I need a new word - do others need one too?

I really need a non-sex identified singular pronoun that doesn't have the negative "non-sentient" flavour of "it". I think I need permies to help me invent one that will take in the wider community.

I know that some people replace "he/she" with "they", or "him/her" with "them", but I'm old school and they and them are plural and so using them affects the proper verb usage and confuses the heck out of Hubby who's even more old-school than I am (his mom was an elementary school teacher.)

This has come up recently because we got a new gosling and he/she has way too much personality to be an "it". To me "it" is a plate or a table, not something that lives, breaths and acts with intent. I'm not sure I even want to call a tree an "it" let alone a gosling. Maybe I'm old-school about the word "it" also. So I'm looking for a pronoun that can be either a he, a she, or hermaphroditic (to cover plants and trees and worms).

So are there any permies out that who speak languages other than English - do any of those have a non-gender singular pronoun that could replace he/she?  English adopts foreign words all the time, so maybe now is the time for a new adoption?

Can anyone just invent  words that would do? One for a singular "they" and one for a singular "them"?

Am I the only one bothered by this issue? I feel that part of changing to a permaculture approach is making sure I'm respectful of *all* living creatures - even microbes and worms as our world depends on them as much as the larger, more obvious creatures. I don't want to call a worm an "it". I believe changing that, might help change the larger attitude.

I usually use words like folks, members, Op, teams, groups, etc.

I use this person when it needs to be about a specific person, though "folks" is my usual word.

Anne Miller wrote:I usually use words like folks, members, Op, teams, groups, etc.

I use this person when it needs to be about a specific person, though "folks" is my usual word.

That solves part of the problem, but the specific situation I'm struggling with is a sentence I wroth this morning, "Beetlegoose did get him/herself into a spot of trouble for chasing ducklings..."  I'm having trouble substituting the words you've suggested in to replace, "him/herself".  "Perself" maybe? A mash between person and self?

You are definitely not alone in feeling this way, Jay and I love this question! I have been struggling with the same thing. For some time, I have made a point of changing the way I speak about plants, animals, even soil and water. I make a point of saying things like "Who is this plant?" Rather than "What is this plant?". But it does get tricky with the grammar sometimes and I'll still notice myself using "it" for lack of a better pronoun. I really think this is important though. To me, using the word "it" to describe a non-human being, feels like removing that being's person hood. I think that makes it much easier to treat said being in disrespectful ways. It might not answer your question, but I suspect you might really enjoy a particular chapter in the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It speaks volumes to this issue, the chapter is "Learning the Grammar of Animacy". Here's a brief excerpt that seems fitting and maybe speaks to why this feels so important:

"A language teacher I know explained that grammar is just the way we chart relationships in language. Maybe it also reflects our relationships with each other. Maybe a grammar of animacy could lead us to whole new ways of living in the world, other species a sovereign people, a world with a democracy of species, not a tyranny of one--with moral responsibility to water and wolves, and with a legal system that recognizes the standing of other species. It's all in the pronouns.

Learning the grammar of animacy could well be a restraint on our mindless exploitation of land. But there is more to it. I have heard our elders give advice like "You should go among the standing people" or "Go spend some time with those Beaver people." They remind us of the capacity of others as our teachers, as holders of knowledge, as guides. Imagine walking through a richly inhabited world of Birch people, Bear people, Rock people, beings we think of and therefore speak of as persons worthy of our respect, of inclusion in a peopled world. We Americans are reluctant to learn a foreign language of our own species, let alone another species. But imagine the possibilities. Imagine the access we would have to different perspectives, the things we might see through other eyes, the wisdom that surrounds us. We don't have to figure out everything by ourselves: there are intelligences other than our own, teachers all around us. Imagine how much less lonely the world would be."

"Beetlegoose did get him/herself into a spot of trouble for chasing ducklings..."

Maybe ...

Bettlegoose, the little gosling got into a spot of trouble for chasing ducklings.

The English pronoun "one" could maybe work for you. It's not usually used to refer to someone specific, but people would probably know what you meant. If you invent a word or use something from a different language most people wouldn't have a clue what you were trying to convey.

Using they as a singular pronoun is pretty old school, though. It's been used that way for hundreds of years. The pronoun "you" used to be exclusively plural, as well; but slowly started to replace thee and thou. Language evolves.

They/Them aren't just plural, they can also be used when "they" are an unidentified person. As in "Someone just ordered a drink."..."Oh really? What did they want?"
But really, he/she/they are just a substitute for recognizing a person's/group's identity by name.

My partner has a transgender employee, who prefers they/them pronouns, but I truly find it easier and less confusing to just use their name.
Also when 90% of her employees are women, "she" doesn't narrow things down much, so names are necessary.

