and identity of this person. They may prefer a fluid and discrete values assigned to them in real life. But your job as an author could be to find a way to condense that view into something that actually encapsulates them better than that. They don't fit "he/she" but may fit "they" but even that's crude and not capturing them probably. You have to find a way to capture the field probability where all 3 discrete values can co exist. A part of your job as an author could be to seen to translate the whole thing better. I mean if you think about it, most of these pronouns are radically new and haven't found a real identity. So push for new ideas than just settling for ones you know people are going with already.
Dude, it's just pronouns to indicate they don't identify entirely with he or they. It's not quite that deep. and I'm not trying to make it some weird quantum thing, I just want to acknowledge their identity (in the same way I will acknowledge in dialogue they are non-binary).
Another thing that occurred to me is that you don't want art to be a direct copy of real life. There is a reason why dialogue doesn't include "uhms" and "ahhs". A photo realistic art is basically no art at all. You have to want to say something in relation to the world you are depicting in some way (I usually call this intent). Otherwise it's just a shallow reflection.
But if they don't identify with one or the other, they kind of do live in this quasi state. At least that's my opinion. But go with gods will, I was just throwing food for thought.
This directly reflects the extremely confusing way a friend of mine tells stories or tells me about a movie he's seen. In his own mind I'm sure he knows exactly who is who and who's doing what, but he tells it like this: "So then the dude walks over and kicks the thing and the dude says 'Man, what are you doing?', so the dude gets pissed off and he tries to kick some ass. But the dude comes in and kicks his ass. And this dude is so crazy nobody will mess with him..." I keep trying to get him to use names, but it does no good. Everyone is the dude or the chick, and everything is simply a thing. All rooms are simply 'the room' and all places are just 'the place'. It's really bad if he's giving directions to get somewhere. It's all gibberish, like "You go out past that one thing, you know, the big thing, it looks like a crescent, and you go a few blocks past it. Or no, a street, and you turn and then a little farther you're there, You can't miss it." I'll ask him to clarify, something like "Wait, WHAT street, and going which way?", and he'll fumble for words and say something like "Man, come on, you know what I'm talking about! That one street man, we were there just the other day!" "Which other day?" "Oh come on man! You were there!! Do I need to spell it all out for you?" Um, yes, actually that's what I'm asking you to do. It's called effective communication, AKA clarity. In fact, many times I've said almost these identical words to him: "We had no idea who was doing what, or how many entities were appearing in each scene, or who left the room, etc." Rather than how many entities were appearing in a scene though, I said how many people were involved. But it expresses the exact same desire for clarity and reflects the same problems with the imprecise use of identifiers. Writing is difficult enough, and we must appease that demanding mistress Clarity. Otherwise the work suffers.
