Thoughts on Mx

I’m Gender-Neutral.

Or perhaps I’m Genderfluid. Agender fits too, and ultimately every time I try to nail down my gender identity to one of the currently accepted terms, I come away thinking “I mean…maybe? I guess?”

I’m autistic, and for me, gender is just confusing. There is a lot that goes into it, a lot that comes out of it, and I just don’t flippin’ know anymore. I don’t care anymore. I don’t have the time or energy to devote to this when I could be planning my next RPG session or struggling to finish this dang-blasted chapter!

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts. If you need evidence of that, look at my post on gender-neutral nobility. Give me enough time, and I’ll fix all the problems with the English language!

Eh, maybe not, but I certainly will share my opinions! Thank you for asking! So glad you’re curious! No, no, the doors are locked, don’t bother trying to flee, you’re mine now! For the next few minutes, anyway.

There is a tendency to label anything gender-neutral with an X, like some strange linguistic/algebra chimera. Given my generation, I can’t help but compare this to the X-treme-ness of the 80s and 90s. The problem is, it’s just clunky. It sounds bad, it looks bad, and if someone told me some alt-right neo-nazi invented the “stick an X on it” trope to discourage people from considering gender-neutrality, I’d believe it. Latinx? Is that like spandex? Is that pronounced LA-tin-EX, la-TEE-necks, or LA-tinks? (For the record, I have heard several native-spanish speakers say “latine” (la-TEE-nay) is better, so that’s what I default to. It just sounds better to my ears.)

Perhaps the worst — no, not the worst…be a Better Socrates…

I don’t understand where Mx. came from. I mean, a quick look on Wikipedia can tell you its etymology, and I do appreciate a good Mx./Mix pun, but…just try saying it. “Hello students, let me introduce your new teacher, Mx. Krandall.” “Phone call for Mr. or Mx. Humphry!” “I’ve got a package for Mx. or Mrs. Steingold.” It’s a thirty-car-pileup of the vocal cords. Eeeugh. In contrast to my ‘-min’ invention when it came to occupational titles, Mx. is a word that might look passable when written out, but hitches terribly in my brain.

Besides, how would you write it out? Mr. is mister, Mrs. is misses, Ms. is miss…and Mx. is…mix? Is it short for mixster? Mixstress? Mxyzptlk? I’d like to explore finding a better alternative; one that sounds like a natural extension of mister and misses and looks gender-neutral on the face of it, without resorting to the letter X.

Let’s start with the obvious. Mr. and Ms. are both “M” followed by another letter as an abbreviation for a longer word. We could either go back to the etymology of the longer words and then abbreviate, or start with the abbreviations and work backwards. Since the abbreviation is naturally pronounced the same as the longer word, we should probably start there. Mister and Missus are both derived from Master and Mistress, so by finding a gender-neutral honorific for Mr. and Ms., we are also looking for a gender-neutral Master and Mistress.

Master originally derived from magister, which is connected to Maestro, Meister, and Magi. Mistress has similar roots, from Latin and Old French. The older French words, Maistresse and Maistre, are a good place to start, now we can look at gender-neutral endings in French.

…Yeah, there aren’t any. French only has masc and femme endings. Okay, what about Latin? Well, Latin has so many different declensions there’s no way I can be accurate without some extensive study, and I only have so many hours in the day, you know?

So let’s be inaccurate: ‘Um’ seems to be relatively safe guess, based on a few minutes of searching the internet, so the gender-neutral version of Maistresse and Maistre is Maistrum. That doesn’t look or sound to bad, really. A quick look at the Old French Wiktionary suggests that ‘um’s either become ’e’s or are dropped, turning Maistrum into Maistr or Maistre…which is the masculine form of the word.

Okay, so what if it became Maiste? That gets a bit too close to “mastah” for me, which is how writers depict southern slaves talking about their owners. I’d rather the gender-neutral master/mistress not be given that baggage. If the ‘ai’ becomes an I instead of an A, we get mistah, which is how east-coast kids talk to trench-coated gumshoes. Again, I’d rather not deal with the connotations.

It’s probably better, then, to go back to the modern words. Mister and Missus give an obvious rule: the agender title needs to start with Mis and have two syllables. Masculine’s second syllable is “ter” and feminine’s is “us,” so what’s the neutral suffix?

