What would happen if someone was to write a story on here but not include a third gender option. What if they only have the option of male and female?
Would it get removed?
No.
HannahPS : “It’s worth having a look at LGBT+ authored info about neopronouns or Spivak pronouns to learn more”
Some authoritative links please. I have come across some of the pronouns before but have no idea when they are appropriate. It seems that each is implying a variation on gender neutrality, or they are simply interchangeable perhaps, and just chosen by the person as one they liked applied?
Anyway, a lot of my friends at the board game club choose zie, but at age 60 I feel awkward asking a 20 something to explain the different choices. I’d rather look it up and understand ore before I embarrass myself IRL.
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This may not be a very satisfying answer but it really varies a lot between person to person. I get it feeling awkward but when it comes to people you know, it’s really best to bite the bullet and check what’s right for them because there’s so much variation (I’m not an expert by any means).
If you’re asking “am I using your pronoun right in this sentence, how’s my grammar, I want to make sure I’m doing it right” in good faith, the person is likely to respond in a friendly way especially if you know them already. My advice would be to avoid saying to the person “I’m so confused”, “this is really hard”, “I’m going to get it wrong but…” (not that I think you would do that; just that those have been the common threads in difficult pronoun conversations I’ve had) because it makes it feel like the asker sees the person with a non-standard pronoun as a problem.
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Thanks Hannah. I’m going to have to bite the bullet I guess. I might start by asking if everyone could write their name tags a little larger for those of us that have trouble with reading small text. LOL
Its an interesting cultural situation. In “olden times” people matched the outside appearance of others to one of the two binaries, reducing the cognitive and social load on how to address people. But of course it was never really that simple, like the difference between Mrs and Miss, depending on female appearance and the presence of a wedding ring. Even so it was all rigged so that the onlooker could take cues and determine the appropriate form of address without asking.
Now those visual cues are exposed as problematic assumptions, and there is no way around engaging a person as to how they wish to be referenced. In at least one sci fi novel I have read, society does away with gendered pronouns all together, which seems like a loss of richness to me but also probably a reduction in complexity all around.
There are languages that exist on Earth right now without gendered pronouns.
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In language, this may not be a bad thing. We can talk about richness and beautiful complexity all day, but when it starts to be a problem, I think it is better to help people understand and get along with each other than to grasp at intangible jewels in the crown of society.
(I am perhaps still somewhat aggravated by the fact that as a child, I was forced to try to and failed to become literate in a language comprising thousands of logograms simply because it was the language my ancestors spoke. I was already a master of this other language with a comparatively simple twenty-six letter alphabet, and it was what I actually used all the time!)
Yes. In nepalese 3rd person singular pronoun is ऊ, उसले pronounced as Ooo and oosle. Although the verb is gendered but very less people yse it now. English also probably should have a common 3rd person singular pronoun.
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It does, but not one with animacy.
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Oh certainly. Even in nepali, “Ooo”, is only used for people. त्यो, त्यसलाई (Tyo, Tyeslai) is used for others i.e. like “it” is used in English.
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I hope that eventually we’ll settle on a single animate-neuter pronoun in English. I think there will be a lot more respect for nonbinary identities when we have a standardized way of talking about people who have them that doesn’t require referring to specific individuals in the grammatical plural or memorizing multiple sets of neopronouns.
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I come from the south and in an area which non-binary people are rare and frowned upon. I remember when I was little and my grandparents took me to Wendy’s and after I got done ordering I said thank you and then looked at my pawpaw and said do I say sir or ma’am? I was like six years old but I remember that always and kinda feel bad because that had to have sucked for them.
An animate neuter singular pronoun in English would be great – but a shift in the usage of singular “they” is I suspect the likeliest outcome. It’s not as if it’s a big or radically modern shift; as often noted, singular they goes back to Shakespeare and beyond.
I think the causality is probably going to work the other way round. If our societies normalize respect for nonbinary people, then we’ll increasingly find using singular they and neopronouns easier. And without that respect, we wouldn’t see a consensus take shape around a singular non-gendered pronoun, whether it’s a borrowing from Nepali (bhetera khushi lagyo, Keto-bhai) or a preferred English neopronoun.
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@AletheiaKnights @Havenstone
Not English speaker here:
How do you distinguish beetween non binary singular “they” and plural “they”?
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Context. It can be tricky.
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I noticed, especially since it would be “they are/do” instead of “they is/does”
Plural pronouns do add complexity to writing, yes, though when the game is in first or second person tense, it’s actually not that often you have to write about the MC in third person. It can be very easily avoided.
As for reading comprehension, I have found, after considering it for years both as a writer and a reader (who is not a native english speaker), that it’s not really that difficult, if you just consciously spend a little time getting use to it.
It’s about the same as when you have a scene with multiple ‘he’ or ‘she’, and need to make it clear which of them you are referring to.
Now, i did try writing a game where everyone used they/them pronouns in the first chapter, and that got quite confusing. And let me to making a lot of mistakes when I changed a sentence from using ‘they’ to using their name, or a descriptor, since I always forgot to change the version of the verb (something we don’t have in my native language).
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As do the other changes to a heteronormative and cisnormative society that are involved in not excluding LGBTQIA people. 
It took plenty of language and mindset work to shift away from the default assumption that couples are opposite-sex. We’re still working on the idea that not everyone wants sex (and that that’s OK).
I agree that on a scale of challenge, expanding the use of singular “they” is a little more work than, say, making more consistent use of neutral language like partner, spouse, sibling, or parent. But of course there are plenty of people who find it hard work to use those terms, too; it’ll be a long time before they take on the widely recognized emotional resonance of gendered terms like mother, sister, or wife.
I’m still terribly unreliable myself when it comes to unintentionally misgendering people in conversation. And I’m certainly still getting used to the ambiguities and need for additional contextual nudges that come with writing in singular they. (As I am with ace characters and others outside my immediate sphere of familiarity.)
But that’s my problem, and it’s my responsibility to work on it and minimize the hurt I do along the way. Meanwhile, I want to be careful not to write as if our respect for NB people should be in any way contingent on their magically turning Engilsh into something it isn’t. There isn’t a single perfect option in the language we’ve inherited. Finding out which of the (relatively limited) set of imperfect options someone would like me to use for them isn’t an unreasonable demand.
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Thanks dai. tapailai pani Nepali aune rahexa, garva lagyo. 
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Purey audaina, tara dhereyjaso bujhxu. Ma sano huda, yahaa hurkeko; ra ahile Lalitpurma basdey xu, mero budhiko PhDko lagi. (Uha Nepalko jadibuti ko barema padhnuhunxa, bisheshgari titepati ra aru “artemisia” prajatiharu.)
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