I find myself often winging it with “themself/themselves” and it seems to be like themselves is always colloquially correct when there are multiple preceding nouns you’re referring to…
Otherwise if there’s only one antecedent or whatever, its themself
Be gentle haha
The obvious rejoinder: if Norman Mailer wanted his neologism to keep the meaning he intended for it, he should have been more careful about etymology. The “oid” suffix makes the new definition more logical than his own one.
Counter-example: “homophobe”, which is illogical but has stuck anyway because it’s succinct.
Interesting points otherwise.