I just figured something out. Gosh, I like the feeling of figuring things out. Goshdarn.
(This is a shortish post. I’ll be writing the first edition of the accompanying page sometime later this week or next week.)
Background: Most every time I present someone with a story where I use gender-neutral pronouns, they say that might distract from the story at hand. I mean, unless they are already as much for such pronouns as I am. The ones I prefer to use are ze and hir (English; pronounced ‘zee’ and something somewhere between her and here, like you started saying ‘his’ but switched the s to an r at the last second) and hen and henom (Swedish; you don’t need the pronunciation). I’ve seen it happen with friends’ stories too. This bothers me because they’re a pretty natural part of my vocabulary.
Solution: Just use more neologisms. Not quite James Joycing it up, but somewhere in that direction.
Just make it part of the story. I would like for language to be all cool with the use of gender-neutral (personal; third-person) pronouns that aren’t they, but obviously it is not. I could mope at individuals for not being as accepting or down with the feminism or [adjective] as I am, or I could just use more neologisms. I love making up words. This is so not a problem. If they think it still distracts (and hey, it still might) that is still their problem.
I will attempt to make a list of all the new words I will henceforth use in my writing. It will be good. It will have the word ‘pinnaturn’ in it, and it will be alphabetical. [EDIT: the glossary is now live: https://zombiesintelligently.com/glossary/]
Also: I totally won ScriptFrenzy with my super secret unbloggable script. Yay me!
Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost 