Quote:
Originally Posted by VydorScope
As mentioned already in this thread, while "it" is grammatically correct in the pure sense, it is not in common usage. Common usage only uses it when referring to a thing, a plant, and sometimes an animal. So "Ban shook its head" would commonly be seen as making Ban not a person. Personally I would avoid it in that context.
For example, see wikipedia:
While they are not authoritative, they do show the common understanding here.
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Yes, because they are discussing the real world, where there are no genderless people. (While there are different ways of defining gender, and people for whom the different definitions might conflict, there is always a genetic definition to fall back on, you either have a Y chromosome or you do not.)
In a science-fiction context where true genderless entities did exist, it would be the correct pronoun for them.