In December, the Post copy editor Bill Walsh called “they” “the only sensible solution to English’s lack of a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun,” with “sensible” being the key word. The singular “they” gained favor with The Post’s standard-bearer partly because the presumptive “he” “hasn’t been palatable for decades,” but also because a generic “she” feels “patronizing” and “attempts at made-up pronouns” — like “xe,” “xim,” and “xir” — strike Walsh as “silly.”
But then, ten years ago, wouldn’t we have thought “text” as a verb or “blog” as any sort of word at all were silly? How about “tweet”? Or earlier, “fax”? “Email”?
Xe, xim, and xir maybe new, unfamiliar, not-yet-widely-adopted, or (is it just me?) hard to pronounce, but they are not silly.
Asshole.*
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* Widely-adopted pronoun indicating (among others things) an arrogant, misguided fool. Example: “Hey, asshole, take a sec to think about the fact that you sound like a cis-privileged old fart before you publish.”
Thought Snax 