Many languages use "assigned" gender for nouns until the "natural" gender is specified. I'm thinking specifically of Spanish, which uses the masculine "el perro" for dog. Unless the dog you are speaking of is definitely known as a female, in which you can say "la perra." Others here whose primary language operates like this will be able to shed more insight.

I am also reminded of German, which not only has masculine and feminine, but also a neutral gender for nouns. I found it quite comical that in the German language, a daughter is neutral, but a cabbage is feminine.

(Edited to add that I had forgotten what the neutral article was in German. I looked it up, and it is "das." Maybe that would suffice until you find something that really jives with you?)

It's been my family's practice that if we don't know a gender of an animal on our homestead, we all collectively decide what it'll be until we know for certain. For instance, the mockingbird we rehabilitated was of unknown gender, but we all called it "her."

We thought we had an eleventh hen that was the "runt" of the flock. We called her "Baby." However, Baby kept growing, outgrew the other hens, and started crowing! So we definitely knew we had misgendered her, and his named was changed to Cluck Norris.

I suppose all that was to say, I think your Beetlegoose will forgive you if you "assign" a gender to him/her until its gender is definitely known.

Or you could go the route of my Great Grandpa, who stubbornly called all dogs boys and all cats girls. Even though he most definitely had a female dog and a male cat. His pets knew they had a good man taking care of them, so we trust they forgave his mistake, LOL.

The singular "they" has been around since at least the 14th century, and we use it pretty normally in some less common structures ("A lost hiker should stay where they are").

Officially at work, since the New York Times and APA style guides accepted the singular "they", I've been using it without reservation (Chicago Manual lists it as common without giving it the green light, but I ignore that). https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/pronouns/gendered_pronouns_and_singular_they.html

So far the other solutions I've seen in other languages (including the ones I speak and work in) are even more awkward than the they.

(In Old English there was a neutral -- hit, in the nominative/accusative case, his in the possessive. I still think the they works better).

I dislike "it" as well.  When I have a young animal, and don't know yet what sex it is, say a chicken, I just pick a gender and use it, while knowing full well it could be wrong.  Sometimes an animal just looks more male or female to me, so I use that.  That's partly how I ended up with a rooster named "Mary B".   My rooster began the first few months of his life being called "her", "she", and "Mary B".  He didn't seem to mind when I kept "Mary B" for his name and switched to "he" and "him".  

If you don't like that, I can't see any reason you can't just make up a word for all of them.  Maybe "Uni" for unisex?  Uni, Unish, Uniself.

This whole conversation reminds me of a friend of mine who is trans. The father of this person could never remember the preferred pronouns, bless his heart. The solution was to always call my friend "the lieutenant," after a family joke, and it stuck, and it was remarkably handy.

Did you remind the lieutenant about the show tonight?
Did you park the lieutenant's car?

(similar in a linguistic sense.... although definitely not applicable for people!!! we call my dog "the pig" or "piggy" most of the time, almost never "he". It causes a lot of confusion but....  it's the best kind!)

I find myself using them, themselves, one or oneself along with "that one" - all could be used in place of "it" (which I too find uncomfortable").

I also have a very prejudiced tendancy to refer to the clever ones as girls and the not so swift as boys; in humans, girls have a tendency to mature quicker, so less likely to do dumb things at the same age as their male counterparts. My apologies to all the men out there!

With birds you may have a bit of an edge, dependent on species. Within the wild bird populations, here in North America, female birds of prey are significantly larger than their male counterparts. With the songbirds the males are generally more brilliantly colored, the females more muted down to be completely without color beyond browns, and greys. If you think of birds like the Canadian goose (male is smaller) or mallard duck(male is MUCH more colorful) these patterns hold true.

As to inventing a word that better addresses this, I am ALL for it, but have no clever nomenclature to offer.

So, back to names... There's never really a situation that's inappropriate to use someone's/something's true name.
Anywhere you might find yourself using a pronoun you can always say the same thing using a name. "Do you agree with what he said?" can easily be "Do you agree with what Robert said?"
To the OP's question, there are also plenty of names that are used for both males and females if not directly, at least as homonyms (Lorne, Lauren) that you could choose from and not feel silly later on for a mismatch.

Tereza Okava wrote:This whole conversation reminds me of a friend of mine who is trans. The father of this person could never remember the preferred pronouns, bless his heart. The solution was to always call my friend "the lieutenant," after a family joke, and it stuck, and it was remarkably handy.

Did you remind the lieutenant about the show tonight?
Did you park the lieutenant's car?

(similar in a linguistic sense.... although definitely not applicable for people!!! we call my dog "the pig" or "piggy" most of the time, almost never "he". It causes a lot of confusion but....  it's the best kind!)

