A recent linguistic phenomenon is on the rise, and the movement is slowly spreading across the United States, particularly on college campuses. It involves the introduction of new gender pronouns to replace the binary forms of she, he, him, her, and their, variations typically used but that only represent those who consider themselves cisgender—people for whom their gender identity aligns with their biological sex.
The rise of alternate pronouns parallels an increased social awareness of individuals who identify as genderqueer—people whose gender falls outside of the gender binary, nonbinary—neither female nor male, masculine nor feminine—and those who are transgender—individuals who do not feel their gender matches their biological sex. (The topics of nonbinary and being transgender are discussed in more detail in Chapter 6.) The intent of introducing these new pronouns into the English language is to create an increased awareness of gender fluidity and inclusiveness.
Some of the pronouns that were originally introduced by the transgender community include zie and hir (Darr & Kibbey, 2016), but some consider these too feminine because of their association with the feminine version of she—sie—in German. However, these pronouns and their variations tend to be most commonly used as alternates to the binary pronouns. The variations of the zie pronoun include ze /zir /zirs /zerself. Darr and Kibbey provide additional examples of ne /nem /nir /nirs /nemself as gender neutral pronouns with the n at the beginning indicating neutral, and xe /xem /xyr /xyrs /xemself (p. 75). An example of how these replacements might be used is: “Carey wants to be zerself. Ze enjoys being free of labels.” Now is Carey male or female, nonbinary, or transgender? Does it matter?
Although use of these alternate pronouns is not yet mainstream, a more inclusive approach to pronouns is to ask a person in conversation what their preferred personal pronoun, or PPP, is. This might seem awkward at first, but it gives the inquirer the opportunity to avoid awkward corrections.