About

CAN I RE-PUBLISH OR QUOTE THIS WEBSITE?

Pronouns.org was first published on January 22, 2017 and has gone through several updates (including changing its name from MyPronouns.org to Pronouns.org on June 3, 2022). No, you can not re-publish entire pages of this website. But, yes, you can certainly link to the site. You may quote from this site within the principles of fair use.

What is this website about?

Pronouns.org is a practical resource dedicated to the empowering and inclusive use of personal pronouns in the English language. This website will help you understand why and how to use the pronouns someone goes by. In particular, we are focusing on pronouns used to refer to a singular human in the third person.

This website presents one set of perspectives on ways to use personal pronouns in an empowering and inclusive way. You may find that there are many other perspectives, resources, and tools, and we encourage you to seek those out, compare, and decide for yourself the best ways you can be more inclusive and empowering for all, and how that that can match to your own personality, ways of communicating, and cultural or organizational context.

This website refers to “personal pronouns” because “gender pronouns” may not be accurate as some people are agender and their pronouns are not necessarily meant to express any gender. When we refer to "personal" pronouns, we don't mean that these pronouns are necessarily private information (generally they are not), we mean that they are pronouns referring to a unique and individual person.

This website does not use the terms “feminine pronouns” or “masculine pronouns” because pronouns have no universal gendering, although we acknowledge that many people go by certain pronouns in order to express or affirm their gender. Many people may also go by certain pronouns because they are safe or socially accepted, even though those pronouns' typical gender associations may not apply to that person. Some people go by “they” pronouns, which might be thought of as “gender neutral” pronouns, but could be used for a variety of reasons that may have nothing to do with the gender of the person who goes by them.

We do not refer to what pronouns a person "prefers" or "likes" because we believe in most cases people have pronouns that they "go by" and are the correct ones to use to refer to that person. We avoid the language of asking what pronouns someone "uses" because those who are less familiar with personal pronouns can get confused and think that they are being asked which pronouns are a part of their vocabulary and not which pronouns should be used to refer to them as an individual.