it's all those things and also a convenient way to avoid properly gendering someone whose gender you don't actually recognize. I don't think everyone who refers to her as "they" is a foaming-at-the-mouth transphobe because there are a lot of ways to be tacitly and accidentally transphobic (and nobody has to be burnt at the stake for that kind of thing!!!) but I also think pretending that everyone who is actively malicious actually just has no clue what they're doing or saying at any given point in time is just as silly.

Ask yourself: would you refer to Y'shtola's voice actor as "they" even if you didn't know her name? What about Urianger's? Let's be real here, the answer is no.