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Pronouns.page
Homepage Pronouns Dictionary of neutral nouns Examples from cultural texts Extra references Blog Queer community Contact Merch Your account Search
Homepage Pronouns Dictionary of neutral nouns Examples from cultural texts Extra references Blog Queer community Contact Merch Your account Search

My pronouns are:

he/him or e/em

(Interchangeable forms: Normative “he/him” or Spivak pronouns)

Example usage in sentences:

  • I think he is very nice.
  • I met him recently.
  • Is this his dog?
  • He told me that the house is his.
  • He said he would rather do it himself.

Table:

Subject Object Possessive determiner Possessive pronoun Reflexive
he him his his himself

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Examples from cultural texts:

Normative “he/him” (he/him)

  • Eiichiro Oda – Nami shows her Loyalty to the Crew!, 2021

    • “He's the king of pirates..”

  • Kohei Horikoshi – My Hero Academia (Translator: Caleb Cook) , 2016 ; Chapter: "Shoto Todoroki: Origin"

    • “That Midoriya kid kept prodding at him and got beaten because of it.”
    • “Wasn't his plan to just keep provoking him, though?”
    • “Gotta admire his vigor.”

  • Scott Cawthon – Five Nights at Freddy's 2, 2014

    • “In the game Five Nights at Freddy's 2, the character Mangle, also referred to as "The Mangle," canonically uses she/him pronouns. In Phone Guy's call on the third night, he says "I think the employees refer to him as just 'The Mangle. '" ”
    • “Additionally, part of his description in Five Nights at Freddy's: Ultimate Custom Night, part of her description says "...once Mangle reaches the vent opening he will never leave. Use the vent-snare to prevent her from making it that far."”
    • “When the creator of the game, Scott Cawthon, was asked about Mangle's gender, he says that her gender is "Yes."”

  • Eric Kripke – Gen V, 2023 ; Jordan Li is the main character of the series “Gen V”; they are a bigender person. Two actors appear in this role: London Thor and Derek Luh.

  • Canadian actor Elliot Page shares he is transgender (CBC News) , 2020

    • “Page said he has been inspired by many in the trans community, and thanked them for their courage, generosity and working to make the world a more inclusive and compassionate place.
      While Page said his joy is real, it is also "fragile." Despite feeling profoundly happy and acknowledging his privilege, he is also scared of the invasiveness, the hate, the jokes and the violence.      ”

  • Jorge Luis Borges – The Garden of Forking Paths (Original title: El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan" (1941)) , 1948

    • “He was Governor of Yunnan and gave up temporal power to write a novel with more characters than there are in the Hung Lou Meng, and to create a maze in which all men would lose themselves. ”

  • Ursula K. Le Guin – The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969

    • “He was so feminine in looks and manner that I once asked him how many children he had. He looked glum. He had never borne any. He had, however, sired four. It was one of the little jolts I was always getting. Cultural shock was nothing much compared to the biological shock I suffered as a human male among human beings who were, five-sixths of the time, hermaphroditic neuters.”
    • “Seven years we were kemmerings, and had two sons. Being of his flesh born they had his name Foreth rem ir Osboth, and were reared in that Clanhearth. Three years ago he had gone to Orgny Fastness and he wore now the gold chain of a Celibate of the Foretellers. We had not seen each other those three years, yet seeing his face in the twilight under the arch of stone I felt the old habit of our love as if it had been broken yesterday, and knew the faithfulness in him that had sent him to share my ruin. And feeling that unavailing bond close on me anew, I was angry; for Ashe’s love had always forced me to act against my heart.”

  • Linsey Miller – Mask of Shadows, 2017 ; a genderfluid character who goes by he, she or they depending on what they’re wearing

  • Cavetown – This Is Home, 2015 ; Includes themes of aromanticism, being transgender.

    • “Often I am upset that I cannot fall in love but I guess
      This avoids the stress of falling out of it      ”
    • “Ooh... I'll cut my hair
      Ooh... to make you stare
      Ooh... I'll hide my chest
      And I'll figure out a way to get us out of here      ”
    • “Get a load of this monster
      He doesn't know how to communicate
      His mind is in a different place
      Will everybody please give him a little bit of space
      Get a load of this train-wreck
      Hishair's a mess and he doesn't know who he is yet
      But little do we know, the stars
      Welcome him with open arms      ”

  • The Spook School – Richard and Judy, 2015

    • “You tell your son
      That when he's older
      You’ll take him out chasing girls       ”
    • “He doesn’t understand
      But he'll get there in the end
      And the boys, the boys the boys, the boys
      Will handle themselves      ”

Spivak pronouns (e/em/eir)

  • Michele Kirichanskaya – Interview With Maia Kobabe (Geeks OUT) , 2020

    • “Maia Kobabe is a nonbinary, queer author and illustrator from the Bay Area, California. Eir first full length book, GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR, was published in May 2019. Maia’s short comics have been published by The Nib and in many anthologies including THE SECRET LOVES OF GEEKS, FASTER THAN LIGHT Y’ALL, GOTHIC TALES OF HAUNTED LOVE, SHOUT OUT, ADVANCED DEATH SAVES and BE GAY, DO COMICS. Before setting out to work freelance full-time, e worked for over ten years in libraries.”

