my latest windmill to tilt at

[rone]

English already has perfectly useful gender-neutral pronouns: it, its. Use them. Do not use they, them for singular objects. Do not use the abhorrent, artificial 'hir', 'zie', 'blim', 'gur', or whatever. Yes, people can be called 'it'. Deal with it.

Comments

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

Greg Egan used ve/ver/vis in a couple of science-fiction novels that had many genderless individuals in them.

This is perhaps of interest with inference to the very unusual case you mention: 'science fiction novels with many genderless individuals'. But in practice there are very few genderless individuals that one encounters. When you are writing instructions for equipment to be used by men or women, for instance, you do not assume that your audience is genderless.

As a clinical neurologist I am occasionally called on to visit the neonatal ward to evaluate newborns with developmental abnormalities. Some of these individuals, such as they are, possess no immediately identifiable gender. I can tell you that ve/ver/vis is not used in this case to refer to the baby in question. Rather, FISH chromosomal analysis is obtained on an emergency basis, and if this is also ambiguous, a gender is bestowed upon the child by joint parental/medical decree.

The moral: people don't like the genderless state or anything that presumes it. Trying to modify the language to incorporate this concept, then, is a silly idea. Or to quote Montaigne, "those who would combat usage with grammar make fools of themselves."

I note that Ron has removed his injunction that commenters to his LJ may not followup unless they are mocking him as strongly as possible, so I will stop here.