Tags
English Language, Gender-neutral pronoun, Genderqueer, Grammatical gender, Language, Pronoun, Transgendered
Sundays are a Day of Rest – by which I mean a Day of talking about the Rest of my life; that is, outside linguistics.
This little rant was initiated by this article.
I clicked on a link someone put up on facebook, and the headline caught my eye, and I ended up reading it – and all the comments.
Several things got to me upon reading it.
Firstly, the article calls Silvani Marquez “a transgendered man”, “he”, and “him” throughout the article.
A biological male who identifies as female is a transgendered woman; a biological male who likes to dress in women’s clothes is a transvestite. You’d think a well-known newspaper would do their homework.
However, it’s the comments that really upset me.
Aside from the blatant bigotry and single-mindedness of most of the comments, they refer to Marquez as “He/she” (x2), “your guy/it friend”, “quasi/semi/sorta woman”, and other things which have been removed and which I won’t bring myself to repeat.
I’m not saying that any sort of changes to the English language could change this; people will always latch onto an “Other” they can use to make them feel better about themself, and if this means ranting about a trans* person being deported, they’ll do it there.
Gender neutral toilet sign
However, the article themself could have used different language. They clearly weren’t sure how to go about referring to Marquez, and a little research would have helped a lot here. However, if the English language had known gender-neutral pronouns, the article could have used these – and left much less scope for transphobia in the process.
It turns out the English language did have gender-neutral pronouns. Historically a and then ou were used. A came from reducing he (he) and heo (she), and ou is a later version of this word.
Why did these words die out?
Had they remained in the English language a few more years, there would be many changes from how we live today.
First off: the Bible. The Hebrew pronoun used to refer to God is actually gender neutral. Lack of gender neutral pronouns in English meant He was used in the translation of the King James Bible. Using a gender-neutral pronoun would not only have prevented much misogyny in the past and today (God = male, male = god-like, therefore female = unworthy), but also would have prevented ambiguity for many translations of the Bible still debated over today.
However, I digress. Had the King James bible used gender-neutral pronouns, they would have stayed. Being used in the Bible gives a word staying power: we would still be using them today, rather than clumsy substitutes such as “they”.
Today, there is the Elverson pronoun:
| Masculine | he laughs | I hugged him | his heart warmed | that is his | he loves himself |
| Feminine | she laughs | I hugged her | her heart warmed | that is hers | she loves herself |
| Singular they | they laugh | I hugged them | their heart warmed | that is theirs | they love themself |
| Elverson (1975) | ey laughs | I hugged em | eir heart warmed | that is eirs | ey loves emself |
When capitalised, it is called the Spivak pronouns – a much more well known gender-neutral pronoun.
And there is also zhe, zher(s), shi/hir, and zhim, which are variations of the above.
So what’s the need for this post, right? We have gender-neutral pronouns, we just need people to start using them.
How many of you, dear readers, have ever heard of the Spivak – or, indeed, Elverson – pronoun?
How many of you would think nothing of it if someone said, “oh, Jamie? Ey just left”.
The unfortunate case is that, in order for a word to be used, people must know about it.
Without having grown up using a word, and without the need to refer to anyone using a gender-neutral pronoun, there is little chance Spivak pronoun will be picked up; or any other gender-neutral pronoun we invent, for that matter.
Anglophonism 
Never heard of those pronouns but I normally use “they/them/theirs” when I don’t want to refer to the sex of the person I’m talking about. Does this count? :)
Shame there are so many misconceptions and, thus, so much misunderstanding about transgenderism… It saddens me when people treat transgender people disrespectfully.
Thanks for a nice post.
Yes, I use “they”, but it begins to sound clumsy after a while – and also just draws attention to the lack of gender in a pronoun. It’s probably the best substitute, but it by no means perfect – or even close!
I agree. However, since I’m not a native English speaker I’m sure people will keep correcting me if I start using the pronouns you suggest in your post haha
Ran into this problem while working on a novel. I was almost going to settle on “he”, much to my chagrin, but I’ll try out some of these now. Excellent post!
Have you read Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson? She manages to keep her protagonist’s gender hidden throughout the whole novel.
