in certain communities the use of "ze" (nominative) and "hir" (accusative) has become popular. it has not and may never become part of mainstream vernacular, but for many of the strange people i hang around with, it suffices.

you also refer to "they" as a possibility, and there has been recent use of a they-derived pronoun set refered to as "spivak pronouns," such as "ey," "em," "eir," "eirs." though i have never personally known anyone who uses these.

i believe it was in the olympia, washington where a certain community started to use "xe" and "xem," and resorted to violence when someone in the group lapsed in xyr use of pronouns.

regardless of these nuances, there are tons of cultures that do not use gender-specific pronouns, and in middle english people used gender-neutral pronouns. so i don't really think of it as affirmative action, just a certain contextual awareness. in a way i really like it, because there are in existence a whole lot of people for whom Indo-European pronouns do not suffice. I don't know if I think the eradication of gender-specific pronouns is necessary, and I definitely don't think it would eliminate sexism, but I do think that if we started to use these pronouns, many transgender and intersexed people would feel included in languge -- even if that language is a masculine or patriarchal one.

and yes, i agree, the one about magic tricks may refer to you.

Wow scott, this has got to be among the top 3 most informative comments ever posted here, if not on any blog anywhere. While writing the entry I couldn't find any good examples of ideas for invented pronouns, and these are all quite intriguing.

There are two types of pronoun usage that I think this can apply to: the first is what I will call the "default" pronoun that you would use when speaking about a hypothetical third person. For example, "if someone tells you a secret, has xe done something wrong?" The movements I was aware of were to come up with something gender-neutral to use here, and in its absence a lot of people resort to "they" even though it should be singular.

The other type of usage is of course talking about a specific person. This is indeed what the "Yo" usage is replacing, and your comment appears to talk about ideas to replace all pronouns with gender-neutral versions for all usages.

I can see the utility of a new gender-neutral pronoun both for the default pronoun and for referring to the transgender or intersexed, but I think it's a dubious proposition to replace all the pronouns wholesale. First, I find it hard to believe that merely acknowledging someone's gender is damaging. Second, it has negative practical utility because the gender of a pronoun can help to deduce the antecedent in ambiguous situations, i.e. "did he say that or did she?" But I know you're not necessarily advocating this.

Lastly, I meant the affirmative action analogy to apply only to the idea of replacing "he" with "she" as the default pronoun, but this may not have been clear.