This tends to come up a fair bit because I often enjoy writing herm/futa characters. There are a few common methods of dealing with the pronouns for herm/futa characters.
Outside of the furry fandom futas are generally just referred to by female pronouns. I only rarely use this method and almost exclusively for characters who fully identify/perform as female.
Due in large part to Bernard Doove's Chakats the furry fandom has taken up the practice of using shi (pronounced like 'sure') and hir (pronounced like 'hair'). Unfortunately, since the way these words are written doesn't look much like the way they are supposed to be pronounced very few in the fandom do so correctly. Instead everyone speaks them as identical to she/her which makes them pointless when spoken. This word also places an automatic assumption of femininity on the herm which has lead to the peculiar creation of male-herm pronouns such as hy/hym and the spinoff fem-herm hyr.
I prefer a simpeler solution that is truely gender neutral. In 1965 a Minnesota secretary published A Transgender Pronoun for Business to help alleviate the annoyance of having to write he/her, he/she, him/her in all of their business paperwork. Elverson's solution was to simply take the existing gender neutral plural pronouns they/them/their and cut off the 'th' to make a singular form. This was to be used any time the gender of a person is either unknown or irrelevant. This system eliminates the plural/singular ambiguity of they/them/their and is easy to use in both speech and writing.
The Elverson system is also known to some as Spivak due to the old popular muck LamdaMu. Micheal Spivak used Elverson's pronouns for testing purposes and forgot to remove them. When players discovered the Spivak gender they loved it and requested he keep it in the game. Since then other genders have been added as well. But too many great women in history have their accomplishments stolen by men who just popularised their work, so I refer to it as the Elverson/Spivak set.
As a non-binary individual myself, I prefer to be referred to by the Elverson/Spivak set. I often use this set in my writing. Though I do have one world in which I use all of the pronouns I have thus far mentioned and each has specific rules for their use.
/end English Major rant
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5 years ago
03 Apr 2019 12:04 CEST
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