“I was with Dan the other day. They forgot their keys at home. They said they had to go back to get them.”
Literally not hard at all?
“I was with Dan (they/them) and Steve the other day. They hadn’t brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it.”
This demonstrates the semantic problem with using “they” as a pronoun: it isn’t clear who went back to the car, (1) just Dan or (2) both Dan and Steve. Nor is it clear who needed the poster and who hadn’t brought it.
You’re going out of your way to create a problem that doesn’t exist. Just Dan? Say Dan went back to the car. Both Dan and Steve? Say they both went back to the car.
If you just don’t respect people’s identity then admit you’re bigoted instead of hiding behind faulty logic.
You’re going out of your way to create a problem that doesn’t exist.
The problem does exist, that’s why you’re making suggestions about how to work around the problem. I’ve been confused before by people using “they” as a pronoun in exactly this sense. I’m not going out of my way to create a problem, it’s a problem that I’ve experienced IRL. Please don’t try to invalidate my experience.
If you just don’t respect people’s identity then admit you’re bigoted instead of hiding behind faulty logic.
You’re jump to conclusions.
It’s equally unclear if both Dan and Steve use “he”, it’s just the the options are “Dan / Steve” instead of “Dan / Dan and Steve”
I don’t understand what you’re trying to express. I can’t make sense of what you’ve written.
If you’re with Dan (they/them) and Dan (he/him), you would also have the problem when saying
“I was with Dan and Dan the other day. Dan hadn’t brought the poster, so Dan went back to the car to get it.”
So to avoud confusion, people should not be allowed to be called Dan anymore. In fact everyone gets a UUID so there is no more confusion.
you would also have the problem when saying …
You would have a problem but it would not be the same problem as in my example. The problem here is not because of the choice of pronoun.