Non-Binary Personal Pronouns

I see ze/hir used a fair amount, but there are a number of conventions out there.

The Kid has some enbies in her friend group, and they all request "they." I use "they" in my own work - singular "they" has been accepted use for centuries - but I do worry a bit that it tends to make the enbiness of the character invisible.

^ What they said about singular they. Spouse is enby and prefers they/their, as well.

Also of note: there are a fair number of non-binary people that will still use he/him or she/her - either full time, as their gender fluxes (specifically for gender fluid people), or as situations warrant - and that doesn't make them any less non-binary.

As always, I think the best question to ask yourself - assuming this is in reference to fiction writing - is "What pronoun would this character use?"

Grammatically speaking, from an historic perspective, singular they has been used for a single entity since Old English (though they was actually swiped from Old Norse and adopted into Old English).

It's not new.

It's not strange; it is in fact, standard and part of the bones of English.

It's also a way of marking that someone is binary without having to jump up and down, wave arms and put up neon lights.

And of course, in life, it is basic courtesy to honor the way other people wish to be addressed, named, and referred to.

You don't have to take my work for it; see this Usage note about singular they from the American Heritage Dictionary.

If you're having trouble reconciling "they" as a singular pronoun in your mental ears, then let me suggest something that might help retune the "sound."

Take your current project and replace all of the he/her pronouns with "they," then read through it and see how remarkably simple it is for to get used to the sound. It helps more than you might think - just don't forget to keep your original document as is, or you'll have to go back and manually change the pronouns back.

Language evolves. No doubt people in the middle ages would baulk at how we currently pronounce the word "knight".

They usually works

Justobuddies said:

In my draft I wrote the narrative referring to one as she and the other as he, for clarity, but as the story progressed I found that I didn't like the choice because it didn't really capture the lack of gender, so I'm looking for another way to tell the story.

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Take a peek at Anne Leckie's Ancillary Sword, which is a wonderful SF novel set in a genderless culture.

Or Emma Bull's Bone Dance, which has a gender neutral protag.

Although not strictly intentional, you quite often can find SFF books which are monogender (though usually not monosex).

Left Hand of Darkness uses he. Everyone is a hermaphrodite, though.

I sympathize with the grammar-police section of your brain protesting when you use "they" for the singular, but in this case that's really the proper thing to do.

What genre are you writing?

Harlequin said:

Although not strictly intentional, you quite often can find SFF books which are monogender (though usually not monosex).

Left Hand of Darkness uses he. Everyone is a hermaphrodite, though.

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Actually, everyone was completely asexual and agendered most of the time, except when they went into Kemmer. Then they were (temporarily) one or the other, and individuals didn't always become the same sex every time either. Hermaphrodite has a different meaning biologically--referring to an animal that has both male and female gonads and genitalia that are fully functional, though it can be simultaneous or sequential.

In the LHoD, everyone was referred to as "he" by the narrator, who is also the protagonist (it was in first person). The protagonist was male and came from a gendered, and very likely patriarchal, culture. I always assumed the defaulting to "he" reflected the pov characters own narrative biases, though I don't recall now if other characters also used "he" as the default pronoun in dialog.

Leckie's narrator/protagonist used "she" as the default pronoun in her non gendered society. In Leckie's world, everyone used "she" as the default, gender-neutral pronoun, though characters were often described as having traits (such as beards or breasts) that we associate with a given sex. It was gender being attached to a given body type that wasn't conceptualized in that culture--as I read it, at least.

I'd chalk these up to the choice of gender pronoun reflecting the narrative viewpoint of the pov character.

In Halfway Human, a SF novel with a caste of genderless (and completely sexless, as in having no gonads or genitalia) humans, they were referred to as "it" in the narrative and by the genderless character who narrated part of their own story, but that reflected the fact that they were a downtrodden and abused group on their home world and the individual who made it off world was regarded as very strange within a gendered society. It was meant to grate, I think, referring to a person as an "it." Heck, I hate referring to animals as "it," because it seems to erase them as feeling beings with personalities.

I think it's different, though, when there are characters who are of a third gender, either because that reflects the biology of a species or of a human culture that has an acknowledged and named third gender. Then I'd be inclined to come up with pronoun for the third gender (or if a real-world culture use the one used by that culture). If someone is agender, bigender, genderfluid, or an alternative gender in a largely bigender culture, though, "they" is the most common preference I've seen.

I've gotten used to it. The only time it's tripped me up in books is when there's a context where it's not clear if "they" is being used to refer to a single character or if it's being used to refer to a group.

Whose point of view are you using? If it's the non-binary character, you use whatever pronoun they would use. If it's somebody else, you use whatever pronoun they would use. This could be a potentially troublesome situation if your point of view character doesn't believe in the non-binary character being non-binary. In this situation, you'd probably have to have somebody call the character out on it.

