Gender-neutral pronoun

In non-sexist language, Gender-neutral or epicene pronouns neither reveal nor imply sex or gender when referring to people, animals or things.

In English, the only gender-specific pronouns are the third-person singular: he, him, himself, his, she, her, herself, and hers. The third-person plural pronouns they, them, themselves, their, and theirs work equally well for either sex, as do the others, such as I, thou, we, you, and so on.

For those people seeking a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, this is a problem. Common solutions include singular they, the generic male, he or she, using he and she in alternate passages, and rewording sentences [1] (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_gender-neutral_pronouns).

The following sets of neologisms have articles in wikipedia, though they are all very rare and most commentators do not believe any of them will ever become widespread:

• Sie and hir
• Spivak pronouns
• It

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can be interpreted to predict that people will be less sexist if they don't distinguish between genders in pronouns and other aspects of speech.

Example

Co is one example of a proposed gender-neutral pronoun. The subject and object form are the same, and the possessive pronoun is cos.

External Links

• Gender-Neutral Pronouns (http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/genpr.htm) - a style guide
• Gender Neutral Pronoun Frequently Asked Questions (http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/)
• Gender-free Legal Writing (http://www.bcli.org/pages/projects/genderfree/genderfree)
• The Epicene Pronouns: A Chronology of the Word That Failed (http://www2.english.uiuc.edu/baron/essays/epicene.htm)