During AMC 2004, I had a discussion with someone from the NewStandard, and we had a discussion about gender-less pronouns. I inquired whether or not they used genderless pronouns in their stories, and ey said no, that they just didn’t have a set of formal rules to rule over this different type of pronoun usage. Asking whether I had something formally written about the topic, I felt bad because I had this whole system of things in my head and nothing on paper to help those individuals that wish to be politically correct in all of their writing. As most know, I’m transgender – genderqueer, specifically and it just irks me when I hear people say “James…he”. Beyond that, I feel that there is too much of a tendency in life, most notably zine culture, to ascribe a certain set of values and actions to someone just at the drop of a “he” or “she”. When I write a zine review, I choose to let the material of the zine come though, instead of dropping loaded terms that presume a certain way of life. The lack of gender in my reviews also combats those sexist individuals that will only read or purchase materials that are written by bio-girls.

I do not make any pretense for the originality of my ideas, but I feel as if these are the most politically correct and accurate guidelines for normal discussion, writing, and everyday chatting. In removing the power that the societal construct of the binary male-female gender has over all minds, a vital step is made against the patriarchy that has installed the system. The great thing about the gender-free pronoun system is that it is incredibly simple to understand and even easier to incorporate into daily life. While it will take a few extra seconds to explain the different sounding pronouns to the un-initiated, it is truly worth it. Surprisingly enough, it was not a grammarian to come up with this system, but rather a mathematician, Michael Spivak. Most of the subsequent work in gender-free pronouns have been enacted by individuals in the “hard” sciences.

In traditional grammar, He or She would do an action. Spivak’s system would have it be Ey doing an action.” He screws the pooch” would be replaced by “Ey screws the pooch”. “James punched him/her” would be replaced by “James punched em”. In a possessive sense, “his/her dog” would be replaced by “eir dog”. “I am completely his/hers” would be “I am completely eirs”. Finally, a reflexive pronoun-replacement for “He shot the friend himself” would be “Ey shot the friend eirself”. There are other semi-accepted sets of pronouns, including sie and hir, but it would make sense if the p.c. community would latch onto one specific set of gender-free pronouns and increase the common usage, instead of splitting usage among two other sets.

Aside from the dilution problem, hir sounds too aurally similar to her to do much besides confuse individuals. Sie has no words in English language similar enough to do comparisons. Ey/Em/Eir is created by cutting off the “th” in a number of plural pronouns and imbuing them with a singular force, and most people that are told that can intuitively recreate the Spivak system by just using common sense. If one is not comfortable with the gender-less pronoun system, just using proper names in place of pronouns provides an adequate replacement. By using someone’s proper name, there is no possible way to incorrectly label an individual.

At some point, there has to be some use of descriptors that will be full of gender meaning to individuals socialized into society. If I say “James listens to music”, one will immediately conjure up the image of a male listening to music, with whatever accoutrements on the person. One can go farther and navigate the choppy waters of non-specific descriptors, like “The punk listens to music”, but depending on one’s socialization, the image brought to mind might solidly consist of a male listened to music. While I would contend that there are very few words in the English language that do not hold any weight of gender, moving to strike down the most obvious signposts of gender in gendered pronouns is a step in the right direction that surprisingly does not prove too terribly hard to incorporate into daily life.

Education about these gender-free pronouns are a must for any individual that calls their self a queer activist, a feminist, or politically correct. I must admit, even I was incorrectly using some of these pronouns before researching this piece , but that has to do more with my poor grasp on English grammar than my lack of knowledge on the subject. Even if individuals are railroaded into using gendered pronouns in academic papers or newspaper pieces, chances are that genderless pronouns may come into those slow-moving fields after it becomes evident that masses of people are using them.