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Sie and hir are inflected forms of a proposed gender-neutral third person singular personal pronoun for the English language (see gender-neutral pronouns). This neologism is used by some people who feel that there are problems with gender-specific pronouns because they imply sex and/or gender (see non-sexist language). However, sie and hir are very rare compared to other solutions and most commentators feel that it is unlikely that they will catch on.
Some science fiction writers have been known to use the sie and hir pronouns for fictional intersex characters (such as Burgoyne 172 in the New Frontier series or in Robert Anton Wilson's Schrödinger's Cat trilogy). It was also moderately popular on the Usenet group alt.sex.bondage in the early 1990's. *
The recommended usage is shown in the table below. See Declension for more information on each of the cases.
| Subject | Object | Possessive adjective | Possessive pronoun | Reflexive | |
| Male | He laughed | I hit him | His face bled | I am his | He washes himself |
| Female | She laughed | I hit her | Her face bled | I am hers | She washes herself |
| Neuter | It laughed | I hit it | Its face bled | I am its | It washes itself |
| Gender-neutral | Sie laughed | I hit hir | Hir face bled | I am hirs | Sie washes hirself |
It is possible to capitalise these words for all of the reasons other pronouns would be capitalised.
Etymology
- Consider someone trying to put a left hand into a right-handed glove; if either the glove or the hand is replaced with its reverse you'll get a gloved hand. Obviously this doesn't work if the person specifically wants this glove on hir left hand
- First recorded usage of hir on usenet – May 26 1981
The ancestors of this pronoun set could date back to at least the 1930s: to hes, hir, hem (quoted in the Washington Post), and se, sim, sis (quoted in the Liverpool Echo).
Hir probably comes from patching together his, him, and her – sharing the common "h" and taking an "i" from his or him and an "r" from her. Alternatively, it might come from the pronoun hir in Chaucer's English, meaning "her". From hir, the extension to hirs and hirself is quite natural.
One theory for the origin of sie is that it came from S(he), I(t), (h)E. Another is that it was borrowed from the German sie, which means you, she, her, they, or them depending on context and/or capitalisation.
Pronunciation guide
Like many neologisms introduced on the internet, different people pronounce these words in different ways. The most common pronunciations are included here, along with pronunciation guides — see the International Phonetic Alphabet for English to decode them.
- Sie or . About three quarters of people in a quick sample of usenet said they pronounced this roughly like see , while the rest said they pronounced it roughly like zee , as the German word is.
- Hir or . About three quarters of the sample said they pronounced this roughly like hear , while the rest said they pronounced it roughly like her .
- Hirs and Hirself — extended from hir in the way you'd expect: adding an "s" or self sound onto the end. Of course, this can vary depending on how you choose to pronounce hir.
Problems with "sie" and "hir"
These are some of the arguments some people make against these pronouns:
- There are existing solutions, such as singular they, or the neutral third person it, that render neologisms unnecessary.
- Sie and hir, unlike they, have not evolved naturally in spoken English. Instead they have been imposed artificially. Historically, such examples of language have not had significant staying power.
- Sie and hir are unintuitive and cumbersome.
- The variation in pronunciation and the similarity to the corresponding female pronouns and other words could cause confusion.
- In proper English usage, the male pronouns are historically also gender-neutral pronouns.
- Sie and hir have a female bias because they sound similar to the corresponding female pronouns. Furthermore, they resemble sie and ihr, the female pronoun in German. (Historically this was an asset: the initial uptake was probably helped by irritation at the use of male pronouns as gender-free terms.)
- General criticism of Gender-neutral language.
Variants
- Zie and zir were introduced slightly later to correct the perceived female bias of sie and hir. The Z is pronounced similarly to tz. This pronoun set is now thought to be about as common as sie and hir, though neither are widespread.
- Kate Bornstein uses ze and hir throughout her book My Gender Workbook.
- Xe is another common replacement for sie
- Shi is sometimes seen as an alternative to sie, especially among the furry fandom. It is pronounced like shay. Some also pronounce hir similar to hair, or the German herr.
- People commonly use they and them when they are talking about an indefinite person and feel the need to use a gender-neutral pronoun.
References
"Sie and hir"