# Non-standard pronouns



## Steerpike (Nov 27, 2017)

I'm contemplating a story in which non-standard pronouns may make sense for at least one characters. I've seen this used most recently in a couple of books by Greg Egan, where he uses ve, vis, ver, etc. I've read other discussions where people advocate using a singular "they" instead. 

I'm leaning toward Egan's approach, but I'm curious what others have done or encountered, and how effective they found it.


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 27, 2017)

A friend of mine used xe/xir in a story she wrote. This was with the intent of identifying a person of indeterminable gender. To me it felt slightly awkward when reading it, and whenever it showed up it broke the flow of the prose and took me out of the story. It wasn't a deal breaker though, and I eventually finished the story. The character in question wasn't playing a major role and didn't show up very often.
It's possible that if they had been around more I would have gotten used to it.


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## Steerpike (Nov 27, 2017)

I wonder if there would be any difference to the reader between xe/xir or ve/vis/ver. Egan's _Diaspora_ uses the non-gendered pronouns heavily throughout. It didn't bother me--I became accustomed to the usage fairly quickly.


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 27, 2017)

Steerpike said:


> I wonder if there would be any difference to the reader between xe/xir or ve/vis/ver.


I'm inclined to say there would be a difference. The pronunciation of ve/vis/ver is more intuitive to me than of xe/xir and I think that's a factor. I don't say the word out loud when reading, but even then the words are still pronounced internally when I see them.
A word like vis reads a lot more intuitive than xir to me, and I think I'd have gotten used to that faster.


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## Steerpike (Nov 27, 2017)

Svrtnsse said:


> I'm inclined to say there would be a difference. The pronunciation of ve/vis/ver is more intuitive to me than of xe/xir and I think that's a factor. I don't say the word out loud when reading, but even then the words are still pronounced internally when I see them.
> A word like vis reads a lot more intuitive than xir to me, and I think I'd have gotten used to that faster.



Good point.


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## A. E. Lowan (Nov 27, 2017)

Kameron Hurley uses xe/xir to good effect in her _Worldbreaker Saga_ (which in my hurley-burley brain sounds a lot like she/her, which might be why it sticks better for me). I think it all comes down to consistent usage and clarity. The reader will pick up either alternative pronoun in good order, since their vowel endings aren't all that exotic when sounded out.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 27, 2017)

I have to comment that whenever i see xe/xir it drives me absolutely crazy and I struggle to even read it. Never seen the other one but I suspect it would sound similarly awkward. I advocate the use of the singular "they."


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## A. E. Lowan (Nov 27, 2017)

They/their is also an option (do you hear the similarities in pronunciation?), especially in a binary construct, but sometimes societal constructs advocate for an entire third, fourth, or even fifth gender, and for that we need extra pronouns. Plus, sometimes characters simply choose for themselves, much like people.


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## Steerpike (Nov 27, 2017)

I think I've decided on using the non-standard pronouns, it's just a matter of which ones. Someone on Twitter made an interesting point, which is that fantasy readers will read made-up words all day long, learn Tolkien's elvish, or learn Klingon, etc., but when confronted with non-standard pronouns seem to have a negative reaction. It does seem a bit incongruous, except that the difference is the pronouns are ubiquitous in the writing. In my experience, while the use initially drew attention to itself, very quickly it seemed natural enough and didn't pull me out of the story.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Nov 27, 2017)

I know some fantasy readers who don't like xe/xir. Never heard anyone complain about ve/vis, or say that they'd read anything with those pronouns. Personally, the use of either one would not stop me from reading the story.


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## CupofJoe (Nov 27, 2017)

A. E. Lowan said:


> They/their is also an option (do you hear the similarities in pronunciation?), especially in a binary construct, but sometimes societal constructs advocate for an entire third, fourth, or even fifth gender, and for that we need extra pronouns.


 Or the society had de-gendered the pronoun already. There will be something generic like it or they and then a personal identifier. I like the idea of it being them [general], one [personal] and you [specific]...


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## Gryphos (Nov 27, 2017)

I'm not a huge fan of made-up pronouns like xe, ve, etc. I think it's better in most cases just to use the singular 'they' when talking about a character who's genderless or unidentifiable (say, if their face is covered). I mean, I've met several people in real life who prefer being referred to as 'they'. Although, if the character is non-human and genderless, but still sentient, you could try using 'it'. I'm actually quite fond of this in such cases.


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## Steerpike (Nov 27, 2017)

Gryphos said:


> I'm not a huge fan of made-up pronouns like xe, ve, etc.



All words are made up, right? Invented by humans to relate concepts to other humans.


