(aka, Taking our genitalia off the table)
A previous post (‘Novel Words – fictional pronouns for the actual future.’ *) explored the concept of a non-gendered singular pronoun, ‘e’, to supplement our familiar ‘he’ and ‘she.’ Fortuitously, a recent article on the perils of AI suggested another way to frame the case.
With ‘he’ and ‘she’ as our English language’s only widely-accepted singular pronouns (‘they’ carrying the stain of wokeness upon its back in addition to its confusion with the plural and ‘it’ being generally received as an insult whether or not intended as such), alongside the predominant conversational practice of using gender terms (‘man’ and ‘woman’) as if they were synonymous with the bio-sexual (‘male‘ and ‘female’), any inquisitive consideration of gender is pre-emptively shipwrecked on the issue of whether each particular individual carries around a penis or a vagina.
Thus, perhaps the simplest and most cogent reason to encourage the use of a gender free singular pronoun such as ‘e’: it enables us to discuss gender issues without the need to pin-down (ouch!) anyone’s genitalia.
P. S.: E Unum Pluribus is a new speculative fiction with its own take on where the current culture wars may be leading our nation, and how even tragic events can spawn new possibilities for the future. The novel is currently being serialized on this site and you can be among the first to read its opening pages in the post titled ‘E Unum Pluribus.’
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* https://robinandrew.net/2026/01/26/novel-words-fictional-pronouns-for-the-actual-future/
** ‘Open Ai is Making the Mistakes Facebook Made. I quit.’ Opinion section, N.Y. Times online edition, 2026-02-11 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/opinion/openai-ads-chatgpt.html
RobinAndrew 