Gender Pronouns

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

I had been searching off and on for quite some time for a non-gendered 3rd person pronoun that wasnt "it." I needed this for describing a certain aspect of self as well as when referring to some spiritual/reality states and guides.
Today, I came across "she'he" [pron: sheh'HEE] thanks to another who was speaking of a transvestite in this way.


Come to think of it, her/him statements would probably have to be something like "her'him" as well...


She looked out at the scene.
She'he looked out at the scene. perfect.


It was not all the same to him.
It was not all the same to ...she'him? ...her'im? ...her'he? unclear.


I was wondering, does anyone else have a way of describing the gender-free, the multi-gendered, and the other-gendered?

Comments

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that helps. It reminds me of pirate-speak almost... which is always good. P-)

[athousandmoons.livejournal.com]

I found this article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun) that gives all sorts of suggestions for describing people with different genders. (Look down at neologisms for the suggestions.) I personally like Spivak pronouns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun) (the article might not be accurate, but I like what it says anyway), but that's just my personal preference.

I hope you find something that you like. :)

~Mel

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

I hadnt heard of Spivak pronouns until posting this entry. Or neologisms, for that matter. Thank you :^)

[eridanusus.livejournal.com]

The most common I've seen is zhe and zir.

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

nize :P

Zhe thanked zir for zirs reply to zir post.

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

icon looooooooooooooooooove baby.

that is so incredible, I just need to marry it and have beautuhfel babehs with it.

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

thanks for the link

you *are* awesome

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

speaking as a genderqueer person, I like(if I must use 3rd gender pronouns) "zee" and "hir" but I'll also go with "shim"

pronunciations: zee = "zshee"

hir = "hear"

shim = self explanatory.

hope it helps.

Rick
pack collective

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

I particularly like shim... these are all nice. Thanks. :)

[kyouketsusha.livejournal.com]

I usually use "shi" and "hir", mainly because those are what someone else I know uses and they caught on :)

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

Wouldnt those sound the same as "she" and "her" out loud?

[kyouketsusha.livejournal.com]

"Shay" and either "hair" or "hear", respectively.

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

ooooo, that's prettier.

[pthalo]

you could use Hungarian:

ő =he, she
őt =him, her (accusative, i saw him, etc)
neki = to him, to her (giving something)
érte = for him, for her
benne = in him/her
hozzá = to him/her (direction)
nála = by him/her (near by)
tőle = from him/her
róla = off of him/her
belőle = out of him/her
vele = with him/her

that's it for the ones that can be applied as pronouns (there are more cases than that, but they don't work as pronouns)

to simply of course, you could just use "őt" (pronounced ert) for "him/her" and "ő" (er) for he/she

[othergalaxy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this one.

As well, our hosts used 'em' in reference to self, quite a lot, without wondering about it much more. One other of us wrote about 'her' as 'zie'. Might come handy.

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

õ is said as "er" phonetically? õ wants to give õt happiness on a plate.

[pthalo]

ő is pronounced kind of like er, like the ir in bird, but if you speak german, it's much closer to the german ö, just pronounced longer. in that sentence the őt would probably be "neki" but it'd sound kinda dumb in English because English grammar works differently.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Discordians tend to use the term "hir" which I think is pronounced "heer." Along with s/he (shah-hee).

My girlfriend uses "e" and "er".

I use my own terms: "djai" (jay), which means s/he; and "djair" (jair), which is his/her(s).

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

So, she'he (s/he) is already in use... maybe that was the word the person I was with was using for the transvestite... I just assumed it was made up by them.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

There's lots of different genderless pronoun sets for English, none of them accepted by the dictionaries yet (to my knowledge). The only accepted English genderless sets of pronouns are It and They.

Spivak is a proposed set of genderless pronouns that works like the genderless use of They, but removes the TH from each word.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

And it appears, according to the Wikipedia entry, that if the possessive is "hir," then the other one is "sie."

