Word choices to include people who identify as genderfluid or nonbinary?

There seem to be a few nonbinary pronouns floating about, but they're very nonstandardized ("ze" is one that I've seen a few times) as far as I'm aware and tend to cause controversy. I personally stick with "they", "person (or a setting-based alternative such as 'customer')", or the proper noun, but it may be possible to use some of these if it fits, especially in a poem. I would just be very careful using nonstandardized pronouns because I've even heard of well-intentioned but uninformed allies using terms I personally had never heard but were actually known to the trans community to be slurs (I don't remember the term myself).

With a strong reminder that no group is a monolith, and that I even as a member of the group in question, can only speak for myself:

They/them/their is always an acceptable substitute for gendered pronouns, and actually has a considerable history of use. There are a lot of people whose knee-jerk reaction is to immediately declare it grammatically inaccurate. However, they are in fact themselves lacking any knowledge of the history of its use. They can go pick a fight with Shakespeare, or they can get with the times.

When it comes to gendered terms that are not pronouns, I try to find neutral equivalents; police officer instead of policeman, firefighter instead of firewoman, partner/spouse instead of girlfriend/husband, etc.

There's a quite extensive collection of personal pronouns available for nonbinary identities, but in general, they aren't tied to specific identities but rather to the individual's preference. So this makes it rather difficult to reflect in a story unless you just pick a specific set of pronouns and use them for all applicable characters, or only have one such character.

A few interesting ideas I've seen so far, though, which only really becomes an option in sci-fi/fantasy, are when an entire culture uses specific pronouns. I've seen a system where pronouns are based on your own social rank (or that of the person you were speaking to). Or systems where there was only a single neutral pronoun for referring to another party, but multiple for identifying yourself. These systems usually used sets of pronouns that were already commonly used in English nonbinary terminology rather than creating new terms, though.

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In my own writing, I have a culture that has both multiple genders and polygamy as core concepts/widespread practices. I established a few common identities that are widely known in that culture as well as making it clear that these are not the only ones. Then, I based the pronouns off of the polygamy system, where an individual's pronouns describe their role in a relationship (or lack thereof for aromantic folks) rather than their gender. They are much more fluid with the concept of pronouns, so although an individual might have a preferred pronoun, they might find it amusing to hear another person refer to them by a different one, rather than offended by it.

A somewhat comparable example from our cultural point of view might be a socially dominant lesbian who is submissive in relationships finding it amusing that everyone thinks she's "butch," or a very effeminate straight cis guy that's secure with his sexuality who thinks it's amusing when people call him gay. So in that culture, if someone gets the wrong pronoun in conversation they might react like "haha, is THAT how I come off?" Either way, their language is specifically structured such that an individual cannot speak without using their own pronoun, so even if their conversational partner uses the wrong one at first it will be corrected by their reply without even needing to bring it up.

For the rest of the cultures in my setting, there is the implicit knowledge that multiple genders exist, but gender isn't really a big cultural deal for them so people just go with the flow. Neutral pronouns are used until someone establishes their preference, otherwise they continue with neutral pronouns the whole time.

I just tell people to use whatever gender pronoun they feel most comfortable using to refer to me, as the gender neutral ones are still new enough to come off as a bit clunky. I know that doesn't necessarily answer your question, but since you are being somewhat specific to poetry, the fact that you can make it clear you are describing someone with feminine attributes but applying the male pronoun (or vice versa) could make for an interesting aspect to the piece.

The gender neutral language I personally like best is ze/zir for singular. Seems to flow a bit better than some of the others.

I recently read something that suggested that pronouns in Japanese are non-binary. When I have time I'm going to look this up; it may be valuable to some settings, especially future-Earth ones.

ManInBlack said:

I recently read something that suggested that pronouns in Japanese are non-binary. When I have time I'm going to look this up; it may be valuable to some settings, especially future-Earth ones.

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First person pronouns are gendered to a degree. Ore/boku are considered masculine, watashi is more neutral, and atashi is more feminine. But they also have connotations of formality and maturity, besides gender.

Third person pronouns don't really exist, so there's that.