Our Desperate, 250-Year-Long Search for a Gender-Neutral Pronoun
The 1970s saw the next wave of pronoun debates—not coincidentally, in the wake of a second women’s movement. There was a volley of new pronouns, despite the fact that none of the 19th-century ones had gotten anywhere. By the end of the 1970s over eighty new gender-neutral pronouns had been coughed up, including en, thon, hir, hesh, hizer, hirm, sheehy, and sap. As well, the currently fashionable “she” was proposed around this time.
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Source:
The Awl
Published: Jan 8, 2011
Length: 11 minutes (2,835 words)