More on Them

In response to Nicole's response to me - my post is here and her's is here

Interestingly, the use of they does not have to cause grammatical confusion. For example, in your own post here, you used 'them' and 'their' in reference to 'another human being.' When people suspect that they will be receiving a phone call they often say to others "if anyone calls, tell them I will be back at 16:00." It's easy in that example and in your post to determine whom is being referred to. Additionally it is possible to create grammatical confusion even with the singular pronouns of he and she. A simple example of this can be seen here: "Bob and Joe went to the beach; he enjoyed the weather."

As I mentioned in my post, we could very easily use they at the cost of having to be more specific writers. For example "Bob went to the beach; they enjoyed themselves." It's fairly obvious to determine whom 'they' is referring. You could add "they invited their friends, Joe and Dave. Their friends also enjoyed themselves." Again, there is no confusion that 1) could not be fixed with clarification or 2) could not exist with singular pronouns.

The fact that 'they' is a plural pronoun now does not mean that it has to be. Remember that how things are is not necessarily how things ought to be. In a previous post you mentioned that we should not change things if there is no evidence to suggest we should. The supplement is that we should change things if there is evidence that we should. There is evidence in this scenario that a change is necessary, and 'they,' it seems, is an acceptable alternative, though coming up with a new singular all encompassing pronoun would be sufficient.

Bigendered and pangendered people could very well be grouped in with people with disassociative identity disorder. Essentially they fall into multiple different categories that we use to identify people. When you see a 'he' and a 'she' together, you refer to them using the plural they. If multiple genders manifest in one person I see little problem with using the singular they. If you are uncertain about a person's gender, foremost it is best to ask as soon as you can, you can refer to them as 'they' because it's as effective, if not more effective(because it is all encompassing), than s/he and  it stands no risk of incorrectly labelling the person, which is embarrassing for all.

I also want to add that s/he is not a plausible solution. How exactly are we supposed to read that? Additionally, the term that would be created would be much longer and thus filled with more unpronounceable forward slashes than should be necessary to identify a single person.