Wikipedia:Xe

A proposal for individuals
'Note: the following idea refers to talk page conversation among editors. WP:Jargon (and common sense) advises us to avoid gratuitous neologisms in article space.'

Wikipedia presents us with a Catch-22. If we look up the sex of an editor, we might fall victim to an impulse to treat him or her differently. If we don't look it up and use the general "he", we are accused of assuming all editors are male. If we say "he or she" it is wordy, and if we say "them" it is far too confusing. In any case, editors will rush in to inform us of an editor's sex, especially if she is female, which I imagine must get awfully tiresome for women in particular, as I find it rather tiresome already. Therefore, it is proposed that we create a new pronoun structure that is more regular and more versatile, using Wikilinks to WP:xe to spread the idea and to communicate the fact that actually, we really don't care what sex an editor is, only what xe has to say.

It should be acknowledged that the notion of using "Xe" has been proposed before as one of many Gender-specific and gender-neutral pronouns but with different details. But so long as these schemes remain out of widespread use, we should feel free to reinvent them, and especially, to invent them with an eye toward delivering additional desirable features to the speaker that could encourage them at last to catch on.

Pronunciation
The pronunciation of "xe" is intended to be a voiceless velar fricative, similar to "ge" in Spanish gerente. As this is not a standard English sound there should be much tolerance for variation, including a "kse" as "x" would normally be pronounced. The rationale is that at least some of these sounds can seem intermediate between "he" and "she". The "e" is more of a schwa than a long vowel to make it easy to pronounce xe/xes/her with precisely the same vowel, which is vital to permit further extension of the scheme (see below)

Formation
The forms "xes" and "xer" are chosen by the rationale that "xe's" would be the regular possessive form and is quite similar to "his", and as a matter of fairness "xer" is chosen to resemble "(to) her".

Extension: xi for the second third person
In standard English we can say "He tossed the ball to Anne, and she threw it back", but not properly "He tossed the ball to Jim, and he threw it back" because (even though you might have a good guess) the antecedent is unclear. When inventing a new set of gender neutral pronouns, we have the choice whether to consign ourselves to the latter limbo, or to enjoy the benefits of the first case even when two men happen to be playing. For this reason the pattern proposed here can be extended to use any other vowel:


 * Xe tossed the ball to Jim, and xi threw it back.

At this point xe -> xi is proposed as a common pattern; whether people choose to extend it further xe -> xi -> xo etc. should be considered at a later date.

The "i" in "xi" is assumed to be short like in "sit".

Idea: role usages
The availability of five or more independent pronoun sets allows us to start setting aside some to reflect the roles people play in a situation. On Wikipedia one such situation is that of the person who is taken to have started a discussion, and another is that of the person for whom a page or discussion is ultimately intended. It is possible that we could routinely choose "xo" to refer to the person who asked a question at the Refdesk or started a thread at ANI, and "xu" to refer to the user whose talk page we are on, or someone who has been called on to mediate a discussion. These roles will need to be evaluated and evolved over time by use in a larger community.