How do you feel about it/its pronouns?

They make me feel a little uncomfortable because it has a gut feeling of dehumanization in a negative way, but actually the more I've gotten comfortable with fictional characters that use "it" (Murderbot and Mosscap the robot) the more comfortable I've been with "it" for real life people. Because those characters are clearly people.

"....We're machines, and machines are objects. Objects are its."

"I'd say you're more than just an object," Dex said.

The robot looked a touch offended. "I would never call you just an animal, Sibling Dex." It turned its gaze to the road, head held high. "We don't have to fall into the same category to be of equal value."

Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)

Edited to clarify.

For some additional context, a /r/Nonbinary post that I think does a good job of explaining why some people like "it" pronouns.

On It, Its, Itself Pronouns

Isn't "it" demeaning and dehumanizing?

Not for me. I see people refer to animals and plants as "it" - the Earth and planets as "it" - the universe as "it". She/he/they are "for humans", but why? Is the line dividing animals, nature, and humans that strict? I like the idea of being another entity in the world - not above or below other things, but with them. "It" makes me feel closer to nature in a gender-neutral way.

I don't personally know anyone who uses it (or any neopronoun, just she/he/they) so my view on it is very much distant from the people using it. As a trans person it does make me feel like someone's mocking the idea of sharing pronouns a bit when I see it (and sometimes it actually is), but I'd still respect it and use it.

I view 'it' the same way as I view the more fantastical of the neopronouns; they're used by people who want to convey an aesthetic vibe separate from gender. In the case of 'it' the people often use it to distance themselves from being human. Like fae/faer and magical aesthetic. It isn't just about gender, but pronouns don't have to be just about gender.

I don't like them. I would respect the wishes of someone who preferred to use them, but I would probably do a bunch of verbal gymnastics to avoid it as much as possible.

It's possibly related to my birth language not really having the gender neutral pronouns (except the "they" plural and variations). Then compounded by adding German to the mix, another language where everything has a gender.

Even after learning English,in my head stuff that is "it" gets a gender in my head (a table is a she, a shoe is a he, a pair of gloves is a she, etc.)

Edit: "they/them" is much easier to both remember and it flows well in talking, as well as some others that are more distinct (zey/zem)

I like it/its pronouns being used for me, but even among queer circles it's often one I don't share unless I know the group pretty well and I know that they're cool with it. Pronouns frankly aren't a big thing for me and I don't feel all that different when someone uses they/them or other pronouns on me, so it's not hard for me to be flexible. A lot of folks have a lot of trauma to unpack and I'm perfectly fine with language adapting to meet the group and the groups needs. I really appreciate you starting this conversation, because I've often felt afraid to ask others how they feel about it and I'm often extremely hesitant to request the pronoun from others.

I'm curious though, for those who do find it/its triggering or uncomfortable, is it uncomfortable in every level of abstraction? If you were to see it on a pronoun pin in a picture, would it make you uncomfortable? What if it was a flair next to a post or on a user profile? If you knew someone used those pronouns, but didn't ask you to use them, would you be uncomfortable? If you overhear a conversation between people you don't know in a context where you know it was being used correctly, how would you feel? If you were in a conversation and someone used the pronouns on someone else? Is it a visceral/gut reaction from hearing the word, does it only apply when you're being asked to use the pronouns on someone else, or does it lay somewhere in-between the two?

Also in return, if anyone has questions for me, I'm happy to answer 💜

As with basically any pronoun, if someone sincerely and earnestly wants to present themselves that way to the world, I have no issue respecting it. I have known one person IRL who used they/it pronouns, and they were very nice.

I'm in the same boat as most people here: I respect pronouns, but that one just makes me uncomfortable. So far I've only encountered one person who uses it/its, when someone joined my Discord server and asked for a custom pronoun role. We made the role after some discussion, but the staff agreed that it felt uncomfortable.

I think a large part of the discomfort is just the history. When used for humans, it's almost always used in a dehumanizing way, like scientists talking about lab subjects or people looking down on minorities. It's used to create a sense of distance and difference from the other person, to basically mentally deny that they're a fellow human at all.

I remember hearing about a book titled "A Child Called It" by a man who was abused as a child. While I never read it, and there have been some accusations he fabricated or exaggerated the extent of the abuse he suffered, that title just sticks with me. It instantly gave me the impression that his abusers didn't even see him as a fellow human being. That title always pops into my head whenever I see people say they prefer it/its pronouns.

Just, all in all, using "it/its" for people just feels like an insult to me at a conscious and subconscious level. I think most people feel similarly.

I think other people here have expressed my feelings on this sufficiently, so I just wanted to take this opportunity to discuss this very nifty tangent on pronouns from the second episode of the Lingthusiasm podcast. Here's the relevant section.

They're discussing the ambiguity around having interactions between two characters that use the same pronoun in fiction. Some languages do away with gendered pronouns altogether, and this type is especially interesting.

