Unsure how to refer to someone who is gender neutral? Here’s our top six appropriate pronouns and examples of how you would use them:
- HEN: used in Sweden
- Herm or they: in place of him or her
- Ne/nem/nir/nirs/nemself (Ne went to get nir hair cut)
- Spivak: Ey/em/eir/eirs/eirself (Ey likes to drink coffee when eir workload is tiring)
- Ze/zir/zir/zirs/zirself (I told zir that ze should stop giving zirself such a hard time)
- Xe/xem/xyr/xyrs/xemself (The sunglasses I’d found were xyrs so I gave them back to xem)
Fun fact: Futurama, a cartoon programme, used the pronoun Shklee to refer to a gender-neutral alien!
First published in issue 8 of We Are Family magazine alongside an article by Del LaGrace Volcano on genderqueer parenting. To order a copy click here
