"They" has been used in the singular for longer than "you" has

exactly, children are very open to the world of possibilities and thus why over 60% of them engage in homosexual experimentation at a young age

just having gone to camp or boarding schools i've personally witnessed plenty of hetero males engaging is pseudo homosexual activity such as all jerking off in the same room - your country of canada is infamous for its soggy biscuit tradition among hockey players

we're all infamously familiar with the trope that all women experimented with other girls in college and studies show as high as 25% of women have done this at a young age


these are all people who as they become adults and are done with the experimental phases of their lives determine they are straight and cisgender people

i had two sisters growing up and fairly long hair for a child, so sometimes my sisters would dress me up as girl and i'd go along with it, i even went to school on halloween as a girl and everyone was shocked by the transformation and even complemented me that i actually made a very pretty girl etc etc etc - it was genuinely fun, i liked the attention i got, and had it not been considered so weird for me to not do it on halloween but rather happened in today's environment then i perhaps would have done it more frequently, i was probably 9 or 10 at the time and if i were surrounded by at the time by ideas that perhaps i was indeed actually a girl then who knows if that would have taken hold or not

i see my nephews/nieces/children of friends all be super impressionable at early ages, my nephew once pretended he was a cheetah for like 3 weeks straight and his parents went along with it and he eventually had to be bribed with cake to get him to act like a human again once they released this phase may not wear out on its own without a nudge - i have no doubt that if i planted the seed in my nephew that perhaps he was a girl and started buying him dresses and such that he would at least run with it for a brief period

and these seeds are being planted, my niece, at her doctor's checkup when she was 10 was asked by her doctor if she was a boy or a girl - as if it was a perfectly reasonable question for a doctor to ask and that she could be either

it is my belief that kids in these experimental phases are leaning into stuff that they would grow out as they get older and putting them on irreversible paths of hormone blockers and even performing surgery is not the correct path

again, david reimer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

at 6 months of age his penis was destroyed in a botched circumcision, at 3 years of age they learned of a new "gender is a social construct" theory from some people at johns hopkins - they believed that children were so impressionable that if they wanted to raise david as a girl that it would take hold - that's exactly what they did and it wasn't until 14 when david told his parents that he was contemplating suicide because he didn't feel like he was a girl did they let him know it's because he wasn't - so for about a decade they convinced a boy without a penis that he was actually a girl even though they started that process at age 3

david needed a double masectomy because they'd been pumping him full of estrogen and he thus had tiddies at age 14

the people doing the "science" were most likely perverts acting out their own fantasies and disguising it under the label of science - they would force david and his twin brother to perform sexual acts with each other - stripping them down, having david spread his cheeks, and having the brother repeatedly thrust into him as young asexual children - that is just sick perverted behavior to force two brothers who are young children to have sex with each other all while you are photographing the event - if this were done outside of a "science experiment" it would be consdired a kiddie porn operation - but nope, while his academic work is now under heavy scrutiny - he still managed to publish over 2,000 articles/books and received many prestigious awards and there's an entire wing of an art museum in his native new zealand named after him

in fact, the entire reason for david "coming out as a boy" was that he hated those people at johns hopkins so much that he would kill himself if he was ever forced to see those people again - they were absolute monsters who traumatized him and his brother

his brother died from an overdose of anti depressants, david later shot himself in the head

a 2016 study of 7 boys who like david were raised that way found all 7 eventually found their way back to being male again, these were boys who spent their entire youth as women, believing they were women, having had vaginal surgery and received estrogen to help out with the physical transition as well


so yeah, when your 8 year old child says "mommy i'm a girl" you don't go ahead and schedule some doctors visits and start hooking him up to hormone blockers because it's most likely no different than the "i'm a dinosaur" phase the kid will have 4 months from now

can you elaborate on this, how can one be trans without having gender dysphoria?

This is the weirdest of bones to pick for me. How have people really not used they as a singular pronoun before??? I’m not talking about whatever style guides said but I’ve used it and heard it in casual English my whole life.

Doesn't this show that you can't just convince a child they are a certain gender, and that instead gender identity is actually an innate thing kids understand from a young age? Which is, more or less, what psychologists and psychiatrists believe to be true.

This is hyperbole of the actual situation. We do a lot more in our assessment than just asking what their gender is. And puberty blockers aren't given until puberty has started -- which is still young but generally older than 8.

