They avoidance of ‘they’ as a singular personal pronoun is a recent occurrence, historically it has been used frequently when gender is unknown or unclear. The

They avoidance of ‘they’ as a singular personal pronoun is a recent occurrence, historically it has been used frequently when gender is unknown or unclear. The Oxford English Dictionary did some research on the history last year https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/ https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they... The only recent change is people expressing a desire to use they/them as their own forms of address, but this isn’t an invalid use.