A question about pronouns

[Mirannan]

This question cropped up in my latest critique piece, and I'm wondering whether someone might have some ideas.

The problem is caused by the fact that there is no neuter personal pronoun in English. Many people have come up with ideas, usually for use in SF stories that feature sapient AIs, but none has been widely adopted.

This caused me a problem with referring to a specific person of definite gender that is currently unknown to another character; using "he or she" sounded wrong, using the English convention that the masculine is the general personal pronoun as well also seemed wrong, given that I (and probably the reader, for various reasons) know the person is female. "Its" is definitely wrong; the person concerned is an adult human, very few of whom are neuter.

I got around it by missing out the possessive altogether; "wiped feet on the mat". Which was also picked up on.

Any ideas? Or a workaround to avoid the problem?

 

[Mouse]

Uh, yeah there is. Ze, sie, hir - all gender neutral pronouns used for gender neutral people. Anyway, as only few people know that, I guess, probably just use 'they.'

 

[Brian G Turner]

This caused me a problem with referring to a specific person of definite gender that is currently unknown to another character

You just write whichever gender the other person presumes them to be.

Male and female pronouns are used widely where gender is not an issue - my understanding is that the male pronoun is the general form instead of neuter, but that female pronouns are used for a range of inanimate objects (not least ships).

 

[Glisterspeck]

This is a huge issue for me in my WIP, also. Mostly, because the gern, who are an important race in my story, are asexual. I tried to write them using non-gendered pronouns, but even I couldn't read my prose then! So, I have one character who does not respect them at all refer to them as it.