I have known, loved, and respected people who do not fit nor identify within the gender binary for more than half of my life. My mom instilled in me French 70s feminist concepts that women and men had no strict requirements. But I also learned English as a bilateral language to my first two years only in French. And grammar and spelling never came intuitively to me, I joke that I will never spell the word restuarant correct. Then I took 12 years of academic English classes, while practicing French at home to then 5 years of academic French, 5 years of academic Latin, 2 years of ancient Greek, and conversational Spanish. And none of it came easily to me and I have forgotten most everything about the academic nature of any language other than English. But in all my studying I had to conjugate verbs, across every concept of time, including French Past Pluperfect – which I have to google to find a definition: The French pluperfect, or plus-que-parfait, is a past tense used to describe an action that was completed before another past action. And to get at least a passing grade I had to make a little chart that followed

I, you, he/she, we, you (plural), they

And then I wrote each verb out, again and again until I could pass the next day’s grammar quiz. It was inscribed into my brain over and over again, in 5 different languages that he/she and they had verbs that ended differently – I often got the you wrong but the third person anchored my memorization. Except from one odd trip where my friend laughed so hard each time I tried to ask someone in Peru a question but instead used the second person imperative so Where do I take the bus? became Where do you take the bus! Like I said, it never came naturally to me. People ask how my French is these days and my best guess is at the proficency of a ten year old, but even that is probably overly generous.

For me to inscribe a new grammartical rule, that they is also singular, with third person verb endings, will take unknown years, and never go as deep as a fourteen year old stressed about failing a quiz. When I misuse a pronoun it has nothing to do with the person in front of me. I try to be considerate and respectful but as the French pluperfect would demand, my subconscious has determined the correct pronoun before my current brain has a chance to decide what my mouth has already said.