[tahaton.livejournal.com]

Sa? Also heard zie being used.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

...I think I've seen "sie" and "hir," or alternately "xie" and "xir" used the most.

Of course, you can use whatever your favorite one is, but our observation was that those were the ones which seemed to be the most universally recognized among most gender-variant people.

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

thanks ☺

[tej-agni.livejournal.com]

We were thinking about this one and we don't have another gender word that we use. Those within our realm who might be considered a different gender are actually part of another race, so we'd either call them by their name or by their racial name.

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

That's how it is for me too. Just using names. However, in certain theological conversations, like while trying to speak of spirits who have shed their gender identity essentially, it can get burdensome.

[cameoflage.livejournal.com]

I generally use either e/eir/eirs or they/their/theirs for most humans and beings who have/can be presumed to have a humanlike mindset. I don't really prefer one over the other, but use "they" more often than "e" because it's more commonly used and therefore easier to understand.

When aliens with different gender setups come into play in my writing, I generally create words and pronouns for whatever non-human gender they're a member of and use those instead. If I was just an observer of these hypothetical aliens, rather than the one who thought up their species, I'd wait and see what they used and carefully avoid pronouns altogether until then. (Or use "they" and "you", since those are gender-neutral and can be used for multiple systems, non-multiple individuals, and all sorts of in-between and/or even more complicated situations.)

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

Interesting thoughts. For, say, a ghost of indeterminate sex but obvious human lineage then, 'they' and 'them' is what you would use? Wouldnt that sound a little distant to say, "They told me of their life with a hint of tears in their voice"? I agree that 'e' is less recognizable as a pronoun. That may be why I was trying to incorporate the masculine and feminine pronouns together--to retain recognizability while attempting to expand on the meaning.

[cameoflage.livejournal.com]

You're right; it does sound distant when you're talking about a specific person with a well-defined personality (as opposed to, for example, a hypothetical person of no specific gender used to illustrate a... well, an example, although I was trying to avoid using the same noun twice in one sentence), which is a problem I neglected to think of.

I'm honestly not sure what I'd do to solve that if I was going for recognizability; I'd want to use 'e', but would be concerned about the reader not understanding it or about it seeming unfamiliar and hard to relate to. "She'he" is more obviously recognizable, but it seems to me like a term that would be more appropriate for someone who's both genders at once than whose gender is indeterminate, and the length of it is kind of jarring to someone who's used to pronouns being shorter than that.

"S/he" also occurred to me as a more compact version of "she'he", but only "she" and "he" are easily combined that way. Perhaps you could combine it with the shi and hir system someone mentioned above?

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

You sum up the problems here exactly. The implication of the word "she'he" being both genders rather than genderless, indeterminate, or other, if I were talking to someone unfamiliar with the pronoun being used, continues to thwart me. However, for my internal purposes, I can see taking one of the formats already mentioned to personally mean "undesignated gender."

I also have had the feeling that "she'he" might be too long. The ze type pronouns probably are the best it gets. ;)

[aquilawolf.livejournal.com]

Interesting conversation. After having read everything I find that I rather like 'ot', maybe because it really seems neutral to me and doesn't sound anything like the common gender pronouns. As far as whether it could be used for both he/she and him/her... Of course I'm just babbling to myself here at the computer in a whimsical mood. In actual practice I do the 'they/their' thing.

[hazelwindows.livejournal.com]

I had no idea about any of these forms of gender neutral pronouns in use already. I learned much from posting about this, though my feeling of wanting a spiritually-referenced ungendered 'he' that implies sentience beyond 'it' is still not fully resolved. I think mixing the pronouns the way they are in "she'he" does reflect mixed or alternate sex rather than the absence of gender. Though, it also suggests to me the possibility of a state beyond mere singular gender-biased experience which I like. I guess I dont want a genderless pronoun. That implies the absence of the experience of gender. What I am looking for is a pronoun that implies having transcended beyond the limitations of a single-gendered perspective.

;)