Instead of (or in addition to*) he, she, they and all of the more fine-grained pronouns such as xir, we could just invent one for everyone that doesn’t require prior knowledge of the person to which it’s being applied.
* I could see a neutral pronoun being used until you know for sure what regular gendered pronoun the person prefers. That way, you can always just play it safe with the neutral one if you want. No harm done.
By way of example, let’s say we used “it/it’s/its”. Obviously we wouldn’t use that because it sounds dehumanising, but it would work for every person with no chance of offence or bigotry (I think?). It doesn’t deny the person’s identity, it just makes their identity untethered to one small part of casual language in the same way it is now.
Do you agree, and if not, why not? I’m not sure where I would stand on such a proposal, so I’m interested to hear the for and against, particularly from the non-binary and trans folks.
P.S. I’m not saying we do away with gendered language entirely, just those introductory pronouns; the part of language that requires the speaker to make a snap judgement about the person’s identity based on unreliable visual and aural clues.
If Fred & Bob are talking and 'he told him x and he responded with y" then that is also unclear. This is not a problem that is unique to the word ‘they’.
Of course, in either case, the answer to use phrase it so that you remove any ambiguity and communicate clearly: “Sam told them x and the board responded with y.”, “Bob told him x and Fred responded with y”.
Yes! Pronoun reference errors hurt my very soul, but they are an inherent risk and pitfall of all pronoun usage. It is fun, when someone is resistant to using another person’s pronouns or is a dumb fuck bitching about pronouns because an angry bigot shouted about pronouns on TV, to point out that those people already use pronouns like shit. Because they always claim a concern for accuracy, then speak and write like shit.