Once people get to know me and start to figure out my alternative gender status, they often ask about pronouns. What pronoun do I prefer? She or he? Well, that’s really the whole problem isn’t it? There aren’t good gender-neutral singular personal or possessive pronouns in the English language. There is of course “one” as in “one likes to go to the movies,” or always using the proper name as in “Rafael likes to go to the movies,” instead of “he” or “she,” though this isn’t common usage. There isn’t, however, any real substitute for “him” and “her” or “his” and “hers.”
Some years back, I tried to research new pronoun inventions online, but even among the gender outlaw community, I could find no agreed-upon single terminology. I recently discovered, that an androgyne friend of mine has written a quite thorough essay on some of the most common ones (including usage and potential problems), which you can check out here: androgyne.0catch.com/terms.htm.
Feel free to study up and start using “ze” instead of “she or he.” For me, what works well in writing is “s/he”, “hir”, “one’s” and “oneself” (and “persons” or “people” instead of women/men). I often get lazy though and will go with assigned gender for known entities (but I won’t ever specify an unknown person with “he/him” as I was tought in English class, because that’s just silly – the patriarchy is plenty strong with out my assistance in pretending “male” is the default gender). Talking-wise, I try to speak similarly, though I don’t often try to get away with “hir” as it could be pronounced as “her” or “here,” either of which could be misleading.
As for my preference, I wish there was some gender-neutral pronoun commonly used in our language, but since there’s not, I can live with what we got. I tell most people who ask me this question that a mix of both is preferable. If someone feels it is too confusing to alternate gender references, then I’d slightly prefer the female pronouns. If someone doesn’t get around to asking me my preference, then they’ll probably just saddle me with the male pronouns, which might make me sigh inwardly, but I can take it like a [perceived-as] man.
Cheers to all you ziers and xes, eys and pers. 🙂
