Gender Pronouns

[Page 701]Pronouns are words that replace nouns when repetitive noun usage would become unwieldy. For example, if a sentence reads “Sam and the dog went to Paris” it would be unnecessarily repetitive for the following sentence to read “Sam and the dog enjoyed Paris.” Instead, pronouns simplify the sentence: “They enjoyed it.” Pronouns include two categories: gender specific and gender neutral. Gender specific pronouns typically take the place of a noun for which the gender is known. For example, if Sam is known to identify as female, the gender specific third-person pronoun of she could be used: “She enjoyed Paris.”

Gender specific pronouns are sometimes inappropriate. For example, Sam’s gender may be unknown, and/or Sam may identify as neither male nor female. In both cases, the ...