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

[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. ;)