Lauren: One example is where you have two different third person singular pronouns, one that you use for one referent and one you use for a referent that has already been discussed. The fancy word for this is 'logophoric pronouns’. Essentially what logophoric pronouns can do is solve the problem of when you say something like 'he said that he is going to cook a barbecue for us on the weekend’. So in isolation or in an ongoing context if you’re talking about Bob and Dave and you could say 'Bob said that Dave’s going to cook a barbeque on the weekend’ or 'Bob said that Bob himself will cook a barbecue on the weekend’. But if you’re just using pronouns, 'he said that he’s going to cook a barbecue on the weekend’ – you don’t actually know if 'he’ is the person that will do the cooking or if 'he’ is assigning someone else that promise. And so logophoric pronouns like 'he’, 'the person who said that he will cook a barbecue’ or 'he said that some other him will cook the barbecue’.

Gretchen: Yeah so you have a different pronoun for referring back to the person who was already speaking vs referring to a different person from the one who was speaking

Lauren: Yeah, and so I think it would solve that 'he put his hands on his hips’ problem, where it would become clear if someone’s putting his hands on his own hips or on some other dude’s hips.

Gretchen: I don’t know if that solves that problem. It solves the 'he said that he loved him’ problem.

Lauren: Oh yeah

Gretchen: Or you know 'he said that he wanted to come over’ or something… I don’t actually speak a language with logophors, so don’t know if you can do it with 'he put his hand on his hip’.

Lauren: No, to be honest I don’t know these languages well enough to make that promise to be honest.

Gretchen: What I was going to say is that, one thing that I know does solve this problem which is not logophors, is a different phenomenon which is known as obviation. And that’s a phenomenon where your pronouns, instead of having gender, they track how important someone is to the discourse. So basically you have the more important or the more central person get one pronoun and the less important or less central or less vocal person or persons get a different pronoun.

Lauren: Oh I can see that being handy.

Gretchen: Yeah and so sometimes it’s called third person and fourth person – in the sense that, if you have a have a scenario with multiple people in it, the third person is obviously more important or more central somehow than the fourth person. And this is of course a storytelling device, so you can decide as the storyteller who is more important to your story. There’s no gender involved so either it’s 'third person put third person’s hands on fourth person’s hips’ or 'third person put third person’s hands on third person’s hips’. So you can track who’s who along that situation and that allows you to very easily keep track of two different persons. And the way you know which is third and which is fourth is, when you first say their names or you first say the noun or something that’s associated with them that the pronouns are going to have to refer to, is you put a little marker on the names like a suffixm that indicates that this one is going to be your third person one and this is going to be your fourth person one and then afterwards you can just refer back to them with that.

Lauren: Nice

Gretchen: So it’s very interesting from a storytelling perspective because then you can retell the story the same way if you just swap which one is obviative, which one is fourth person, then the story gets completely different focus which is kind of interesting.

Lauren: Cool

Gretchen: So obviation does a great job of solving the gay fanfiction problem. It doesn’t do a whole lot to solve the poly fanfiction problem because generally you have a third person and a fourth person and so if you end up with 4 or 5 people in a scenario that’s not -

Lauren: It’s not enough pronouns to go around.

Gretchen: Yeah. Some languages have a more obscure pronoun known as the 'further obviate’. It’s like a fifth person, so you can have like three people of various levels of importance in this scenario but I haven’t seen it used a whole lot because I guess making this distinction two ways is enough for a lot of languages.

Lauren: And of course there are a set of languages where none of this is a problem at all, and they are sign languages that use spatial locations for pronominal reference. So in sign languages, generally what happens is to make the equivalent of a pronoun in a language like English, they all sign someone’s name or a reference to someone or their actions in a particular space and then that space will be used to call back to that person throughout the interaction. Or the person can move around in the kind of signing space but they’re always able to be spatially referred to.

Gretchen: So signing space could be like 'top left’ or 'towards the right of the person’ who’s signing or something like that.

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, when you speak English and you gesture across a narrative you’re possibly doing this without really thinking about it anyway. So you may be referring to - who were my barbecuers again, Bob and Dave?

Gretchen: Yeah

Lauren: Bob and Dave might get referred to as if Bob’s on the left, Dave’s on the right and I kind of keep referring to them and gesturing throughout the interaction, but in sign languages like Auslan, which is the one I know this type of example from best, Bob will get put in a particular space and he’ll be signed there and then he’ll kind of keeping called back to from there.

Gretchen: So if the barbecue is to the left of us and Bob’s by the barbecue that we set up the barbecue on the left, we set up Bob near the BBQ, and then we have Dave over by the house on the right.

Having such a pronoun system would make my inner pedant very happy. They're both endlessly inclusive as well as very precise!

I'd like to point out that this is a fairly anglocentric conversation and/or argument — in many gendered languages, a non-binary person that does not feel "good" with using masculine or feminine grammatical gender would have no other realistic option other than using the language's neuter gender, which is perceived to be as "dehumanising" as "it/its" in English. Nevertheless, as "unusual" as it may be, it appears to be catching on even in more official settings, e.g. this year's Eurovision, where news outlets etc. in Greece would be referring to Nemo using neuter grammatical gender, including the article "το/του", which is roughly equivalent to the English pronoun "it/its". E.g.: [1]. I've heard of a similar situation in Poland as well.

