I think it's just rude behavior, honestly. If I ask you to call me something and you go out of your way not to do that, how is that not a dick move?
That's the entire reason neutral words like "they" exist, to cover every possible case to avoid mis-gendering. If we decide that the singular "they" is inappropriate, we might as well do away with pronouns altogether and refer to people by name every time we mention someone.
One can use it at any time.
And before anyone claims otherwise, "they" was still in use as a definite, gender-neutral pronoun long before its NB usage began to become mainstream.
Furthermore, "He" has been used as a generic pronoun long predating the singular they. While it comes with some ambiguity as well, it flows a lot better and does not screw around with singular/plural ambiguity.
The only thing that seems relative new here is usage to refer to a specific known individual, of known gender. Historically singular they was used definite but unknown individuals, or at least individuals of unknown gender.
In any case, "They is" is wrong for singular, just like "you is".
"You" always takes "are", for both singular and plural "you". Indeed singular "you" differs from plural "you" only in the reflexive: yourself/yourselves.
Singular "They" is exactly the same. It uses "are" and differs only in the reflexive: themself/themselves. The only difference here is that the plural reflexive can be used for the singular, and indeed that has been standard for several hundred years, but feels extremely awkward with respect to a known specific individual.
Fun fact: "themself" actually predates "themselves", and was originally used for both singular and plural they, although around 1450 "themselves" became standard for plural, with "themself" remaining standard for singular. But eventually "themself" almost completely died out.
Straight from the article. You can tell people not to call you something, Cellio will not call you that thing. However, they will not go out of their way to call you what you want to be called, it's their choice in what they call you, as well as how they respond to names you don't like.
Clarification of rules, even to the point where they may seem redundant, is completely fine and often important. This is such a weird hill for them to die on.
I think we (as humans on this planet) need to be respectful of each other. Not go out of our way to hurt each other.
But "being respectful" needs to have a standard, society-wide definition. We cannot allow individuals to set their own standard of what they demand in order to feel respected, because then people can invent unreasonable demands on others and then claim to be harmed when that fails to happen.
For instance, I can go around demanding people call me "your lordship". No, my name is not Scott. My name is not unreal37. I am not he/she/they. Call me "your lordship" or I will consider that an insult.
Individuals cannot define the rules like this. We need a standard of what is considered respectful behavior and it applies to everyone.
Mike has a team member that keeps referring to him as 'Mikey'. Mike doesn't like this, because he feels it's demeaning and rude. He insists on being called Mike, but his teammate refuses.
If his manager gets involved and tells said team member to cut it out, is that punishing someone for wrongthink? Do you think it's acceptable to repeatedly call someone a name that they don't like?
In my scenario, it doesn't change much if Mike is a new employee at said company. The coworker still calls him Mikey even after the employee's requests to stop, which would be considered rude by a lot of people.
Is "Mikey" pejorative?
I don’t think anyone is arguing that it’s right or correct to continue using a pronoun or name that someone has specifically objected to.
Nothing wrong with that.