The other characters in LHoD said he, but that's because Genly was translating and he used his own terms. Son of Man (silverberg) also used "he" to describe humans who could move between sexes.

I don't think Genly's society was particularly patriarchal (depending at which you're at in the timeline--it fluctuates) but the author's society probably had an influence ;-)

Harlequin said:

The other characters in LHoD said he, but that's because Genly was translating and he used his own terms. Son of Man (silverberg) also used "he" to describe humans who could move between sexes.

I don't think Genly's society wasn't particularly patriarchal (depending at which you're at in the timeline--it fluctuates) but the author's society probably had an influence ;-)

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I think this is true. Le Guin is wonderful at playing with gendered dynamics in her books, but she was (and is, though I think she's evolved too since the sixties) as much a product of her own time as anyone else. She has an essay that addresses this issue, actually. https://www.scholarsonline.org/~godsflunky/LeGuin_Intr_myself.pdf

I came of age in an era where traditional interpretations of maleness and femaleness were being questioned, and many women were beginning to be irritated by "he" being the gender-neutral pronoun and by being referred to as "men" in the generic sense. It feels positively weird to me now when some old fart in a documentary on TV (usually with a very "posh" British accent for some reason) refers to the human race as "man." It feels even stranger when a woman does so in casual conversation (as one did on facebook a while back, and I know she's a feminist and no older than I am).

But the gender binary was rarely, if ever, questioned when I was a kid. Some still don't question it, and many express bewilderment or hostility when someone else does. I've worked hard to change my mindset, but I know I still have a way to go.

Justobuddies said:

I have objections to using the personal pronoun 'they' to refer to a singular person.

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I hope this helps.

You already use the singular version of 'they' in everyday speech. It's grammatically correct and in your vocabulary and you just don't know it. Don't believe me? What if there is someone in the other room, and you need to ask if this book belongs to them?

Oh, oops. I just did it. Did you notice?

Here is the page on the rules. Let me snip their examples.

"Somebody left their umbrella in the office. Would they please collect it?"
"The patient should be told at the outset how much they will be required to pay."
"But a journalist should not be forced to reveal their sources."

With all due respect, if you want your novel to sell, I'm not sure using pronouns like "zie/zir" are really gonna win over anybody who isn't already heavily invested in the LGBT+ cause. To be frank, it just looks silly written down, and I fear that e-based pronouns like "eir" are just downright unpronounceable if you're not already familiar with the terms.

If you want your book to be enjoyed exclusively by nonbinary people, use z and e pronouns. By all means. But if you want the rest of the ignorant masses to have any hope of understanding what's being said, go with "they".

I have used zie/zir but haven't seen the e versions. My only non-binary friend uses them/they. I initially used zie/zir but have adapted to using them/they because it's already standardized English terminology for referring to humans without gender. I also tend to refer to groups of people as people or humans. I doubt using zie/zir would make it exclusively enjoyable by non-binary people; I am LGBT+ but female bodied and using female identification and would read a book with different pronouns. But i would appreciate if the book made it clear, perhaps even before beginning the story, that it used these pronouns and this is what they mean.

I do believe they/them/their is most salable and accessible for cis readers and a worthy hangup to get ones self over.

You can contact these groups for help with LGBTQIA questions:
National Center for Transgender Equality
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
GLADD

My random thought for the day: zie/zir is something we haven't been socially conditioned to read, and when I'm reading something that contains those pronouns, it trips my eyes and makes the reading less smooth. They/them doesn't have this effect on me. I'd imagine this is the same for a lot of other readers.

After considering, first, how the characters themselves would want to identify - I would consider next what your aims as an author are, and how the nonbinary content is relative to your themes. If you want to normalize new pronoun usage and/or draw greater attention to the fact, I would opt for less commonly seen pronouns. They/them would make a smoother reading experience. I'm not suggesting smoother is better - only the artistic manipulation of people's biases to better serve your story. Each set of pronouns will have a subtly different effect on the reader's experience.

In fantasy, it's not uncommon for magical creatures to have an archaic or completely different way of speaking. I think there are some really interesting world-building opportunities with language in relation to identity concepts.

I'm dealing with nonbinary content, but only use binary pronouns in my WIP, because they are the tools best suited to my goals (psychological genderfucking).

What words would be the best tools for your story?

It basically depends on how it effects your characters. Your characters sound different in that they don't recognise the concept of gender, whereas my understanding is that someone who is non-binary is consciously rejecting binary forms of gender. They are also human in appearance but not human in themselves so I don't think it's comparable to the same concept in humanity.

I would probably use 'they' as the most invisible option but as they are fantasy creatures, they could use whatever pronoun they want.