Most people are familiar with the concept of pronouns, but The New York Times left many people scratching their heads Thursday with a lengthy report on “neopronouns,” a new phrase for a pronoun “without expressing gender.”
“He,” “she,” and “they” do not suffice for some, the Times’ Ezra Marcus wrote, in a piece that quoted people as young as 13. These “noun-self pronouns” emerged from “an online hotbed for avant-garde ideas around gender expression.”
“A neopronoun can also be a so-called ‘noun-self pronoun,’ in which a pre-existing word is drafted into use as a pronoun. Noun-self…