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Gender-Neutral Terms?

Gender Neutral Term?

  • Total voters
    27
Minish said:
I'm pretty sure xie/hir sprung up specifically out of non-binary circles, so it's always made sense to me that it's still kind of reigning.
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I have to say this seems really weird since hir is like... his + her fused together, which just makes it seem neutral-sure-but-still-with-clearly-binary-influences? (and also can still sound very much like 'her', especially factoring in dialect and speech tendencies). And while it is by no means a comprehensive list, 'xie' is absent (albeit 'xe' and 'hir' are not) from Wiki's (presumably) common-use pronouns.

Elverson first appeared in 1975 (which is the 'Spivak' set I still default to), but I can't seem to find a clear date on the others. It's amusing seeing how much 19th century (English) literature there is on the need for a neutral pronoun, though!
 
I think xie was mostly replaced by sie/zie for some reason, I wonder if maybe because an x is too ~special snowflake~y or something. But, hm!

I found hir pretty weird too for the longest time, and probably won't ever use it, but its closeness to binary pronouns is maybe meant to be part of its charm, in a kind of third gender impression? I definitely think it's the most popular one, and it's always paired with xie, sie or zie, so. I also prefer Spivak, I guess. It's weird that sie/hir seems outdated to me, yet Spivak came first!


Yaaaaaay a huge majority of google searches bring up shitty people complaining about new pronouns. \o/ that's exactly what I wanted
 
Only tangentially related but upon visiting a professor's office I found that he had multiple Spivak books
 
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