Bay Gaillard

Hello again friends! This month, on October 20th, we have International Pronouns Day! So let’s talk about some pronouns. 

The two most common sets of pronouns are he/him/his/himself and she/her/hers/herself. You read these blocks as sets of related pronouns; the first is the subjective, or when to use when the person is the subject of the sentence, as in, “she kicked the ball”. The second is the object form, what to use when the person is the object of the sentence: “I kicked him”. The third is the possessive, what to use when talking about something that belongs to the person: “I kicked her ball”. And the final is the reflexive form: “He kicked the ball all by himself.” 

Everyone has pronouns. We used to say “preferred pronouns”, but that makes it sound optional; it’s incredibly rude to use the wrong pronoun for someone. Imagine if someone used the pronoun associated with the other common gender for you — wouldn’t it feel like they were misgendering you, calling you a girl (or guy) instead of acknowledging your actual gender? That’s why it’s so important to use the correct pronoun for people. 

You can’t always tell the pronoun someone uses by looking at them. That’s why it’s polite to use they/them/their/themself until you know what the person’s pronoun is. They/them has been used for centuries when the person’s gender is completely unknown, for example: “Whoever lives here, I hit their cat with my car.” You can see examples of this in historical texts such as Canterbury Tales and Pride and Prejudice. 

Back in the 1500s, it was suggested that “he” be used as a generic in these situations, but that is inexorably tied to a doctrine that “The Masculine Gender is more worthy than the Feminine, and the Feminine more worthy than the Neuter.” (William Lilly, 1542). Therefore, that usage has fallen out of favor. In 1808, Samuel Taylor Coleridge suggested it/it/its/itself become the gender-neutral pronoun, but currently “it” is seen as dehumanizing. Some people use it as their pronoun, but unless you’re invited to do so, using it for people is seen as the height of rudeness and dehumanization. 

Note that for some people, like myself, they/them is the correct pronoun to use. This is commonly used to signify that someone is nonbinary, but not always. 

There are other sets of pronouns that are less common. Back in 1841, linguist Dennis Baron created the set e/em/es/emself, kicking off a slew of other pronoun inventions: ou/ou/ours/ourself (1781), ze/zim/zier/zemself (1864), thon/thon/thons/thonself (1884), he’er/him’er/his’er/him’erself (1912),  ae/aer/aers/aerself (1920), and per/per/pers/perself (1972), among many others. None of them have really caught on as a generic, but there are people out there that use any or all of those pronouns. These are called “neopronouns”, from neo (meaning “new”) and pronouns. According to a gender survey in 2018, the most common neopronouns are xe/xem/xyr/xemself (7.4% of nonbinary respondants), e/em/eirs/emself (5.3%), ze/hir/hirs/hirself (5.3%), and fae/faer/faers/faerself (3.9%). 

There’s another fairly common form of neopronoun that originated on Tumblr before the great LGBT content purge: the noun-as-pronoun form. I believe this started with the bunny set: bun/bun/buns/bunself, though I am not certain. My partner Rowan uses a set of this form: soup/soup/soups/soupself. When I talk about soup, I alternate depending on context between calling soup by soups neopronoun or using he/him for soup. There are others like this you may run into in your travels, especially on the internet. 

Learning a new pronoun for someone can be difficult. Retraining your habits when speaking of a person takes time, and there are inevitably mistakes. If you are corrected on a pronoun, you should thank the person for correcting you, fix your sentence, and move on. Spending a lot of time talking about how hard it is to retrain your brain is disrespectful, as it puts the burden of managing your feelings about pronouns and trans people on the trans or nonbinary person who is using the pronoun rather than making it a problem you have to deal with yourself. It just takes time and practice to get used to a new pronoun, so have faith, it will feel more natural eventually. 

I hope you’ve learned some things about pronouns and neopronouns today. Feel free to email me or start a conversation on facebook if you want to talk more about pronouns or get some practice. You can also practice using online tools such as minus-18. I wish you well, go in peace.