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## Dark Squiggle (Nov 27, 2017)

You can use 'it' for people regardless of gender, as long as they are either chill enough, dumb enough, or incapable of doing anything about it. It is something that people do 
The xe/xir or anything like that makes me nuts, not enough to throw me enough reading  a book, but enough to push me in that direction. People use they/their in conversation, and it just seems smooth, why wouldn't you want to use it? Are you trying to throw in something quirky into your story?


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## Steerpike (Nov 27, 2017)

Dark Squiggle said:


> You can use 'it' for people regardless of gender, as long as they are either chill enough, dumb enough, or incapable of doing anything about it. It is something that people do
> The xe/xir or anything like that makes me nuts, not enough to throw me enough reading  a book, but enough to push me in that direction. People use they/their in conversation, and it just seems smooth, why wouldn't you want to use it? Are you trying to throw in something quirky into your story?



"They" and "their" are routinely used for people of all genders. The story will have the usual binary genders, but also a race for which those genders do not make sense. Using "they" or "their" seems unnecessarily vague given the other uses of those words, where as ve/vis/ver are explicit gender references.


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## Dark Squiggle (Nov 27, 2017)

Why don't the regular pronouns make sense? Are they a gynogenestic race (Amazon Mollies, Poecilia formosa come to mind), a species with more than two sexes? Why not try to keep it simple? As complexity builds, the book will become harder and harder to read, and need to be longer and longer to give the readers a chance to immerse  themselves in the story, until you have an unwieldy monster rather than a novel.


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## Steerpike (Nov 27, 2017)

Dark Squiggle said:


> Why don't the regular pronouns make sense? Are they a gynogenestic race (Amazon Mollies, Poecilia formosa come to mind), a species with more than two sexes? Why not try to keep it simple? As complexity builds, the book will become harder and harder to read, and need to be longer and longer to give the readers a chance to immerse  themselves in the story, until you have an unwieldy monster rather than a novel.



I don't agree that the usage will make it complex or harder to read--at least not for a fair number of readers.  As I noted above, Greg Egan uses these non-standard pronouns extensively in _Diaspora. _The regular pronouns make _less_ sense because they're less concrete and specific. Again, "they" and "their" are used with respect to individuals who do exhibit one of the two binaried genders. Ve/vis/ver are not. Thus, the latter are more specific designations.


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## Gryphos (Nov 27, 2017)

Steerpike said:


> All words are made up, right? Invented by humans to relate concepts to other humans.


Yes, of course. Believe me, I'm no language purist. I just think language can't be _forced_ to evolve, if you get me. And I think that pronouns like xe, ve, etc aren't the right way to go.


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## Steerpike (Nov 27, 2017)

Gryphos said:


> Yes, of course. Believe me, I'm no language purist. I just think language can't be _forced_ to evolve, if you get me. And I think that pronouns like xe, ve, etc aren't the right way to go.



I look at it somewhat like the arrival of other new terms into the lexicon: cyberpunk, cyberspace, photobomb, microaggression. Those are all relatively new words that we've pulled into the language. In the case of pronouns, a perceptual shift is required in addition to simply adopting the new words, thus the resistance. 

In any event, the discussion is an interesting one. I tend to like more concrete or specific terms as opposed to more vague or ambiguous ones, which is why I lean toward the approach taken by Egan and others.


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 27, 2017)

There's also the cultural issue of neutral gender pronouns. This may not be an issue in this case, but it's still an interesting thing to bring up. A few years back Sweden introduced a gender neutral pronoun (_hen_) into the dictionary. From what I understand it's seeing some use and slowly gaining acceptance as an everyday word, but it's not without struggle.

As I understand it the controversy isn't in a new word being added but in what this specific word represents symbolically. Getting into a discussion about it would probably lead to the "no politics" rule getting violated real fast, but if anyone's interested you can look it up online. 

The first few years after it was added I rarely saw it other than in the context of people making fun of it, but these days many of my friends back in Sweden are using it in their social media updates. In another generation or so it's unlikely anyone will bat an eyelid at it.


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## Steerpike (Nov 27, 2017)

Svrtnsse I suspect you're right in that over time people will no longer see it as unusual. Interestingly, Egan's works utilize it going back to at least 1995. I wonder what the earliest use in fiction is.


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Nov 27, 2017)

I use they/their to refer to genderless characters.

Here's a random fact: there is a gender neutral [and very formal/polite] Japanese pronoun: watashi. Yet on my Japanese rosetta Stone programme, watashi is tossed around as easily as atashi, boku, and ore are in anime. I found it a little strange. [Oh, and a sentence of a man introducing himself started with 'boku', which is usually used by boys or young men. I found that equally odd.]

I seem to have a skill at derailing topics.


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## Dark Squiggle (Nov 27, 2017)

Steerpike said:


> I look at it somewhat like the arrival of other new terms into the lexicon: cyberpunk, cyberspace, photobomb, microaggression. Those are all relatively new words that we've pulled into the language. In the case of pronouns, a perceptual shift is required in addition to simply adopting the new words, thus the resistance.


