Theme
9:06pm June 4, 2014

questions

empyr3:

are there genderless terms for mother/father, son/daughter, Mr/Ms and other stuff like that?

Mother/father: Parent

Son/daughter: Child, offspring.

Mr./Ms.: Mx.

Here’s a list I found elsewhere online:

sibling: Standard gender neutral term for “brother/sister”.

nibling: Non-standard gender neutral term for “niece/nephew”. Coined by linguist Samuel E. Martin in 1951 from nephew/niece by analogy with sibling.

emmer: Non-standard genderqueer term for sibling.

ommer: Non-standard genderqueer term for “aunt/uncle”

child: Standard gender neutral term for “daughter/son” or “boy/girl”.

kid: Standard informal gender neutral term for “daughter/son” or “boy/girl”

bitsy: Non-standard genderqueer term for “boy/girl” or “daughter/son”

nesser: Non-standard non-binary term for “daughter/son”

enby: From “NB (nonbinary)”. A word for a person for whom you feel affection. “boy/girlfriend” becomes enbyfriend. Urban Dictionary definition, and post on Gender Queeries.

offspring: Established biological term referring to child or children; could have applications as an informal term for “daughter/son”

parent: Standard gender neutral term for “mother/father” or “stepmother/stepfather”

spouse: Standard gender neutral term for “husband/wife”

Their page is far from comprehensive, especially with nonbinary pronouns, but here it is:

http://nonbinary.org/wiki/Gender_neutral_language

(My preferred pronouns are kind of a mix of the ones they have on there:  Sie/hir/hir, or ze/zer/zem.  They seem to have mixed the two together in a way I’ve never seen before, but there’s lots of nonbinary pronouns out there, many of which have histories longer than you’d believe at first sight.)

Unfortunately, for me, a lot of the gender-neutral terms for these things feel either unreal (I have trouble with neologisms most of the time, the only way I can accept even the pronouns I’ve picked for myself is that I grew up with some of them being used in various places online), or else sort of detached and clinical rather than the warm, multilayered connotation of a word like mother or father.  Parent just doesn’t feel the same.  And I have no good answer to that problem.  (I’m also genderless, and I struggle to figure out what words to ask people to use on me, or whether to ask at all.)