Pronoun for an asexual humanoid being?

Nah Bruh, I've been very busy with work and writing. I still hop on here to throw a critique up or a suggestion when I have the time.

 

What about if you want to write in English?

Xe sounds like Sci-Fi.
The rest sound German, Chinese, etc.

If you say Zhe is English, I'd send you back to school lol.
Same with Ze, Zir, like, what are you trying to pull here? - Those aren't English... Those aren't even words...

 

Given the liberties you take with the language yourself, it seems peculiar that you're trying to be a stickler for the view of English as a non-evolving language...

 

I'm up for broken English, but, not inventing alien words; the author should listen to the reader, not dictate a bunch of new words to the reader, and if the reader wants new words, then that's not every reader but a difficult reader.

 

Xe is actually currency exachange.

Sklim, Skler, Skleeple, sounds like some drunken Rick & Morty Sci-Fi thing, as does Zhe and Zher.

 

My T friends in my LGBT friends manifest this issue in Facebook posts they share...
and it's not even this issue, but issues of gender stereotypes in general.
They might take issue with the word it, because it's not the gender they've identified with.

Asexual people might either feel more like one gender than the other.

Assexual creatures of fiction like Godzilla from that 1998 movie Godzilla, don't care if you say it.

 

But every word was at one point a made up, newly invented, alien word. If you call someone a nerd, you're using a word invented by Dr. Seuss as a bit of nonsensical rhyming. The biggest difference between it and words like skler and skleeple are public acceptance of it as an acceptable term. New words should be invented, or at the very least adopted, especially when there's a distinct lack of wording in a language to effectively express a concept, idea, or thing. You know, basically the whole reason for language to begin with. If you follow your reasoning to it's logical conclusion, you really should be upset that we don't still communicate wholly using awkward grunts and rude hand gestures.

 

I take your meaning, but in reality, every word I'm typing right now was made up at some point. All words are made up, and some sound strange before you get used to them. In the context of a story with characters who use new pronouns, the reader would likely get used to it quickly. Think of all the books you've read with far more fantastical concepts or terminology than gender-neutrality. This happens in the real world too. "Blog" and "blogging" are the goofiest sounding words invented in the last century, but we all got used to them. I think the least jarring to the ear and the most English sounding option is the first one on the list, "E". You mostly just drop the "h/sh" from he/she that determines gender and drop the "th" from the singular "them' and 'their" so as not to confuse singular with plural.

Try these out and see how easy they are to read, and how (semi)natural it starts to sound:

E (Spivak, 1983) E is laughing - I called Em - Eir eyes gleam - That is Eirs - E likes Emself (keep "they", "them" and "themselves" for plural. They're already neutral.)

“E allowed emself to be swayed by eir conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” ― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“E was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. E was Lola in slacks. E was Dolly at school. E was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms e was always Lolita.” Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“You think because e doesn’t love you that you are worthless. You think that because e doesn’t want you anymore that e is right — that eir judgement and opinion of you are correct. If e throws you out, then you are garbage. You think e belongs to you because you want to belong to em. Don’t. It’s a bad word, ‘belong.’ Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn’t be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can’t even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? Eir head. The clouds never cover the head. Eir head pokes through, because the clouds let em; they don’t wrap em up. They let em keep eir head up high, free, with nothing to hide em or bind em. You can’t own a human being. You can’t lose what you don’t own. Suppose you did own em. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don’t, do you? And neither does e. You’re turning over your whole life to em. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to em, then why should it mean any more to em? E can’t value you more than you value yourself.” – Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“I wanted so badly to lie down next to em on the couch, to wrap my arms around em and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and e had a [mate] and I was gawky and e was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and e was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and e was hurricane.” ― John Green, Looking for Alaska

"E got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of em going, though e looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after em: the last time e saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot. ― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

 

I think a big part of the issue is that it's not just a random word, like 'nerd', but a pronoun. That's what we use to identify gender (among other things). The notion that gender might be a social construct and that there could be more than two is very young compared to the thousands of years of man and woman. It's not at all like inventing some new word or changing an existing word's meaning, because the whole gender-thing is caught up in it (which is why there's such a large debate about it in the first place).

Completely new words get accepted because basically the whole population at some point agrees that it's a good word for its intended use (like 'blog'). There is no consensus at all about the whole trans-issue (if it's alright to call it that). There are dozens of pronouns floating around, lots of them trying to achieve the same thing (just look at some of the lists in this thread), and not even in the LGBT-community (if there is such a thing as one monolithic community) itself will you notice any sort of agreement on the issue.

I have two friends (one I've known since childhood, the other I met a few years ago), one of them went from boy to girl, the other one the other way around. I've seen them talk about this topic for a good two hours without getting anywhere. Even just two people can't agree on what's best. Expecting the whole world (and I'm pretty sure there's no debate such as this in the world of Islam to begin with) to somehow reach a satisfying solution in the matter in the near future is delusional, in my opinion. This will take a very long time, and it won't help if nations jump in to hammer the issue down by legislation ('Call those guys this pronoun from now on, or else...!').

On a personal level, I have no problem to call someone whatever they want. If they tell me why I have to pick a different pronoun for them and their reasoning sounds good to me, I'll be the first one to agree. I just don't see that happening as soon as we talk about major parts of the population.

And to get back to the topic of writing: As long as we (as in: at least almost every human being in the Western world) can't come up with a solution to the problems I mentioned, I would stick to he/she and, in cases such as robots/androids, it. This would be a relatively 'safe' way to write the story too. What if whatever pronoun you settle on suddenly causes major controversy again in a few years? Your story would suddenly be labeled as some offensive piece of trash. It's just all very shaky and fragile right now...

 

I think you've nailed the issue that caused me to start this thread. Yeah. There doesn't seem to be a 'right' way to do this at the moment. My friend who is writing the book in question has come up with a workaround. We'll see how this all plays out, if we live long enough!

 

Sorry if has been mentioned before, didn't read the entire thread. These beings remind me of angels. We humans refer to an angel as "he". Though we don't know. Maybe they're all shes.
We could restart that long debate about the gender of angels but it has proven a waste of time. I did vote for "they/them" but then you showed us the problem and I get it.
Still, I think you and your friend are overthinking this. Humans will refer to these beings as "he" or "they". Because that's what we do with angels. And demons, if you think about it. To avoid the repetition of them your friend can refer to them as "beings". Then the beings brought Christmas lights and lighted them. At some point there will be a repetition of "them" and "beings" but that can only be avoided by naming them. Like Vulcans.
It doesn't annoy me if they are always referred to as "beings". If the narrator is talking about UFOs and wants to be accurate he* won't be calling them anything else than UFOs.

*He the narrator. We can't escape this, really. So I think you're overthinking it.

 

It may be a useful idea to play this in reverse from the perspective of the creature referring to a human as “hume” (eg. ‘Hume said hume didn’t like the look of it.’)

Then take the name of the species of creature, say ... Poltond and simply cut it down and use either “Pol” or “Tond” as a pronoun. This would make some sense because it is likely they won’t really see such a distinction between male and female humans anymore than we can tell a female cat from a male cat. It would make sense to keep it to one syllable though to be realistic.

 

Noted science fiction author Steve Perry has started using "zhe" on Facebook. I can't remember if it's his creation or if he adopted it from someone else, but it reads well.

JD