Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-2162194-20130713192557/@comment-5918438-20160126022331

I feel the issue at hand is more grammatical than political, more about presenting truthful information in a neutral manner than lining up with any real world personal identities. I do feel that it is incorrect to assign more specific pronouns than 'they' when those pronouns do not actually line up with the (sometimes lack of) sex/gender of a character—perhaps due of their species, or maybe as a result of their identity. If unsure, and a DWU story doesn't help to clarify what we should call them, I think we should just default to they/them. It's not political; it's the 3rd person pronoun we've got in English that doesn't have any gender markers.

It just feels weird to use "he" when referring to incarnations of the Master including Gomez, and it's equally weird to use pronouns like "he" or "it" when those are not truly representative, nor widely/consistently/at all used in the relevant story or stories.

If one pronoun is used consistently (all the time) for a character, and there's no question about it in-narrative, we just go with that set of pronouns. So Christopher is a he, because that's what is used. Don't take any of this to mean I'm in support of us deciding on characters' pronouns when recording their stories. If it's clear, it's clear.

It's when there's confusion or inconsistency—as with Alpha Centauri—that we need a consistent approach to turn to. Since we would never use "it" for a human character who doesn't fit into either grammatical gender, it doesn't make any sense to make exceptions for members of other sentient species. Just as importantly, though, we don't have a consistent pronoun for this character, because different stories call them different things, and different characters use different pronouns within a single story. Heck, the Doctor uses at least three different pronouns to refer to Alpha Centauri in their first appearance. So: "Alpha Centauri was the delegate on Peladon for the planet Alpha Centauri. They helped the Third Doctor in defeating Hepesh and Arcturus."

And in cases where we only ever meet a character in a certain form, which is not their true form, it would be acceptable to use gendered pronouns when discussing the person while inhabiting that body, but, unless gender is made clear, usually not necessarily correct to gender them at any point before then. The truth is that we don't really know Sentris' gender. "When a prime breach developed between the two universes in the form of Charlotte Pollard, Sentris took her form to honour her." Before this part on Sentris' story, we should not assume anything, and so gender-non-specific pronouns should be used.

Actually, Zygons are a bit complicated.
 * Bonnie certainly seems to have a female identity (remember that gender can exist without sex distinctions), but in PROSE: The Bodysnatchers, Zygons are pretty clearly hermaphroditic, starting out with a more feminine appearance before being essentially masculinised, I guess, in the sterilisation process. Queen Elizabeth seems to refer to them all as men in Day of the Doctor. In their very first appearance, the Doctor says, "Broton escaped and he still has control of the monster. He plans to attack some target in London." So do we always use he for Zygons? In a quick search of The Zygon Inversion, the Doctor doesn't seem to use any pronouns at all for Bonnie. Do Zygons have binary gender?