> And — please — do not refer to me as ‘they.’ I am not a collective, but rather a human being. I find being referred to as ‘they’ to be profoundly offensive.
I can't seriously believe you're not trolling with this. The use of singular "they" to refer to an individual of unknown gender has been a thing for literally centuries.
Some people, like me, grew up on the Internet assuming every person they interacted with was male by default, because it was a statically sound assumption. We would then use the right pronoun if corrected (unless we thought you might be a G.I.R.L.) Some people, like the person you're ostensibly trolling, do not make this assumption, and just use the singular, gender-neutral "they", which is arguably the nicer, more humane approach anyway.
Being offended by such an approach just smacks of trying to "own the libs", or just otherwise bring contrarian for the sake of it. Neither involves being genuinely offended by anything, and is instead a transparent piece of performative posturing. Please don't bring that here.
I can't seriously believe you're not trolling with this. The use of singular "they" to refer to an individual of unknown gender has been a thing for literally centuries.
Some people, like me, grew up on the Internet assuming every person they interacted with was male by default, because it was a statically sound assumption. We would then use the right pronoun if corrected (unless we thought you might be a G.I.R.L.) Some people, like the person you're ostensibly trolling, do not make this assumption, and just use the singular, gender-neutral "they", which is arguably the nicer, more humane approach anyway.
Being offended by such an approach just smacks of trying to "own the libs", or just otherwise bring contrarian for the sake of it. Neither involves being genuinely offended by anything, and is instead a transparent piece of performative posturing. Please don't bring that here.