Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
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.
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But readers will understand the vocabulary based on their real world. So unless at some point in the book, preferably early on, it is made clear why he is using the non-personal pronoun, many readers will be confused. The same would be true of "shim" or any of the other made up pronouns, but at least they do not carry an expectation with them.
In a sense using an unknown word, is more clear then using a known word since the known word has baggage. If he wrote
Ban shook hiser head
Then when the readers come across hiser, they will automatically use context to figure out what he meant. If he writes
Ban shook its head
Then the most common understanding will be "Ban is not a person, maybe a robot or a dog."
Writing dialog from another land and time has to take into account how the reader reads. So while "it" may possibly rise up in a genderless society to fit this role, modern readers will not likely think that way.
The same is true of
Ban shook Ban's head
That is 100% correct way of saying the same thing, but it is not how we speak so most readers will think there are 2 different people named Ban in that sentence.
Readers are smart enough to figure it out, but things like this jar them out of the book, and that should be avoided when possible, IMO.
Anyways, that is all just my opinion.