  • Smash Pages – Smash Pages Q&A: Maia Kobabe (Alex Dueben) , 2019

    • “Maia Kobabe has been making comics for The Nib, and anthologies like Mine!, Gothic Tales of Haunted Love, The Secrets Loves of Geeks and elsewhere for years, but eir first book is the just released Gender Queer: A Memoir from Lion Forge.”
    • “Gender Queer is an exploration of identity, an explanation of what the term means, but more than that, it’s a thoughtful look at coming to understand oneself over time and what it means to be human. Maia and I spoke recently about the book, working with eir sibling on it and reluctantly crafting a memoir.”

  • Author: Maia Kobabe (The Nib) , 2019

    • “Maia Kobabe is a nonbinary, queer author and illustrator with an MFA in Comics from California College of the Arts. Eir first full length book, GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR is forthcoming from Lion Forge in May 2019. Eir work focuses on themes of identity, sexuality, anti-fascism, fairy tales, and homesickness.”

  • Bogi Takács: About the Author (Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 105) , 2015

    • “Bogi Takács is a Hungarian Jewish agender trans person (e/em/eir/emself or they pronouns) and a resident alien in the US. E is a winner of the Lambda award for editing Transcendent 2: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, and a finalist for the Hugo and Locus awards. Eir debut poetry collection Algorithmic Shapeshifting is out now from Aqueduct, and eir debut short story collection The Trans Space Octopus Congregation was published in Fall 2019 by Lethe Press. ”

  • Bernardine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other, 2019

    • “they discussed the best gender-neutral alternatives such as ae, e, ey, per, they, and tested each word to see if the words tripped off the tongue or “tripped over it, ditto with the alternatives to his and hers: hirs, aers, eirs, pers, theirs and xyrs”

  • Ann Leckie – Provenance, 2017

    • ““No,” said the person sitting in the suspension pod. “I don’t even know who that is.” E noticed the cup Captain Uisine was proffering. “Thank you,” e said, and took it, cupped it in eir hands as Captain Uisine stopped the blanket from sliding off eir shoulders.”

  • Nicole Melleby and A.J. Sass – Camp QUILTBAG, 2023

    • “'Camp QUILTBAG: a safe space to be yourself!.' Kai didn't see why e couldn't just be emself back at home. Instead, eir parents were sending em someplace where e wouldn't know anyone, all because a few kids at school last year had a problem with Kai and eir pronouns.”

  • Michael D. Spivak – The Joy of TeX. A Gourmet Guide to Typesetting with the AMS-TeX Macro Package (The quotes are from the 2nd edition (2004 reprint), the original was published in 1982) , 2004 ; Note the capitalization of the pronoun. Spivak himself, doesn't provide a reflexive form.

    • “Just as ‘I’ is the first person singular pronoun, regardless of gender, so ‘E’ will be used in this book as the third person singular pronoun for both genders. Thus, ‘E’ is the singular of ‘they’. Accordingly, ‘Eir’ (pronounced to rhyme with ‘their’) will be the possessive, and ‘Em’ (rhyming with ‘them’) will stand for either ‘him’ or ‘her’. Here is an example that illustrates all three forms: E loves Em only for Eir body. (p. xv)”
    • “If a book designer wanted to use underlining extensively, E would have to design a special ‘\ul’ font in which each letter has an underline as part of it; of course, the letters g, j, p, q and y would be one of Eir design problems. (p. 18)”
    • “If the author uses such notation, it should be up to Em to indicate Eir intentions clearly, but there’s no harm checking first. (p. 63)”

What's the deal with pronouns?

Pronouns are those words that we use instead of calling someone by their name every time we mention them. Most people use “he/him” and “she/her”, so we automatically assume which one to call them based on someone's looks. But it's actually not that simple…

Gender is complicated. Some people “don't look like” their gender. Some prefer being called in a different way from what you'd assume. Some people don't fit into the boxes of “male” or “female” and prefer more neutral language.

This tool lets you share a link to your pronouns, with example sentences, so that you can show people how you like to be called.

Why does it matter? Because of simple human decency. You wouldn't call Ashley “Samantha” just because you like that name more or because “she looks like a Samantha to you”. Or even if she does have the name “Samantha” in her birth certificate but she absolutely hates it and prefers to use “Ashley”. And it's the exact same story with pronouns – if you don't want to be rude towards someone, please address them properly. The only difference is that we usually know names, but not pronouns. We introduce ourselves with a name, but not pronouns. Let's change that!

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