I agree with you in that words will arise to fill in the now empty space in the genderless pronoun niche, but I don't agree that shoving in some random sounds will create those words. The words that you have listed are a few of those that have survived long enough to become words, a small fraction of those that are coined. Furthermore, all the words that you have listed are compounds of preexisting words, which lends them extra legitimacy, which 'cir' doesn't have. The word "watashi" TheCrystallineEntity mentioned, or an Anglicized version of it, would be a good choice.
Words are born when other words are modified, absorbed from other languages, or in rare occasions, like Thomas Edison's "Hello", created by famous figures who shove them into existence. So, if you use the word and become the next Brandon Sanderson or J. K. Rowling, you may create a real word. Otherwise, you will create a fantasy world-specific word, which is fine, but not really a word for a gender neutral person.
(Am I just being thick? I am beginning to feel I may have gone overboard and am no longer productively adding to the thread)


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## Steerpike (Nov 27, 2017)

Dark Squiggle said:


> I agree with you in that words will arise to fill in the now empty space in the genderless pronoun niche, but I don't agree that shoving in some random sounds will create those words. The words that you have listed are a few of those that have survived long enough to become words, a small fraction of those that are coined.



I don't think they're random sounds at this point. Ve/vis/vir have been around since the 1980s, so 30+ years. Xe, etc., goes back another decade before that. Even though they are not widely used at this point, they've been in existence, and have been used in limited circumstances, for some time now. The decision to employ options that have been around for that long isn't "random," but is a deliberate decision to settle on one of a few pre-existing strategies for dealing with the problem.


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## Dark Squiggle (Nov 27, 2017)

Steerpike said:


> I don't think they're random sounds at this point. Ve/vis/vir have been around since the 1980s, so 30+ years. Xe, etc., goes back another decade before that. Even though they are not widely used at this point, they've been in existence, and have been used in limited circumstances, for some time now. The decision to employ options that have been around for that long isn't "random," but is a deliberate decision to settle on one of a few pre-existing strategies for dealing with the problem.


I have never heard them before, but that doesn't mean anything. I guess it comes down to whether or not the bulk of your readers will have heard them before or not.


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## TheKillerBs (Nov 27, 2017)

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> I use they/their to refer to genderless characters.
> 
> Here's a random fact: there is a gender neutral [and very formal/polite] Japanese pronoun: watashi. Yet on my Japanese rosetta Stone programme, watashi is tossed around as easily as atashi, boku, and ore are in anime. I found it a little strange. [Oh, and a sentence of a man introducing himself started with 'boku', which is usually used by boys or young men. I found that equally odd.]


Well, watashi is the default first-person pronoun in Japanese. As I understand it, boku is used by males in the same circunstances that one would use -kun. If you throw atashi and ore around in Japanese conversations, people will look at you weird. They're words used in anime that aren't used in real life. Same as kisama.

On topic: I use they/their as well, and would probably put down any book that starts throwing out non-standard pronouns. However, I might not be your target audience anyway so...


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Nov 27, 2017)

Oh. Shows how much I know, then.


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## Queshire (Nov 28, 2017)

Personally I find using they / their as smoother, but that's just aesthetics. Among those who are familiar with gender neutral pronouns, while I don't think there's one that as particularly won out, the general format of Ve/vis/vir is well established and it should be easy enough for readers to pick up what it means from context.

The "fake word" style arguments against it are... Utterly unconvincing to me. Especially here. Fantasy words are a cliche. Guys like Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll came up with nonsense words that are now in use all the time.

Honestly, it reminds me of when I was a little kid and adults would make "pokemans" jokes. When you're a kid Pokémon is serious business! Similarly, it might seem ridiculous, but it's still important to some people.


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## TheKillerBs (Nov 28, 2017)

There’s a difference between coming up with a fake word for a non-existent concept and coming up with fake grammar when there is a perfectly viable standard option. But ignore me, I’m just a disgruntled (former) English teacher.


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## CupofJoe (Nov 28, 2017)

I had a chance to broach this questions [sort of] with a couple of people that do not identify with the male and female genders.
One of them hated all of the "modern" constructs. The other was hoping that we could find a named vs un-named convention, where you would use a person's name or some wording that was neater than "the unknown person".


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## Steerpike (Nov 28, 2017)

TheKillerBs said:


> There’s a difference between coming up with a fake word for a non-existent concept and coming up with fake grammar when there is a perfectly viable standard option. But ignore me, I’m just a disgruntled (former) English teacher.



This is akin to calling news reports one doesn’t like “fake news.” It simply isn’t a compelling argument.


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## Dark Squiggle (Nov 28, 2017)

Steerpike said:


> This is akin to calling news reports one doesn’t like “fake news.” It simply isn’t a compelling argument.


