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Cis people often struggle most with getting they/them pronouns right, probably in part because of the annoying rules of grammar. This might sound obvious, but something that helped me habituate the usage of they/them was to think of ALL strangers as they/them.
I have been retraining my brain as best I can: Person walking their dog down the street? They've got a cute dog. Person in a dress pushing a stroller and singing to their baby? What a sweet parent.
It's a way to organically bring back the single 'they' into our default language.
It's a way to organically bring back the single 'they' into our default language.
I say "bring back" because I remember as a kid/teen I was always writing "they" in my essays to refer to an unknown human, because "he/she" looked clunky. And my teachers would correct me. It was an instinct they trained me out of—these days I'm training myself back into it.
I took an online class this year where there were a ton of students in the group and the teacher referred to everyone as "they/them" by default, even when the student had a name that was commonly a specific gender, even when the student had pronouns written in their name.
