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.