Woah, you're claiming the presence of a vagina contributed to the accident? I'd love to hear how you think that's a problem? You do realize women have been flying professionally for (albeit not in) the US military since at least 1942 (establishment of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron)?
The grammar is fine. Saying "the pilot did not listen to the instructor sitting next to them" is perfectly fine in English and has been so since at least the '90s when I first learned the language as a child.
Singular they has always been valid in modern English, going back to before Shakespeare (he used it a couple of times). The idea that it isn't comes from contrarian mid-18th-century prescriptivists who wanted to actively change the language people were already using.
a Wikipedia link means nothing, especially in the context of politically charged grammar. You can't link most conservative papers on Wikipedia, and some of the founders regularly acknowledge the site is heavily biased.
I mean that article claims singular they was common through the 19th and 20th century, but we see that's not true through any dictionary lookup https://www.websters1913.com/words/They
They (thā), pron. pl.; poss. Theirs; obj. Them. [Icel. þeir they, properly nom. pl. masc. of sā, sū, þat, a demonstrative pronoun, akin to the English definite article, AS. sē, seó, ðæt, nom. pl. ðā. See That.] The plural of he, she, or it. They is never used adjectively, but always as a pronoun proper, and sometimes refers to persons without an antecedent expressed.
Using they to refer to someone when you don't want to acknowledge their gender is a very recent thing, only done by the politically motivated.
Doesn't this prove my point? Using singular "they" is a recent, political change. Old dictionaries, like I've linked, don't include its use. A small selection of new, left-wing "dictionaries" are the only place you see it.
Well it proves that “singular they” is acknowledged by the OED, pretty much the authority of the English language, as being in common use from circa 1300. If you think Websters is older or more authoritative than the OED (or that the OED is new and left-wing) then I suppose we just have to agree to disagree but at that point I would suggest that perhaps you are rejecting any source that doesn’t support your claims and personal beliefs.
I would not call them the authority on the english language lol, but what are you talking about? The idea of being transgender was invented in the 1970's by John Money, there were no 1300 nonbinary people.
The relevant section of your definition is this:
I.2.c Used with reference to a person whose sense of personal identity does not correspond to conventional sex and gender distinctions, and who has typically asked to be referred to as they (rather than as he or she).
This was a recent addition. It did not exist in any older dictionary, or more moderate new dictionaries. I showed you this in an earlier comment, this revisionist history claiming they was always used in a singular fashion to avoid gendering people is insane, it literally couldn't have existed before the 70's because the concept hadn't been invented yet.
The word "they" being used in a singular manner is not something invented by transgender people. It has existed for a long time in natural conversation when talking about someone indeterminate. You can see it in examples like "Has anyone forgotten their coat?" or "Someone who's bought their own house would know." Activists couldn't hope to make people talk that way if they didn't already.
You can see it randomly used in old writing, too. For example, I just found this example of the word they being used in a singular fashion in Jane Eyre.
I observed when any one entered or left the apartment: I could even tell who they were; I could understand what was said when the speaker stood near to me; but I could not answer; to open my lips or move my limbs was equally impossible.
It was not uncontested, however; 19th century grammarians prescribed that people use "he" for indeterminate persons, and you will see this a lot in old writing, too.
Finally, I will say that transgender people have existed for longer than the 1970s. For trivial evidence, you can see how Christine Jorgensen got a sex change in 1954, making headlines as "Former G.I. Becomes Blonde Beauty" in a newspaper.