What I found interesting was that, as I read this as part of a book group, we were able to ask people what they perceived the protagonist’s gender to be. All the boys thought it was a boy, while all the girls thought it was a girl!
Glad you enjoyed!
I haven’t, but I certainly will. That must have been difficult to do, I’m guessing she used first person throughout? And I love how everyone identified the protagonist as their gender. I wonder if I’ll think that too. ;)
Yeah, it’s written in first person – though I’ve seen someone do this by using second person. I can’t remember where, but it was very hard to follow anyway.
Ooh, gender-neutral pronouns would really come in handy. I had to use ‘he/she’ in a policy document today and found the experience quite unsatisfactory.
On the topic of hidden gender – please don’t be offended – until recently, I had pictured you as an older male. The anonymity of the Internet is truly fascinating.
Really? What gave me away?
Your post on 30/08, where you said, “I know what you’re thinking: two posts in one day? This girl’s making us look bad!”.
Aaah, I thought it might have been the revelation that I like Eminem… This one’s way more obvious!
If you think this is bad, try being gender neutral in a Romance language like Italian or even Hindi or Arabic where I think even the pronoun you varies based on gender. Also German has three types of them I think: feminine, masculine and neutral.
I find it hard in French – but then, on the other hand, their possessive pronouns are gendered based on the object: “his table” would indicate that the table is male, not that the possessor is male. So in some ways this makes it easier.
Old English had masculine, feminine and neuter too.
Reblogged this on Musings of a Demented Little Boy and commented:
Gender sensitivity and the English language. I haven’t heard that the English language have gender-neutral pronouns after all. But I think this will be hard to reintegrate to modern usage.
This is a very enriching post. I never knew Spivak pronous existed! Your post really set me thinking what pronouns will be appropriate in instances like these.
I have never seriously considered gender language socialisation up till the point of my research (which I’m still doing) and am greatly surprised how we are all socialised into the language without even realising it.
Like bambusasolutions, I had thought you were an older male~ it’s interesting how the language we use gives ourselves away.
Finnish has no gendered pronouns. There is only “hän” which means “he” or “she” depending on the context. I remember when I started my English studies as a kid. It felt absurd to choose a different pronoun based on whether you were talking about a girl or a boy. Our teacher just said that in English it’s very important to always indicate the gender, and I was left wondering why it is so important?
Just a small example of how language shapes our thoughts! Finnish had given me the implicit idea that gender isn’t that important but to learn to speak English, I had to be careful about taking gender into account at all times. (Of course it’s not just the language that had created a comparatively gender neutral environment for me to grow up in, but I believe it must have contributed some.)
I have a friend from Finland who mentioned this to me once – I was going to include it in the article, but wasn’t sure the details and didn’t want to get it wrong!
Apparently Finnish is the odd one out in this. I think Persian might have a similar system of not having separate male and female pronouns… but if that’s so, doesn’t it kind of ruin my hypothesis that language is a factor in Scandinavian gender neutral social climate?
Besides, Swedish has “hon” for “she” and “han” for “he,” and Sweden is perhaps even more egalitarian than Finland, so there goes that theory down the drain.
I still like the idea that language shapes our thoughts – but apparently it’s quite hard to pinpoint how, exactly!
I’m intending to do a post about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis soon, which considers such issues, so kep an eye out!
Good old Sapir-Whorf! I’ll definitely try to keep an eye out for that one.
Reblogged this on inmyinternest and commented:
Would you use the pronoun “ey” instead of “he or she”?
I felt so proud of my language (Turkish) for it has got gender-neutral pronouns.
“ben”, “sen”, and “o” are the singular pronouns for I, you, and the gender-neutral version for both he/she.
I’m discovering that a lot of languages do now – maybe it’s because English grammar changed a lot with the adoption of a new alphabet all those years ago…
I have a DON QUIXOTE with leather covers printed in 1938 in London… First time I’ve the using of “ey” in that book. Now I am wondering what if I prefer using “ey” instead of he/she in my conversations with English speaking friends, will it make sense to them? Maybe we could bring this pronoun back to use by a little bit of effort…
Beginning to use Elverson’s pronouns right away!