My theory is that butch is a noun, a gender all its own, something which cannot always be described within the confines of the bigendered pronoun system we have now. In an attempt to honor butches of whatever sex, whatever pronoun they may personally prefer (and my experience of butches is that they may prefer either, both, these gender-neutral ones, or, in some inventive cases, may have made up their own), I have chosen to use gender-neutral pronouns... It seems congruent to use language that has the most possibility inherent in it. Those gender-neutral pronouns are (drumroll, please): ze and hir. Let's meet them; you'll be spending a lot of time together during the balance of this book.
Ze, pronounced zee, like the twenty-sixth letter of the alphabet if you speak American English, is used as the subjective pronoun-that is, instead of she or he. "Ze went to the store," "What kind of shoes is ze wearing?" "Does ze have relatives in Bulgaria?" and so on...
Hir, pronounced here, is the objective and also the possessive pronoun, and is used in place of the feminine pronoun her or hers, or the masculine pronouns him or his. "Ask hir for the time, please," "It's hir truck, not mine," "Have you thought about asking hir on a date?"
Creative Cryptograms
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Dark_potato57
Bookmarks