Genderless Pronouns – Ey, Em, and Eir

Martha Brockenbrough wrote a column Do You Have a Cow About He/She/It? about one of my pet peeves: the use of gendered pronouns when it doesn’t make sense. I, too, have written about the problem on this very site (Trying To Make English Easier) which I quote below:

Sociologically, we came of age in the late twentieth century in regards to the general equality between our two genders. Unfortunately, the language hasn’t quite caught up. Too often, when writing about individuals in a gender-neutral setting, you have to pick one set of gender pronouns, alternate between the sets, or somehow combine them (”his or hers”, “s/he”, etc.).

In the past, the way around over-reliance of masculine pronouns has been to use the word, “one”. Over time, it has come to be so over-used and so stodgy that one [hee] really doesn’t want to have to stoop to that level. More recently, some people have resorted to the gender-neutral “they/them/their” as a substitute. My objection is that these are plural pronouns unsuitable for referring to a generic and singular “one”.

My solution is to adapt “they/them/their” to a singular form, “ey/em/eir”. “Ey” = “he/she”, “em” = “him/her”, and “eir” = “his/hers”. (The careful reader will note that I simply dropped the “th”s from they/them/their.) There are three other similar systems out there, but all seem to carry with them some sort of subtle gender bias. I like to think that mine avoids that. PLUS, since I had a gender-less species in my latest novel, I used this combination throughout the book. It was actually pretty easy to with for either writing or reading. Personally, I think this is a winner.

(For those who worry about such things, ey is pronounced as “ay”, em as “em”, and eir as “air” or “err”.)

As I mentioned in the post, I’ve used it throughout a fairly lengthy novel I started writing in June 2005 and finished the next spring (Que Sera Serees) without too much problem other than it being new. Here are some brief excerpts (sorry about the awkward names, it’s science fiction, doncha know):

Ey’d come to enjoy eir life, even when filled with pain and the crushing responsibility of leadership. Though it wasn’t in em to mourn the life that ey wouldn’t get to live, that melancholy not being a part of Ligrosian psyche, ey wasn’t going to stop fighting for the life ey still owned.

Verina had already shifted into eir leadership mindset. “That’s really not the point. Ey’s letting emself be a symbol that things can return close to normal, that Earth will be nothing except a distraction after I’m out of the way. I know ey really believes it and may not even see how badly ey’s being manipulated.”

“Where did ey manage to get all of this?” Verina asked Elekin.

“Ey’s the sib to the maetor. Eir assistants sent messages to every cell we know of, and the
supplies have been coming ever since.”

Verina put it in eir middle mouth and immediately a cooing emerged from eir bottom maw as ey said with eir top, “I could cry, that’s so good.”

“I can see that, you’re starting to redden,” Elekin said, pointing to the involuntary colorshifting patches around eir friend’s eyes, prompting Verina to look away. “Can I box some up for you?”

As you can see, new but not too different. Honestly, if I can write it for over 100,000 words, reading it should be a cinch. Though new, it doesn’t get in the way. Being that all you do is take the “th” off of the they/them/their pronouns, their usage becomes pretty obvious.

Before I wrote the book, I did a lot of research on what others had done before in the pursuit of gender-neutral pronouns. Sadly, I noticed a consistent, if subtle, bias in many of the options that seemed to shade slightly toward one gender or the other. Plus, the various forms quickly got just as confusing as trying to learn a foreign language. In the end, I just sat down and tried to work out a system that wouldn’t drive me completely insane as I was writing. The result was ey/em/eir. Sure, I had a cheat sheet written up just in case I had trouble, but I really didn’t need it. This conceit of just dropping the “th” served me pretty well.

It’s very likely that a lot of people will stick with the old way. That’s fine. We all have to get used to these sorts of changes, and old habits are hard to break. But given a couple of generations, things do change. Witness “Ms”. It just got thrown at us in the 1970s, but it made so much sense that its use now (arguably) predominates. No longer do we need to know if the female we are writing to or about is married or not. (Personally, I’d like a gender neutral title, but I mentioned that, too, in my earlier blog.)

English changes all the time. Often its due to popular culture or the youth wanting to put their stamp on it. Our standard pronoun structure has served us well, but it does have weaknesses. Second-person plural, for example. Most of us who have spent much time at all in the lower half of the contiguous states pretty much resort to “y’all” to fill that gap. It’s time that we fill the gap of not having a non-gendered third-person singular pronoun group. Whether in academic writing, or just because we want to be inclusively generic, English is in desperate, if not dire need of an infusion of these new words (not that I’m overstating my case or anything ). Ey/em/eir fit the bill easily.

Though I don’t usually press for an issue, I’m strongly encouraging y’all to link to this blog and comment on this issue wherever you can. It’s time for our linguistic nightmare to end. It’s not up to the grammarians or academics to decide this. It’s up to us, the people, to change the language to our benefit. As Ms Brockenbrough’s column shows, I’m not the only one who thinks we need a change.  The time is now. We can do it. You have nothing to lose except your pretension.