I think it can be disrespectful to not use someone's name and pronounce it correctly when you ought to know it. (parent, teacher, coworker, classmate) It can be an outright show of disrespect to use a "pet name" or "nickname" unless you are familiar enough to know that's acceptable.
In the case of "the lieutenant", I feel like it's unfortunately making light of the fact that the father can't accept and/or won't respect the "new gender" or the "new name" that his child has chosen for themselves... and while it might be mutually agreed upon as "funny" not all "pet names" are so funny to the named person.

As far as pet names for pets, LAY ON!!! that's what they're for!!! Wanna call your dog "the Toaster" or "spinning poopster" or whatever pops into your head in the moment? go for it! They probably don't know what you are saying unless you start calling them that all the time... Then they are the Toaster.

First off, thank you everyone for agreeing that I'm not crazy! (well, maybe a little but not with regard to this issue...)

Heather Sharpe wrote:

in the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It speaks volumes to this issue, the chapter is "Learning the Grammar of Animacy"

I had just asked a friend at lunch whether she thought any of the local Indigenous languages would have gender neutral singular pronouns. Indigenous words might be quite well accepted in our region because not only are there roads and locations with Indigenous derived names, but as part of "Truth and Reconciliation", many places are being reverted to the Indigenous name which was used prior to European immigration to this region.

However, your quote certainly supports my concern that the "language we use" influences the "attitude of respect and cooperation" we exhibit towards things in nature that we need to see in a much more "shared"  and "supportive" relationship than it seems that many people have.

Tereza Okava wrote:

Officially at work, since the New York Times and APA style guides accepted the singular "they", I've been using it without reservation

I read the link and I can't object to anything they said. I recognize the use in the example of the lost hiker, and it is far better to use they in that sort of situation than to assume the hiker's gender. My only objection is that without it's own word, there are many situations where substituting "they" leaves one wondering about the quantity.
"Beetlegoose was happy to get out this morning. They look like they grew in just one week." That seems weird to me, but I still like it much better than, "It looks like it grew in just one week," and I've been using the pessimistic "he" as I know I'd prefer Beetlegoose turn out to be female and I don't want to get my hopes up.

Kenneth Elwell wrote:

But really, he/she/they are just a substitute for recognizing a person's/group's identity by name.

Yes, and certainly identifying by name is frequently the best option, but to use poor Beetlegoose as my example again, "Beetlegoose's legs seem much stronger in just a week, but Beetlegoose's wings are still baby wings" vs. "Beetlegoose's legs seem much stronger in just a week, but his wings are still baby wings" vs "Beetlegoose's legs seem much stronger in just a week, but their wings are still baby wings". Clearly he needs a shorter name! (He already gets "Beetle" for short at times, although I must have been crazy when I named a goose "Beetle".)

Lorinne Anderson wrote:

As to inventing a word that better addresses this, I am ALL for it, but have no clever nomenclature to offer.

Tereza's link had other links imbedded in it one of which had some alternatives such as the singular "they". Maybe those are becoming more common in some places, but many aren't ones I've seen in common usage here. I'm not sure whether that's because people haven't decided they fit well enough, or whether those alternative just haven't reached critical mass yet.

Either way, I will keep searching for what I think will work better for me, and will welcome any input from everyone on permies!

My dad's first language had no distinction between he/she/it or his/her, etc  My father therefore didn't consider it important to remember them in English.

So I have been referred to as 'he/him' more times than I can count, or 'it' or...  Most confusing is when he uses both it, her, and his to refer to the same person in one sentence. Anyway, being misgendered isn't something that bothers me much.

I have offended a few people over the years though,  since when i'm tired my pronouns slip and I start mis gendering people.

I have seen people use ze or xe as a gender neutral version of he/she, but it's not really caught on.

Two of my kids are trans and use they/them pronouns as does one of my brothers kids. I do tend to use their proper names most of the term and gender neutrals terms for most other references, such as my kid and siblings that kind of thing. Personally I wish that we would just discontinue gendered terminology of all kinds, it's pointless. It reminds me of the discussion about asking people personal information to tick off boxes, are you married etc. My gender is nobodies business until it is. Same with animals, it only matters when it does. And they could care less what you call them.

That being said, I loved Braiding Sweetgrass, at least as much as I could get through. I started reading it shortly after my grandson's death, and all the parenting references had me in tears. I will try to finish it when I feel up to it.

I hope that English evolves to drop the gendered pronouns.  For much of modern social, commercial, and professional interactions, a person's gender shouldn't matter.  Yet due to our language, we find ourselves uncomfortably floundering, unable to draft a simple message because we aren't sure the gender of customer "Kelly" or "Tejal."  And how many work hours are wasted in offices making sure that the correct pronouns have been used in copy-and-paste letters?

