They

     Pronouns are tricky. All my English-teacher life I tried to get students to understand that "they" is plural and "everyone," for instance, is singular, that it is incorrect to say, "Everyone hung up their hat." Correct usage when I  was in college was, "Everyone hung up his hat," but the women's movement made it clear that that wiped out half the population with one pronoun. So then we said, "Everyone hung up his or her hat," which is awkward, so everyone went on using "their" in the singular, anyway, saying, "Everyone hung up their hat" without thinking about it. (Wikipedia tells me that this possessive form of "they" has been used since the fourteenth century. I should have known that while I was teaching English! I wouldn't have tried so hard.)

    In today's language a new use of the third-person plural pronoun (they, them, their) has been introduced. Some people who fit into neither the male nor the female box ask to be referred to as "they," in the singular. English teachers wail and other people rebel, but I find this a reasonable way to make language fit reality.

    Besides the half-accepted use of "they" with a singular antecedent illustrated above, there is another precedent for using a once-plural-only pronoun in the singular. "You" used to be a plural pronoun. "Thee," "thou," and "thine" were the singular forms. Gradually—or suddenly, as far as I know—that usage fell out of favor. No doubt English teachers wailed and other people rebelled, but today we easily say, "You are going with me," whether there are fifteen people going or only one.

    I admit it's hard to adjust to, but I like this new use of "they." It's a good solution to a real problem. And we'll get used to it. We'll even be able to say, "They can get it theirself" in the right context. We don't blink an eye when someone asks us for something and we say, "I'd be glad to, but you can get it yourself." Language changes, and I, for one, am proud to see English accommodating itself to another population that has in the past been wiped out by a pronoun.