Xe said, Ze said: A guide to gender-neutral pronouns

Gender neutrality proposes the idea that government, society and businesses shouldn’t impose regulations based on conventional ideas about sex, the biological classification of persons or gender, the identity of a person in society.

“Not everyone thinks of themselves as either a man or a woman,” said director of the LGBT Resource Center Lorraine Schroeder.

With gender identity rapidly evolving and becoming more complex, some may have trouble understanding how a gender-neutral person might want to be referred.

“When a person identifies their gender as non-binary or gender queer, they may see oneself as both genders or somewhere in between,” Schroeder said. “They could possibly see themselves as neither gender, but instead something else. It is a sign of respect to address non-binary identified people with a gender-neutral pronoun.”

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