User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Help!/@comment-5532276-20140228232457/@comment-1789834-20170421130055

In my opinion, when there is no in-source statement from which we can gather a gender, 'they' should be used over 'it' when talking about humans. There's nothing wrong with the grammar of it. I left university with a degree with modern languages and can tell you that using 'they' is perfectly fine. Where aliens are concerned, sometimes gender can be a lot trickier and their reproductive systems won't necessarily be the same as ours. For that reason, I don't see any problem using 'it' over 'they'. In conclusion, it either comes down to personal preference, or if you really care that much, a vote.

I don't think 'ze' and 'hir' are appropriate here. As was mentioned quite rightly earlier, neither 'ze' nor 'hir' are used widely throughout British English and throughout the Whoniverse. One character being called 'hir' constitutes less than a minority of characters. But in that character's case we call them 'hir' because the story does.