In 1971, Casey Miller and Kate Swift coined the gender-neutral pronouns tey, ter, and tem. Writing in the preview issue of Ms. Magazine, Miller and Swift called their creation “the human pronoun” which would help women to be recognized “as full-fledged members of the human race.”
Miller and Swift wanted to “kick the habit” of generic he, a pronoun that treated everything male as the human norm and everything female as “a subspecies.” They rejected the “tandem” he or she as well-intentioned but awkward.
Miller and Swift did acknowledge they as the pronoun of choice whenever gender is unknown or irrelevant, or it needs to be concealed. But as professional editors, they considered singular they ungrammatical. Instead they used they, their, and them as models for the new pronouns tey, ter, and tem, offering this example: “If anyone objects, it is certainly ter right--but in that case let tem come up with a better solution.”
Casey Miller and Kate Swift, “Desexing the Language,” New York Magazine, Dec. 20, 1971, pp. 103-04. The preview issue of Ms. appeared as an insert in New York Magazine; the first stand-alone issue of Ms. appeared in July, 1972.
Three years later, Warren Farrell did just that, "improving" tey, ter, and tem by coming up with te, tes, and tir. At the time Farrell was a self-proclaimed male feminist, though he has since become an advocate for men’s rights. But in 1974 Farrell copied Miller and Swift’s pronouns without really crediting his source or explaining why his slightly-altered coinages offered a better solution than Miller and Swift’s.
Farrell did note that Kate Swift was the source of “t” as the first letter for his pronouns, but he trumpeted his own version of “the human pronoun” without bothering to mention that Miller and Swift had already staked out that term.
And Farrell couldn’t resist mansplaining his pronouns, though his account is a little hard to follow:
Each of the human pronouns consist [sic] of a t plus one letter from both the masculine and feminine gender of the older pronouns. Te takes the e from he and she, tes takes the e from hers and the s from his, tir takes the i from him and the r from her.
Farrell adds this final bit of pseudo-scientific authority to make his coinage more attractive: “All words are pretested for easy readability and pronunciation.” But perhaps the pronunciation is not so easy after all: in his illustration, Farrell feels he must explain that te sounds like tea, not tay.
Warren Farrell, The Liberated Man: Beyond masculinity, New York: Random House, 1974, p. xxxii.
Although the second-wave feminism of the 1970s saw renewed calls for a gender-neutral pronoun--a word that would include both women and men--the need for such a pronoun was recognized as early as the 1790s (that date is not a typo). In 1808, the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge suggested extending the neuter English pronoun it to persons of either sex, but his suggestion went nowhere because using it for people has always been insulting.
In 1851, the philosopher John Stuart Mill complained that the lack of a gender-neutral pronoun forced him to use generic he, which excludes “one-half the human species.” And in 1841 we find the first coined gender-inclusive pronouns, E, es, and em (that date, too, is not a typo, and surely earlier ones will appear).
From the mid-nineteenth century to the 1970s, more than 200 gender-neutral pronouns were coined by well-educated and sometimes well-known writers concerned with good grammar along with gender inclusivity. Calls for a pronoun that is not just gender-neutral, but also nonbinary, begin to appear in the 1990s, and today’s discussions of inclusivity and rights for nonbinary, gender-nonconforming, and trans persons has brought renewed attention to the gender pronouns and their history.
Today Miller and Swift’s tey, ter, and tem still pop up when people consider nonbinary and gender-neutral options, along with E, hie, per, hir, zie, xe, and several other coinages. And of course there's singular they, used in writing since 1375 (not a typo!) and now no longer marked as ungrammatical by the major grammars, dictionaries, and style and usage guides.
It’s not clear why Farrell felt compelled to improve on Miller and Swift’s pronouns with te, tes, and tir, or whether anyone else ever used his upgraded “human pronouns.” I only came across a passing mention of them in a 1976 letter to the Sacramento Bee several months after my new book, What’s your pronoun? Beyond he and she, went to the printers. Incidentally, the SacBee coined gender-neutral hir back in 1920, using it sporadically in its pages until the mid-1940s.
Fittingly, Miller and Swift’s Words and Women (1976), which promotes tey, ter, and tem along with other ways to de-sex the language, is still in print, while I found Farrell’s book, with its meticulous explanation of te, tes, and tir, languishing forgotten in the remote storage facility of my university’s library.
