Gender Neutral Pronoun

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Michael from Pensacola Farta. How are y’all doing today?

Super, Michael.

Doing well. Welcome to the program.

What’s up?

I have got a question about how do words become and how to create a word, basically.

I used to go to college about four years, and this has been bugging me ever since I was in college.

And they would have you write he slash she, because there is no way to do a singular.

And I’m wanting to know why you can’t take the vowel that is common to those two and capitalize it and make a capital E equal E slash sheet.

Okay, let’s hear an example of what that would sound like, Michael.

And E went to the store to buy coffee.

-huh, and then the barista behind the counter gave it to M?

The person.

I mean, do you have an objective case for this, too?

Well, the concept is in writing, and especially in the paperwork in schools.

You’re constantly typing out when you need to speak of an individual to hand it to just one person.

But it’s not so much that it’s a gender-specific.

That you would not refer to it as just male or just female, but that you would say the person.

And now that we have all of these E-representing electronics, which represent everybody, but to capitalize it.

A capital I represents I.

-huh.

A A represents object, A apple.

But when we have to give it to an individual without saying they, because it’s not plural, it’s singular.

To represent it without having to he slash she it.

Mm—

Okay, so did you use E in the papers that you turned into your professors?

Tried it.

Tried it?

How’d it go?

They didn’t necessarily care for it.

But it was easy to do a find and replace to punch them all in there.

So I used to type it that way and then let the computer do the work of replacing them.

What did your professors say?

They said, that’s not a word yet.

And said, you know, if it becomes to be, then you can use it.

But at the moment, you must put he slash she.

I was like, but I put a little note that this is what this represents and notated it that in the future of the paragraph, this would be what it was replaced by.

They just didn’t care for it, maybe because it was a communications degree and they won’t get the way they won’t.

Yeah, I can see how that might be a problem.

Well, that is creative, Michael.

And I appreciate your trying to come up with what they call an epicene pronoun, which is a genderless pronoun.

And do you know what? That has been tried before.

That very E, I’m sure.

That capital E.

There was a psychologist at UCLA in the 1980s who was promoting that in part because there had been psychological research showing that when people read sentences that had he for the generic pronoun, they tended to think of a male person.

And so he was trying to change that by proposing that we use E and I think M.

And the fact is that people have been trying to do this for centuries now.

And they’ve proposed all kinds of different things, and it just hasn’t caught on.

Well, sometimes I just wish I could spin the wheel, buy a valve, and say this is what it is, you know?

So your question when you started out was how can you spread this?

And, Michael, the only answer is keep on using it, and maybe other people will too.

I hear you, and every now and then in cards and stuff I’m trying to convince people to try it.

But I haven’t found anyone brave enough that had a need for it yet.

All right. Well, good luck with your mission.

Thank you all, and I love the show.

You all have a great week.

Great.

Our pleasure. Bye-bye, Michael.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

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