My pronouns are:
ze/hir
(Neopronoun “ze/hir”)
Example usage in sentences:
Table:
Examples from cultural texts:
Neopronoun “ze/hir” (ze/hir)
Mari Cohen – Beyond the Gender Binary: Alternatives to “boy” and “girl” (The Communicator) , 2011
- “Growing up, Williams always just thought of hirself as a tomboy. Ze definitely was “not your typical stereotype of a little girl,” but still identified as a girl.
Then, the summer after Williams’s sophomore year, hir friend mentioned the term genderqueer in a conversation. Though Williams had heard the term in passing before, ze wasn’t really sure exactly what it meant. After the conversation, Williams Googled “genderqueer”, not knowing that the search results would completely change hir identity.”
- “Growing up, Williams always just thought of hirself as a tomboy. Ze definitely was “not your typical stereotype of a little girl,” but still identified as a girl.
Levi C. R. Hord – Bucking the Linguistic Binary: Gender Neutral Language in English, Swedish, French, and German (Proceedings of Western Interdisciplinary Student Symposium on Language Research, Iss. 1, Vol. 3) , 2016
- “Speaking from hir unique gender position, Feinberg highlighted what ze called a “crisis of language” (Owen 1996) which often results in clumsy dual constructions such as s/he, and which would be solved by abandoning binary language altogether in favour of specific language to suit complex gender identities. (p. 6)”
Meredith Broussard – When Binary Code Won’t Accommodate Nonbinary People (Slate) , 2019 ; Zemí Yukiyú Atabey's pronouns are ze/zem.
- “That aesthetic, however, dates to the very earliest era of computing. It’s not inclusive. It is specifically exclusionary to someone like Zemí Yukiyú Atabey, an NYU graduate student who identifies as genderqueer and nonbinary. Atabey’s pronouns are ze (“Where is ze?”)/zem (“I don’t have the tickets. I gave them to zem.”). “As a nonbinary person, there is no option most of the time,” ze says of entering personal information in databases. “There’s only male or female, which doesn’t fit my reality or identity.” Microsoft Word, the program I used to compose this story, marked all of Atabey’s pronouns with the red squiggly underline. Meaning: The people at Microsoft who wrote Word do not recognize Atabey’s pronouns as acceptable English words, even though the genderqueer community has been suggesting the use of ze and hir as pronouns for at least 20 years.”
Nick Romano – Madagascar animated series welcomes a nonbinary character in Pride episode sneak peek (Entertainment Weekly) , 2021
- “Ezra Menas couldn't identify with a character on screen until hir mid-20s. The actor from Broadway's Jagged Little Pill and the upcoming West Side Story movie — who identifies as nonbinary and uses zie/hir/they pronouns — saw actor Elliot Fletcher, a trans man, portray Aaron on an episode of The Fosters. It was "real, real late in my life," Menas tells EW. Before that moment, zie would project hir experience onto characters "always hoping for some kind of narrative to come through."”
- “Thinking back to how little queer representation Menas saw on screen as a kid, they believe a character like Odee would've made hir younger self feel less alone.”
Denise Petski – ‘Another Life’: Eight Cast In Netflix Sci-Fi Drama Series (Deadline) , 2018
- “Zayn is the ship’s medic, and since in the future medicine is a whole lot more holistic than it is now, ze is also the ship’s shrink. Ze is extremely logical, intuitive, and curious. As chief medic, ze must confront hir worst fears of losing those people ze’s grown closest to.”
Charlie Jane Andrews – Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy (in: Transcendent 2: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction) , 2017 ; uses the spelling "sie" instead of "ze"
- “Joconda was sort of the leader here. Sie sometimes had a beard and sometimes a smooth round face covered with perfect bright makeup. Hir eyes were as gray as the sea and just as unpredictable.”
K. A. Cook – The Differently Animated and Queer Society (A short story from a collection called “Crooked Words” by K. A. Cook) , 2013
- “Pat couldn’t help a slight frown as ze got out of hir car. It wasn’t likely that someone was going to try and mug a zombie, but even so, the neighbourhood didn’t seem all that prosperous. There weren’t even too many cars around, just one down the other end of the street and a rusty bike chained to a light post.
Maybe ze shouldn’t have waited until ze’d be the last to arrive. What if everyone had come, decided that nobody was coming, and gone home already? What if ze was the only one to come at all?” - “This will be fine, Pat told hirself, in what felt like a ridiculous attempt to bolster hir courage. If ze had summoned up the courage for hir last job interview—and Pat thought ze would have gotten it despite being undead if ze felt remotely inclined to try and pass, something that annoyed hir job seeker support officer no end—then ze could summon up the courage to do this. This should be easier than a job interview!”
- “Pat couldn’t help a slight frown as ze got out of hir car. It wasn’t likely that someone was going to try and mug a zombie, but even so, the neighbourhood didn’t seem all that prosperous. There weren’t even too many cars around, just one down the other end of the street and a rusty bike chained to a light post.
Seth Dickinson – Sekhmet Hunts the Dying Gnosis: A Computation (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #143) , 2014 ; Only the nominative form is used.
- “Ze is a slender sinuous person, black as carbon fiber, seated perfectly erect. Eyes a little luminous in the twilight of Set’s half-drowned tomb, as if they are filled with jellyfish.”
- ““I have come to speak to you,” ze says. “My name is Coeus.””
Chayanika Shah, Raj Merchant, Shals Mahajan – No Outlaws in the Gender Galaxy, 2015
- “One respondent with an intersex variation said that ze thought of hirself as a woman, but was unsure. While ze would have liked to identify as 'woman' due to societal scripts around what male or female bodies should look like, ze did not allow hirself to call hirself a woman.”
Susan Stryker, Stephen Whittle – Preface to a reprint of Leslie Feinberg's pamphlet in “The Transgender Studies Reader”, 2006
- “Leslie Feinberg, whose particular style of being transgender helped non-gender-specific pronouns like “s/he” and “hir” achieve a limited popularity over the past decade, must be considered a founding figure of contemporary transgender studies. Hir influential pamphlet, reproduced below, took an older (and apolitical) term — transgender — and infused it with a radical new meaning. (p. 205)”
- “Though hir particular theory of history has not attracted widespread support in transgender communities, hir work has gained a devoted and grateful following for the powerful way it calls upon transgender people to recover their historical legacy, and to harness that knowledge to the current struggle for a more just society. (p. 205)”
What's the deal with pronouns?
Pronouns are those words that we use instead of calling someone by their name every time we mention them. Most people use “he/him” and “she/her”, so we automatically assume which one to call them based on someone's looks. But it's actually not that simple…
Gender is complicated. Some people “don't look like” their gender. Some prefer being called in a different way from what you'd assume. Some people don't fit into the boxes of “male” or “female” and prefer more neutral language.
This tool lets you share a link to your pronouns, with example sentences, so that you can show people how you like to be called.
Why does it matter? Because of simple human decency. You wouldn't call Ashley “Samantha” just because you like that name more or because “she looks like a Samantha to you”. Or even if she does have the name “Samantha” in her birth certificate but she absolutely hates it and prefers to use “Ashley”. And it's the exact same story with pronouns – if you don't want to be rude towards someone, please address them properly. The only difference is that we usually know names, but not pronouns. We introduce ourselves with a name, but not pronouns. Let's change that!