I have a situation where a character writing in a private journal wishes to disguise the gender of somebody lest the journal is discovered.

Naturally, the writer has a coded reference / nickname etc. but if s/he reuses that constantly, the journal will be even more excruciating for my poor readers than it already will be by dint of being some pitiful neurotic's private journal in which the writer is already writing in a secret code lest it be discovered.

So...

Anybody got any gender neutral alternatives to "she" or "he"?

(FYI, and with a nod to Emma vis a vis nuance and thesauruses, this person is quite important to the writer so the obvious nuanced objectification by using "it" doesn't quite cut it.)

G

'they/their' has been a gender neutral third person singular pronoun since the 17th century...

Emma

Hmm. Surprised to know it's that old!

I remember being told to use that for some elearning courses that I wrote, but it sounds very clunky and American to me and the implied plural jars horribly, especially for how I want to use it.

Regrettably, wrt other threads, I concede the point on nuance and admit my hypocrisy...

Any other ideas?

Thanks,

Yes, it can be an awkward beast, especially reflexively - 'themself'?. Other sentences it can be fine.

In my experience it's America's, shackled to Strunk and White, who are most resistant to it, and insist on using 'he'.

Emma

Why not just refer to the person as the opposite throughout and drop subtle clues to contradict it, clues the author may not have realised he put in there. This allows a reader to play the same game as the detective (or whoever) without it being obvious. If you use "they" throughout, it becomes clear you are hiding the gender and the reader will wonder why and guess that the killer is a woman, or the mad nurse is a man.

A good example (or bad, I suppose) of this is James Herbert's Moon. It feels strange not to refer to an unknown killer as "he".

Colin M

If you use "they" throughout, it becomes clear you are hiding the gender and the reader will wonder why and guess that the killer is a woman, or the mad nurse is a man.

At the risk of sounding like I've vanished up my own tailpipe and missed some obvious fun, the reader already knows who, why and what...

The diarist is ashamed to admit it, but is under no illusions...

It may not surprise you to know this is an unrequited, forbidden love kind of scenario (though it surprised me that my characters would want such a thing).

If it helps, she is still a teenager and about to have a really rotten introduction to the adult world.

G

In my experience it's America's, shackled to Strunk and White, who are most resistant to it, and insist on using 'he'. Emma

I think the problem is usage, I would happily say:
if a person wants x, they should y.

I would not say:
meet Brangelina. They are not sure about their gender.

It's the latter, direct and personal, that I need.

I'm thinking I may have to really work on sentence structure instead...

<Added>

Brangeline is not sure they are born.

Very often, when I've read books where an identity it kept secret in diaries or letters, the subject is referred to by one or two initials.

You may need to juggle your sentences to construct them so that this method works, but you should be able to carry it off.

ie: M was determined to remain hidden from view,

rather than,

M was determined that he should remain hidden from view.

Sarah

Yes, that gives me some options, thanks.
So it's sounding like I need a range of ways to refer directly rather than impersonal It/they etc.

Oddly, I started writing some drafts using "it" and actually quite like the effect as the emotional remove makes her devotion just that little bit creepy and ever so slightly subservient, as if she is writing about some terrifying monster... the kind of way I might feel about picking out the hooves of a champion show-jumper after discovering it had a taste for human flesh... excited, yes, eager, yes, just that little bit wary, yes yes and yes again.

Perfect.

<Added>

the reader already knows who, why and what...

And... ah they don't any more! Thanks, Colin.

Could the text be written to the unnamed character, in which case you could use 'you'. Just an idea.
HB x

I initially thought no because the notes are discovered and read by the person in question, but then I thought...
Thanks, that might open up some interesting (and worrying) possibilities!