Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-1451563-20180913002703/@comment-5918438-20181004204034

If we're making real-world connections, I do know people who use different pronouns at different points in time; their gender fluctuates. They’re genderfluid. I might ask them on a given day what pronouns to use, but ultimately, if I’m unsure, or I’m speaking more generally about them, I will default to they.

The lovely thing about singular they is that it gets to wear two hats: they’re both gender-specific pronouns, used by many trans and nonbinary people, and generic, neutral gender-nonspecific pronouns, for anyone.

So I am not claiming here that the Doctor prefers they/them pronouns, or that they’re the best pronouns to use in all cases, as with Orr.

I’m using the latter sense, of gender-nonspecificity. Sometimes they’re "he", sometimes they’re "she", so described generally, "they" is most appropriate.

"They" is like "he or she", but compact, and doesn’t carry "or she" as a mere afterthought. Since "they" can be gender-nonspecific, its use is not limited to people who are not at all "he" or "she", or who are somewhere in between. The Doctor is, in fact, he and she, at different points in their timeline.

It’s true neutral, not constrained to two options, and so it's also future-proof. Time Lords can regenerate into any sort of person, so you never know what their future holds.

Five actually describes gender as fluid, for many people, and "even more so" for Time Lords. And Twelve says Time Lords are above "petty human concepts" of strict binary gender, so why force it onto them?