Has anyone else talked yet about alternatives to the word "neopronouns." What about ancient pronouns. What about ancestral pronouns. What about non-trinary pronouns (outside they/she/he) or non-quaternary pronouns (outside it/they/she/he). What about exobinary pronouns (also outside coinages meant to combine she+he, such as sie/hir)
I mean, for English alone, the damn timescale goes back nigh the start of the language. Here's some time-sourced epicene/neuter/gender-neutral pronouns:
1970s: xe, co, ve, per, ey
1890: e (not spivak, which was 1990)
1300s: a (not the indefinite article, an actual third-person pronoun)
from Etymonline, an excellent linguistic source for etymologies:
The paradigm in Old English was:
MASCULINE SINGULAR: he (nominative), hine (accusative), his (genitive), him (dative);
FEMININE SINGULAR: heo, hio (nom.), hie, hi (acc.), hire (gen. and dat.);
NEUTER SINGULAR: hit (nom. and acc.), his (gen.), him (dat.);
PLURAL: (all genders) hie, hi (nom. and acc.), hira, heora (gen.), him, heom (dat.)
and let's remember the historical periods of English:
Old English circa 500-1100 C.E. - classics point of reference Beowulf
Middle English circa 1100-1500 C.E. - classics point of reference Chaucer
Early Modern English circa 1500-1800 C.E. - classics point of reference Shakespeare
Late Modern English circa 1800-today C.E. - classics point of reference Alcott (who stated "I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body," see page 41 at this link)
Like, I get that we don't want to say "nonbinary pronouns" because nonbinary can also be a gender identity and let's not perpetuate pronoun = gender; maybe that problem extends to saying exobinary pronouns. I get that epicene and neuter and gender-neutral all also have various gender implications.
I hate the argument that singular they is the oldest in use, and thus most acceptable / least deviant / gets an exception from the category of "neo."
You can certainly hold the opinion it's unimportant, semantic, perhaps like -misia vs -phobia; we've established the word homophobia, bad faith actors will always nitpick. Fair enough. I would respond that we're largely practiced at breaking down arguments about "phobia = fear" and citing historical use. How many people can counter the common argument "neo = newfangled = contemporary (= fleeting)" with facts beyond "Chaucer used singular they"?
I try very hard to avoid saying "neopronouns" and to ask/tell people I do not consider my pronouns to be neopronouns, please don't describe them as such when specifically talking about me. It is rarely noticed even when I am explicit.
It's not that the word can't be unpacked and contextualized and used with understanding. But... it consistently isn't. Allyship is simple "neopronouns are valid!" Yes, no matter how recently coined. Who is that convincing or affirming, when you end there and do nothing to tie us to the community history of evolving language like and including pronouns?
(Aside, have we really settled on "user"? So-and-so is a ⭐️-pronoun user? Uses ⭐️ pronouns? Surely it's the people saying the pronouns to refer to So-and-so who are doing the using. It feels so "identifies as [gender]." Whatever happened to has ⭐️ pronouns? To pronouns are ⭐️?)
dededos
2087
annaxmalina
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
jacobvanloon
blakekathryn