I speak several languages, and there is quite a variation in how gender manifests linguistically.  English is kind of in the middle with the singular, third-person pronouns being our last remnant.  Other languages have "gendered" adjectives and verbs even, and some have gendered versions of "I" and "we."  And yet some of the more gendered languages (Spanish, Russian) have certain grammatical element which are not gendered, though they would be in English.  

Mk Neal wrote:I hope that English evolves to drop the gendered pronouns.

It seems so hit and miss how languages evolve and how some conventions carry on regardless of any logic being involved! As I suggested above, some things require what our family refers to as "critical mass" to move them and yet sometimes words get adopted, changed or dropped like a hot potato.

Step one is to get some good replacement words. I suspect the reason "zhe" for he/she hasn't taken off, is that people don't really like it as an option, or that the *right* person or people don't like it, or that people feel it should only be used is special circumstances rather than for any situation when you don't want to specify gender.

Alas, I fear that by the time we manage this change to the language, poor Beetle will be all grown up and either be laying eggs or fighting with his adopted dad. Heinrich seem *really* accepting of Beetle, who's already a good size, so maybe Beetle is female?

  Rotherham's translation

ye also do ye individually,  

 Other translations use "one"  or "you"     I am sure the goose will respond quite well and most humans will recognize the archaic.

Lovely. Yes, it's important!

Jay Angler wrote:
This has come up recently because we got a new gosling and he/she has way too much personality to be an "it".  

Here's a video showing the process of venting to determine a goose from a gander.



Edit to add:

I found it quite comical that in the German language, a daughter is neutral, but a cabbage is feminine.

"Die Tochter" is German for "The daughter."  "Die" is feminine.  You are perhaps thinking of "The girl" which is "Das Mädchen" and "das" is neutral.  And cabbage is actually masculine. "The cabbage" is  "Der Kohl."

Edit to add:

Am I the only one bothered by this issue? I feel that part of changing to a permaculture approach is making sure I'm respectful of *all* living creatures - even microbes and worms as our world depends on them as much as the larger, more obvious creatures. I don't want to call a worm an "it".

In nautical tradition, ships are treated with the utmost respect, and are referred to as "she".  Even though most warships are named after some long dead male Admirals, the ships don't seem to mind that they're called "she".  Your worm friends and plants are in the same boat (pun intended).  They won't feel disrespected being called "it".  So don't feel like you are being disrespectful.  The worms are perfectly satisfied that you aren't squishing them, and that you occasionally pick them up off the sidewalk and put them in the grass when the sun comes out after the rain.  And the trees are just tickled that you aren't carving your own name into them, and that you enjoy sitting in their shade, and that you occasionally look after their progeny and look up at them with wonder.  That's plenty of respect.  You are clearly already respectful of life, so don't worry that by calling something "it" you are being disrespectful.

Yeah, I agree that "it" doesn't work as an english non-gendered pronoun. However, I don't need a new word. As with the hiker or the drink orderer example, "they" works quite naturally.

Take another example. Someone knocks at the door, and my partner answers it. Upon her return, she tells me it was an unspecified neighbour. My natural question would be, "What did they want?"

I think the best course of action might be just to respect the personal preferences of the individual in the matter, where applicable. One thing many forget in these discussions is that it is a subjective matter, not an objective one.

This applies only slightly in the case of the animal of undetermined gender, except that comfort of use lies at the heart of the matter here as well. It's just that the animal in question doesn't have any linguistic hangups like we do, as they lack language, and they have no gender identity or orientation-related hangups because, again, such things are human constructs.

If my comfort level with the shifting use of language actually mattered, my opinion stands with the use of "they" in cases where preferred pronouns haven't been specified.

Where they have been specified, I feel it's rude to not respect choices made by any individual regarding their preferred pronouns. Do you randomly assign nicknames or shortened monikers to people you associate with, on a whim, because it suits you to do so? I don't. I feel that, in the rush to find new and exciting things to be insulted or affronted by, people sometimes forget the importance of respect for the individual. It's not about you. It's not about me.

Of course where it comes to animals, do whatever. I would default to whatever is convenient and easy to hand, linguistically speaking, so livestock of indeterminate gender get a "they" pronoun. I'd most likely stick to nicknames and pejoratives, or terms of endearment, anyways.

To each their own, I say, but let's all try to respect each other.

-CK

Animacy? That's a word to remember! Thanks for the smile.

As for the original question, I'm reasonably comfortable with using plural pronouns for unspecified singular gender, at least in speech. (I try to word my writing to avoid the problem.) If could learn to write email without the hyphen, it seems I'm no longer the stickler I used to be. ☺