That being said, as someone who had been identifying as non-binary for over 15 years and has been using both "they" and "it" as pronouns in English, I do not see an issue. @DefinitelyNotAFae's linked description more or less describes my thoughts/feelings regarsing it/its as a pronoun – I don't see anything wrong with it on my part.

Also do note @RobotOverlord525's note about languages who do gendering completely differently than English as well!

as someone who uses it/it's pronouns and know several others who use them, I can say that the dehumanizing aspect that others have mentioned is often intentional. My autism affects my gender identity and presentation a lot, and so it gets a seat at the table and full veto powers on pronouns. Using it/its pronouns signals that something is off, and you should think twice before treating me like any other person.

A large part of it is also control, in the sense of forcing people out of their comfort zones and controlling that dehumanization narrative. If you can't handle the low, low bar of calling me "it", you're gonna struggle with other parts of my gender identity or someone else's identity. To be an ally, you need to accept all queer people, not just the ones you find tolerable. If you find it uncomfortable then tough luck, unlearn some things.

The dehumanizing part of it/its pronouns is used frequently by bigots trying to invalidate (particularly) trans women's identities. By already feeling less human from autistic trauma and interests alike, I take that narrative and control it myself, deciding for myself what it means for me to be less human. It takes more than that to defeat bigotry, but it's fulfilling nonetheless.

Out of about a hundred trans people and nonbinary folks I've met or just talked to, only 1 used it/its and I'm not sure the person does so anymore. I will respect anybody's pronouns, but it/its is like neopronouns to me - I don't understand it, but if it makes the person in question happy and if it doesn't hurt anybody, then I have no problem using it.

As someone who comes from a country where "it" is the default pronoun for a person, this discussion is interesting and revealing about different English-speaking communities. They/she/he is for pets and "it" for humans. I think "it" fits very well in a casual conversation style, promotes solidarity and focuses on more salient contexts.

I think we are in the liminal threshold of possible pronoun expansion in English (at least in larger areas of the internet). I would be hesitant to call someone outside of a conversation "it" because of the dehumanizing connotation in the English language.

I'm a bit curious about where the need for "it" pronouns rises in the English language. I could speculate a few reasons, but I would rather get something concrete.

My wife uses it/its pronouns, in addition to the more conventional she/her. I definitely wouldn't use them for myself, but in the end pronouns are a very personal thing. I don't have much opportunity to use them for her, since I use she/her in contexts where it would be confusing or off-putting to use it/its -- although I know the off-puttingness is part of the point, at least for her. It's something I tend to limit to queer-centric domains as a result.

I’d describe how I feel about that by segueing into neopronouns:

Neopronouns frustrate me when I try to interact with them. Not in the sense that I feel anyone is wrong for using them, but more in the way that I feel annoyed whenever I see the thorn character being used to replace th sounds in text (e.g. “þem” instead of “them”). Is it harmful? No, obviously not. But much like seeing a thorn, some neopronouns like fae/faer drive me up a wall, like I’m verbally stubbing my toe, so-to-speak. I know I shouldn’t care, and I’ll do my best to respect those who use them, but I’ll also probably try to avoid having to use them if possible, for example by using a name directly.

it/its – and some neopronouns that flow better, like e/es mentioned elsewhere in this thread – feel like this, but less so. Still unintuitive, but easier to follow along with.

I feel lesser in value/less than human, so having it/its used for me feels affirming and comforting.

I have been personally and publically dehumanized for my race with it/its pronouns and I do not feel comfortable using them. If someone asked me to use them I would decline, and explain to them that it's better off if we don't communicate as there is no good balance between respecting them and avoiding my own personal trauma triggers.

I think we're in a transitional phase as a society. I get the sense that there are a lot of allies who primarily struggle with breaking habits. Most people I know have been pretty good an understanding that tongues slip and a binary pronoun might be used occasionally.

They/them pronoun are getting decent visibility and I think people are getting used to using them. I fully support someone going with it/its, but I think that kind of decision should be made with an understanding that even allies will make mistakes. It's just less common and that is going to be reflected in speech patterns which have been reinforced for a lifetime.

Honestly, I'd probably just use "they" because you can use that for anyone. It would maybe be different if pronouns weren't just a way to talk about someone when they aren't around.

I'm fine with singular "they", but I'd feel viscerally uncomfortable using "it", even if it was a clear preference. I'd feel similar if somebody insisted I refer to them with the F-word or the N-word -- it just has such a strong history of contempt and dehumanization. Reclaiming a slur for yourself is one thing, asking other people to use it to refer to you is quite different.

I'm late to this thread, but please if anyone sees this, help me understand better.
I've had difficulty understanding why they/them isn't used as opposed to it/it's.
The comment with the quote from a sci fi book involving a robot was helpful.