User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-2162194-20130713192557/@comment-5918438-20160112015809

I think the same issue applies to Zygons, too. Current articles seem to use she/her pronouns when talking about a Zygon who later adopted the body of a woman. Queen Elizabeth in Day even makes it clear that her duplicate was only "at the time" a woman.

I feel singular they/them should always be the way to go when nothing more specific is given, but I may be biased, because those are my pronouns. I highly doubt xi, thon or per have been used anywhere in the DWU, and they would only confuse our readers.

I would certainly say for Sentris (if referred to as she, it's because of the form she took up, so perhaps 'she' is acceptable once she's in that female form) or Zygon Queen Elizabeth I (yeah, that name ain't lasting), or indeed any characters whose genders are not specified, singular they pronouns should be used.

So would we call Alpha Centauri "it" like TPOP does, or use "they" as is standard English convention? ("It" is not really in use when referring to sentient individuals, and if applied to humans in the real world will probably be seen as rude.)

I'm really interested about the case of Christopher. Can anyone who owns the novel tell us what pronouns are used there? I'm not sure "originally male" is argument enough. What pronouns are actually used in both source materials?

How does it address sex vs. gender, also, because those upthread seem to be using "gender" loosely, when, in the real world certainly, gender is social while sex is biological. Is he used because that is his gender, but his sex is now indeterminate? How are the words "gender" and "sex" specifically used in the text of the novel or the script of the audio, and how are issues of the gender binary addressed in relation to this character?