Gender dysphoria, like nearly all psychiatric diagnoses, must be associated with "clinically significant distress or impairment in ...functioning." While that phrase isn't precisely defined, you can be trans and not impaired in functioning nor too distressed by it.

Perhaps you missed this part -

It's both singular and plural. It's been that way for a long time. A doctor would know this.

thanks for your responses gansta, i feel like threads like this really benefit from your presence

yes, i understand it's so flippant as "joe said he's a girl today, let's schedule the vaginoplasty for this tuesday" but that's kind of my point that if Joe is a girl then he's still going to be a girl with or without hormone blockers, estrogen, and surgery

she can do all of that once she is an adult who is better informed on their choices but that's simply not what is happening

the average age for a child put on puberty blockers today is under 11 years old - that just should never be happening and I don't understand why that position is viewed as transphobic

To quote of the the posters here, that’s not how words work.

I appreciate it and do enjoy the civil discussion we can surprisingly often have on this topic.

According to wiki, singular they is a bit more recent

1.
used to refer to two or more people or things previously mentioned or easily identified.
"the two men could get life sentences if they are convicted"
2.
used to refer to a person of unspecified gender.
"ask someone if they could help"

People also say “ain’t” in colloquial speech. It’s still technically incorrect.

And at what age is the frontal lobe fully developed?

So an 8 year old cannot decide his/her own bedtime, but can decide his/her sex (cuz that’s what you people believe, that sex can be changed)?

If you’re “trans” and not distressed by it, why are you being seen by a psychiatrist then?

Singular only when the gender is unknown.

That ain't how language works, actually. Ain't was accepted as standard, correct speech until the stuck-up English speakers in the 1700s-1900s decided they didn't like it. There is nothing technically wrong with it.

So you're a pretend english teacher now too?

Just give it up.

Are you surprised to be learning that trans people can have medical/psychiatric issues unrelated to their gender identity?

No one is saying that a child (or adult) decides their gender or sex. But gender identity is something that 8 year olds typically know about themselves.

it's kinda of funny because my brother and his wife watched the witch in 2015 where in one line anya taylor joy says "it was they"

as a result they began using "they" as a generic pronoun or substitute word for fun and

instead of saying "that/this/etc" they'll say "they"
instead of saying "the" they'll say "they"

it's actually quite contagious and a lot of people in their friend circles use it now - when they host for things over the holidays, by the end of it everyone is using those words


but the really funny thing is when they used to do this in public around 2016 people just found it quirkly but now everyone assumes they are trying to be inclusive, like when they said "look at they squirrel" they genuinely assumed it was because my brother and sister in law were trying to be cognizant of not assuming the squirrel's gender or even the gender of the apples they are looking to purchase and as a result they get some pretty wild reactions at times

So none of this information adds up to what you’re worried about, which is that young kids are somehow being “led astray”.

Yes, young people are more likely to indentify as lgbtq and “use pronouns”.

When you actually look at the numbers , there hasn’t been any shift in sexuality, people are just free to be more open about who they are. In practical terms the largest group by population in those identifying as lgbtq is by far bisexual. They make up more than 50% of the lgbtq population. The second largest group is lesbians, and then the third is gays. The smallest is transgender and intersex.
Because of this by far the biggest increase in the overall lgbtq percent is bisexual, not the fraction of 1% of transgender identifying people who make up something like 2%-3%of the lgbtq community.

By far the increase comes from the lack of prejudice in the younger generation in discussing bisexual issues as compared to previous generations. For example letÂ’s say you were a rugged man mostly attracted to women but occasionally developed romantic attractions to guys. Most guys in their 50’s would certainly not identify as bisexual, even though they are, but rather keep those feelings private. Because thereÂ’s very little for someone in the 1950Â’s to gain by admitting those feelings and a lot to lose.

In a world without discrimination there’s no reason not to share those feelings, hence the higher percentage. Not some media driven social contagion. Being in my 30Â’s from Kansas, IÂ’m actually jealous of how anti-discriminatory people in their 20’s and teens are now compared to just 15 years ago where I live.

Then, why do we not see “ain’t” in formal writing? I don’t see it in journal articles.

Like when the previous poster mentioned his young relative who believed himself to be a cheetah.

Perhaps you missed this part -

No, not like that.