I think it is about unfamiliar, not fake. A lot of the time familiar is better, because it does not require effort for the reader to understand what is going on.  is better, you can see this in the fact that many fantasy worlds are similar (elves, Dark Lord, dwarves, goblins, etc.) This is not because these things are better than any alternatives, or because the writers are unimaginative, but because people know what to expect when they hear 'elf' (Thank you Tolkien), and not when they hear 'grifnobbler'. This point is meaningless if you either want to play CS Lewis and make up your own words or feel your audience has heard the word before. As for disgruntled English teachers, my grandmother is a PhD of 19th and 20th Century French Literature and Philosophy. I can tell you from personal experience that you will never satisfy those people. They are just like the realist people, once you've spent years getting weapons, armor and combat terminology, they'll want to know about your dragon's calorie intake.


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## TheKillerBs (Nov 28, 2017)

Steerpike said:


> This is akin to calling news reports one doesn’t like “fake news.” It simply isn’t a compelling argument.


I see it more like calling a rabbit a smeerp. But like I said, people like me probably aren’t your target audience so feel free to ignore me.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 28, 2017)

All i can contribute is that i've read "humans are weird" tumblr stories with genderless aliens that use xe/xir and I found it very distracting and annoying. 

But maybe this just shows the limits of the English language. And maybe we have to adapt.


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## Steerpike (Nov 28, 2017)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> All i can contribute is that i've read "humans are weird" tumblr stories with genderless aliens that use xe/xir and I found it very distracting and annoying.
> 
> But maybe this just shows the limits of the English language. And maybe we have to adapt.



I think I'd prefer ve/vis to xe/xir, but it may be just because I've read the former more. For all I know, the latter is more common. Neither of them bother me--as with fantasy or science fiction terminology and other elements of such stories, it's just a matter of initially recognizing what the author is doing with the words and then assimilating that usage into the brain during the reading of the work. It doesn't take much more, in my view, than understanding what the word _mithril_ or _jumpgate_ means in the context of a story and then proceeding to read with that understanding in place. One's brain does the relatively easy work of supplying the concept when the word appears. Although gender-neutral pronouns might be seen as having more of an impact on the structure of sentences, I think the process of applying meaning to them during reading is much the same.


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## Steerpike (Nov 28, 2017)

TheKillerBs said:


> I see it more like calling a rabbit a smeerp. But like I said, people like me probably aren’t your target audience so feel free to ignore me.



That argument doesn't hold up to scrutiny, either. Blish criticized calling a rabbit a smeerp because, in context, rabbits and smeerps were identical, but the word 'smeerp' was used to make the creature appear alien. In the case of beings in a story for which binary gender terminology is inapplicable, the beings are of course not identical to human beings and the new pronouns are not substitutes for traditional pronouns that are simply made to appear exotic.


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 28, 2017)

This is only vaguely tangential, but this thread got me to look into gender from a grammatical point of view. Some languages have no grammatical genders, while others have several (up to 140 for Tuyuca). I found an list grouping languages by how many grammatical genders they have here: List of languages by type of grammatical genders - Wikipedia
Please note: grammatical gender is not the same as biological gender.

It also struck me that this is something that can be used for world building purposes, even if you don't add additional genders. I've done it once, but it came without me really thinking about it. In my first novel I wrote I had the characters and the narrator refer to the sun as she rather than it. I recall one beta reader commented on it, but I don't remember if it was as a complaint or if they just pointed out it was unusual to them.


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## A. E. Lowan (Nov 28, 2017)

I find the "it's an unfamiliar word, ew!" argument hard to swallow. In our series we use the word "therianthrope" ("therian" for short) to refer to our shape shifters. It's not a commonly used word, but yet it exists just as do alternative pronouns (and I would argue its use is actually more limited than theirs), and is in fact the correct word for people who take the shape of animals - much like an alternative pronoun would be correct for someone choosing to use it. So far, our readers have encountered it, learned it, and moved on with the new vocabulary in tow.

So, the question becomes, then, what are we objecting to when we object to alternative gender terms? Curiously, among our therian rabbits we have alternative terms for gender presentation. Rabbits; females, jacks; breeding males, and hutch jacks; transgender males.


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 28, 2017)

A. E. Lowan said:


> In our series we use the word "therianthrope" ("therian" for short) to refer to our shape shifters


I use that as well, except the shortened form is terry/terries. Therian isn't used at all, because I haven't thought about it. Now that you've mentioned it, I may have some characters use it just to set them apart from everyone else. There may be some cultural values that differ between the different short forms. Terry/terries may be the more vulgar or derogatory term. An even more derogatory term is dog, but that's also used affectionately between therianthropes who are on good/familiar terms with each other.

EDIT: Yes, that's why the series is called Lost Dogs.


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