> people suddenly realizing they were already recognizing genderless people without knowing it ;)
Not true. It was used in the past to refer to an unknown person. I.e. "When a candidate arrives given them the test." You don't know what sex the candidate is before he arrives and instead of saying "he or she" you say "they".
But nowadays people use it as a superclass of he and she: "I asked my boss for a raise but they refused". It doesn't make any sense. You know very well what sex your boss is, but "they" is used for virtue signaling. It's a way of saying "I know my boss is a man, but I'm going to use they because a woman could do just a good a job and he, sorry, they does."
> You know very well what sex your boss is, but "they" is used for virtue signaling.
I doubt it's virtue signaling. I'll use they to refer to the position not the person. Sometimes it's deliberate obscuration. Other times it's a form of laziness. I don't have to think about which pronoun to use if I just use the generic one.
In my case, once I got used to seeing people as people first instead of their gender, it's been easy to slip up on the pronoun.
Your sentence is the perfect example for proper use of "they", per the wikipedia article "It typically occurs with an indeterminate antecedent" - "boss" is non-gendered and so "they" is grammatically correct.
There's no virtue signalling, you're reading too much into it.
No, it is used to signal the person's gender doesn't matter. Being angry about other people not fixating on gender by demanding everyone always explicitly define it with every pronoun is used as sexism signaling, which is what you're doing.
You don't know why other people choose to use the words they do, yet you presume the worst and accuse people of being insincere and lacking virtue despite (and because of) their polite behavior, regardless of their true beliefs, when it's actually none of your business to police and judge their grammar.
I'd rather work with someone who purposefully signals they have virtue than someone who purposefully signals they're a sexist asshole, any day.
The person you responded to is right. If you start mixing in "they" you're just confusing the listener, because they will assume you're now talking about some different people. I wouldn't have the patience to listen to somebody who speaks in that matter and deliberately makes their words cryptic.
Sexist assholes who become performatively confused and impatient and pretend they can't understand you and stop listening are just signaling that they are sexist assholes.
I do know what sex my boss is, but why should I be forced to restate it every time I reference them in a conversation? It feels rather less polite to the speaker to impose that need on them.
Not true. It was used in the past to refer to an unknown person. I.e. "When a candidate arrives given them the test." You don't know what sex the candidate is before he arrives and instead of saying "he or she" you say "they".
But nowadays people use it as a superclass of he and she: "I asked my boss for a raise but they refused". It doesn't make any sense. You know very well what sex your boss is, but "they" is used for virtue signaling. It's a way of saying "I know my boss is a man, but I'm going to use they because a woman could do just a good a job and he, sorry, they does."