Spivak pronoun

The Spivak pronouns are a proposed set of gender-neutral pronouns in English. They are not in widespread use, but have been employed in gender-neutral language by some people who dislike the more common alternatives "he/she" or singular they.

The (new) Spivak pronouns are formed from the pronoun "they" by dropping the "th".

There are two variants of the Spivak pronouns in use, as shown in the declension table below.

	Subject	Object	Possessive Adjective	Possessive Pronoun	Reflexive
Male	He laughs	I hugged him	His heart warmed	That is his	He loves himself
Female	She laughs	I hugged her	Her heart warmed	That is hers	She loves herself
Singular they	They laugh	I hugged them	Their heart warmed	That is theirs	They love themselves
Spivak (new)	Ey laughs	I hugged em	Eir heart warmed	That is eirs	Ey loves emself
Spivak (original)	E laughs	I hugged em	Eir heart warmed	That is eirs	E loves eirself

Origin

The pronoun set was popularized as neologisms by Michael Spivak, a mathematician-educator who used it in a number of books. Spivak writes:[1]

The original pronoun set was not created by me. I think I read about it in a newspaper clipping, perhaps from the Boston Globe, during the time I taught at Brandeis, and I believe it was credited to an anthropologist; later on, when I wanted to use it, I was unable to locate the source. In "The Joy of TeX", I wrote "Numerous approaches to this problem have been suggested, but one strikes me as particularly simple and sensible." I assumed people would figure that I was using a construction I couldn't properly credit, and not consider me so immodest as to praise my own invention (though I guess that was a rather immodest assumption). Michael Spivak, May 21 2006.

Comparison with other gender-neutral pronouns or constructions

The two most common systems have specific disadvantages:

• "he or she", "him or her", "his or her", "his or hers", "himself or herself": These constructions are often perceived as long-winded and awkward.
• "he/she", "him/her", "his/her", "his/hers", "himself/herself": These constructs are often perceived as awkward and hindering pronunciation.
• singular they: This is more pronounceable, but it can be ambiguous. It is also awkward to use plural pronouns and plural verb forms for a singular person, and some rescriptivists consider it grammatically incorrect.

Compared with other gender-neutral pronouns, Spivak (new) is easier to learn since the system stems directly from the well-known forms of "they". Supporters also feel that this derivation makes them more natural than the sie/ze/zie/xe forms.

Where they are used

Spivak is one of the allowable genders on many MUDs and MOOs. Others might include some selection of: male, female, neuter, either, both, "splat" (asterisk), plural, egotistical, royal, and 2nd. The selected gender determines how the game engine refers to a player.

On at least one MOO, LambdaMOO, they became standard practice for help texts ("The user may choose any description e likes"), referring to people of unknown gender ("Who was that guest yesterday, eir typing was terrible"), referring to people whose gender was known but without disclosing it ("Yes I've met Squiggle. E was nice."), or of course characters declaring themselves to be of gender Spivak. In recent years (2000 onwards), this usage is declining.

Spivak is also the favoured choice of some people who have written about the subject, such as in Footnotes: Pronouns and in the Gender-Neutral Pronoun FAQ.

Nomic games, especially on the Internet, often use Spivak pronouns in their rulesets, as a way to refer to indefinite players.

Criticism

The use of Spivak pronouns and other neologisms offered as alternative grammar or spelling is sometimes viewed as a linguistic pretension with political overtones, and its introduction may accordingly be received with the same degree of hostility associated with other such terms. (See also Womyn)

A more academic criticism stems from regarding Spivak pronouns as a prescriptive grammar, and an invention for the purpose of avoiding a proscribed "singular they" form. Supporters of the singular they claim, truly or falsely, that the form has been in use for centuries, and thus it is hypothetically hardly a recent corruption of proper speech.

Publications employing Spivak pronouns

• Doom Patrols: A Theoretical Fiction About Postmodernism (Steven Shaviro)
• The Joy of TeX (Michael Spivak)
• The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Logic, Law, Omnipotence, and Change (Peter Suber)

See also

• Generic antecedents