This isn't a new thing with pronouns. It's fundamental to seccond-language education. You can't teach someone French by saying "eh, do whatever you want and I'll observe your struggles". "Prescriptivism" is OK, and necessary, when you want to tell someone how to function within the systems that already exist, rather than changing those systems. I.e., what you are describing is not prescriptiv-ism, it is the practical application of knowledge obtained through descriptivism.

Thank you for decribing by main beef with self-styled descriptivists, who, as soon as a field comes up that matters to them, suddenly are anything but. It's egotism, pure and simple - my hobbyhorse matters, not yours!

Your premise is that prescriptivism is self-evidently bad. It's not.

I feel like the answer in this case would be: don't be prescriptivist when doing linguistics (like when writing a grammar), but in the case of people merely speaking, prescriptivism is okay (I should define limits regarding obsolete or dragging along archaic parts of language) within reason because that is just something that happens naturally. Language is just a convention, so people are to find common ground to understand eachother.

Pronouns are defined to convey meaning in all languages. Even if a certain individual wishes to deceive others, that does not grant that person the right to compel others to engage in that same deceptive behaviour.

In issues like this where you get conflicts, the definition is too broad

You can correct someone for calling a trans man "she" (or even a cis man), for using a term which is now considered a slur, or for simply saying something insulting. In those cases the correction because the usage of English is wrong, but instead because the meaning being conveyed is hurtful.

Just follow standard English teach from school. Bad at learning grammar isnt an excuse to create new word and avoid the problem. Literally just a grammar issue.

Always, my waking goal is to tell everyone precisely how to speak at all times 😎

I think the real problem with this question, and why it's so hard to try and answer without making contradictions or cornering yourself into a subjectively stupid position is that "ok" is subjective. Peoples' priorities can be incompatible. I read someone saying it was about consent, that Harry wouldn't consent to being called anything but "they". But you can say the same for the narrator's Mother, that she doesn't consent to calling Harry "they". And consent over what you're called surely can't outweigh consent over the words you say, or vice versa. In this case I think there's really no objective scientific way to resolve the issue. A whole lifetime of experiences and thoughts have gone into shaping both Harry's and the narrator's Mum's opinions, and it can't be said in general that prescriptionism in either direction is worse than the other. I'm rambling, but what I'm trying to say is that none of the attempts at explanations in the comments are satisfactory to me, so I've decided this problem is poorly framed and/or unsolvable.

I would disagree with how you see descriptivism. I think descriptivism (in inguistics) is not used to mean "anything is fine use whatever you want" but a scientific approach: "we're not here to judge people's language, we're just here to learn how people use language". I think a descriptivist can definitely have opinions on language, but they recognise that opinions and preferences are subjective and not objective: you can't measure or prove what the "correct" word to use is.

Im a linguistics nerd they/them who has gotten in trouble with other non-binary and agender friends because I refuse to "correct" people who use she/her or he/him. This video is going to be super helpful in helping those friends understand my position better!

I’m no linguist, but I always interpreted descriptivism as something more like “any linguistic path you take to get your point across is valid as long as your audience understands your point.” In other words, a language is defined not just by the specific linguistic rules humans set up for it, but also the naturally occurring, often unspoken rules that determine interpret what you say.

Thanks for the thought ! I think the boundary is about consent. Consent over one's designation.

I think a lot of this hinges on what "prescriptivism" and "descriptivism" even mean. I don't think linguists are under any illusion that there is no such thing as "incorrect" use of language, they just think that the boundary between correct and incorrect is innate to native speakers. The phrase "I didn't do nothing" might rile your average boomer, but most speakers of english will understand it as belonging to a different dialect. On the other hand, for the sake of example, something like "I didn't nothing" would be immediately clocked by virtually all native anglophones as incorrect. To my understanding, the descriptivist approach is all about finding grammatical as fundamentally understood by native speakers.

I'm not a linguist, so I don't know how exactly "prescriptivism" is designed, but I think there is a clear difference between telling someone that they shouldn't say something because it's "grammatically incorrect" or even "factually incorrect" and telling someone they shouldn't say something because it's "hurtful", which I think is generally the intended meaning when people say things like "Harry goes by "they" so you should use "they".

I love this video! But my solution to the pronouns debate is to remove the concept of gender from the language as a flawed construct... so I've never claimed to be a remotely a descriptivist. I do believe you should be aware of the contexts of how you use words in communication in the interim of fixing the language though and that claiming/informing a preference is different to prescribing a usage - eg: 'Harry claims "they" as their default first person singular pronoun' is a neutral phrase, while 'you must use "they" when you talk about Harry to be grammatically correct' is putting impetus on the person you talk to to change their behaviour. AKA: the first is informing a person how to avoid communicating that they are a troglodite in future communication, while the second gives the impression that there is a factually correct way to describe an individual's gender using language.

This is my first time hearing about this, but wouldn’t prescriptivist’s main concern be language, and your main concern not related to language? In the whom example, there is a grammatical error/disagreement whereas the “they” example is less grammatical and more relating to personal issues. Does this matter?

In romanian, I find that it s really common. But I don t even think I m referring to the same thing as the one explained in the video. We have pronouns and "polite" pronouns. Meaning we use he/him when talking about someone close and they/them if they re of higher status than us. Though, in recent years, it s less commonly used among people, but the majority still uses them. Also, they re a must when typing / in some parts of literature. I find that it s similar to how it is in japanese. Anyways, I m pretty sure I m referring to a different thing than the one mentioned in the video. Sorry for rambling.

I don't believe in either descriptivism or prescriptivism. I believe in being descriptive in linguistics and prescriptive when we're considering speech as a part of our culture including the ethics as well as practicalities of particular usages.