thoughts on pronouns

 I don't think that I have any problem calling someone who asks to be refered to as "they/them" as "they/them." The pronoun label is a covenience of linguists, not a societal truth.

If you ask me to refer to you as it/tree/they, I'll do it because it doesn't matter -- it is your personal preference and I can respect that. So when do I develop a problem? When you think that you you are adopting an extant word and import its other baggage. I shall try to explain.

If a singular person wants to be refered to as "they," then I would change the sounds coming out of my mouth (in the same way that the sounds qwould change if I used a foreign word in the place of an English one). The arbitrary letters combined to make the sound by which I label you don't, inherently, matter. What matters is I am finding and using a specific and unique combination to define you and make you distinct from other potential referents. The word I use for you is a signifier of a single individual. Therefore, I should be allowed, or even required, to use the singular verb to agree with the singular pronoun, whatever the sound of that pronoun is. We are importing the sound of the combination of letters, not the meaning: "they/them" has 2 gramamtical dimensions in the 3rd person -- number-plural and gender-indeterminate. If an individual wants the label of "they/them" then either the person is demanding the full meaning (which is false because the individual is not demanding to be thought of as a plural) or the person is asking a new coinage, a new word which happens to share the sound of a pre-existing word but must be a different word as its meaning is necessarily different from the extant word.

Just because this new word is identical in spelling and pronunciation does not mean that it IS that older word. It is a new word which has the grammatical implications of its meaning, not its prior use. The word must call forth the singular structure regardless of the fact that it looks like a plural word.

So, sure, I can call you "they/them" but if you are uncomfortable when I say "they wants dinner" then maybe you should choose a different word as your pronoun which doesn't make the grammar confusing.