I tried taking names and giving them different endings until I got a neutral-sounding name. Using Jack, for example, you could get Jacki, Jacko, Jacka, etc. Erin could be Eriny, Erinu, or Erino; Tom could be Toma, Tomee, or Tomih…

A lot of the endings sounded silly, but after playing around for a bit, I found some semi-regular neutral sounds. The “oo” sound of U and the long “ay” sound of A sounded neutral to my American ears more often than not, so what does that do to our ‘mis’ root word? Misoo or Misay, huh? Misoo sounds very odd to me. Misay sounds better, even more so if I add the ’t’ back in, and I might settle with mistay…were I not a maximizer and already on a roll…

I’m not the first person to wonder about this issue. A quick look here gives us some other people’s ideas. https://universalenglish.org/gendered-english-words/ is also an interesting read, both for the attempt’s strengths and its flaws. It’s interesting to see both when the ‘-um’ latin suffix works and when it doesn’t. Do I think this syntax will come into common usage anytime soon? Of course not; language evolves through use, not through scholarly study about what “should have happened” if the language were designed.

To my mind, Mistrum is probably the closest to what we would actually have if French cared about neutral endings, but it does sound a little odd to my ears. Add to that the character of Mistrum Ridcully of Unseen University, and it doesn’t particularly sound gender neutral to me anymore.

Mistree is cute, possibly too cute by half. I’d rather a commonly used term doesn’t become a pun. Miss-star is similarly punnish, and I think far to close to Mister to be of practical use.

Misslin sounds too much like Michelin, missiff like mastiff, missell like missile, and missive like…well, missive.

What about missim? missit? missin? missid? missic?

Nah.

Okay, this all stems from a problem with French; there are no gender-neutral endings in french. A long chain of etymology suggests that the french madame is from the french “my lady:” ma dame; and Monsieur is from “my lord:” mon sieur. A gender neutral word could just be “my person,” or ma personne…or…

According to this, there is another word used for “people” in french, a word more like “folk.” It’s always plural, and is considered masculine: les gens. If we added a “my” on the front and forced it to be singular, we’d get ma gen. (pronounced like mah-jen) Relax and Americanize the word and you get magen, spelled majin if you like Dragonball Z.

So…Mister, Missus, Misgen? As in to Mis-gen someone? Mis-gender? Again, a lexicographically solid option that doesn’t quite fit.

The kicker? Miss would be a pretty perfect neutral title compared to Mister and Missus if it hadn’t been usurped to mean “unmarried female.”

…You know what’s interesting? Child used to mean specifically female offspring and a bearn was a male offspring; now child is agendered. In German, “girl” is mädchen, which is gendered as a neutral noun, das mädchen, not feminine: die mädchen. I wonder if there isn’t some strange linguistic thing that happened where females are gender neutral in our language until they become older and able to bear children. Or bearnren. Is there some sexism in this? Over time, do languages decide that young non-child-bearing girls are agender?

Studies have shown that when you ask a German do describe a generic key, (masc.: der Schlüssel) they will use more masculine descriptors, such as iron, useful, solid, or strong. When you ask a Spanish speaker to do the same, (femme.: la llave) they use more words like delicate, shiny, or pretty.

An often useful thought experiment is “Earth-2.” We are here on Earth-1, living our lives as usual, and along comes Earth-2; exactly the same in almost every way, but with one key difference.

For example, the english-speakers on Earth-2 gender their objects, similar to Spanish and German. Forks are masculine, perhaps, and chairs are feminine. We might think it’s weird, but they’ll laugh at us, saying “the chair is obviously feminine. Look at how delicate, shiny, and pretty it is. Look at how solid, useful, and strong the fork is. It’s clearly masculine.”

Now we can imagine an Earth-2b, where the fork and chair’s genders are swapped, and consider how these earthlings describe their furniture. Here on Earth-1, we shake our heads and realize that an individual fork might be strong or sturdy, while a different fork could be delicate or pretty. We sigh and shrug and say “their language has changed how they view the world, it’s clear there is no inherent masculinity or femininity in everyday objects;” but that’s not the interesting bit — no, sorry, it is interesting, it’s not the last interesting bit.

Now we can imagine Earth-0.

Earth-0 is looking at us the same way we are looking at Earth-2. They’re shaking their heads and shrugging and saying “it’s clear there is no inherent masculinity or femininity in people.” An AMAB or AFAB person might have masculine or feminine traits, but there is no inherent “maleness” or “femaleness” in them. And we might laugh and say “this person is obviously a man. Look at his jaw, his beard, his lack of milk-ducts and womb. Look at this person’s hips, her clothing, and the fact that she’s pregnant; she’s clearly a woman.”

To which, the obvious answer is; “an individual man might have a jaw, a beard, or lack a womb, but a different man might not.” The fact is, every piece of evidence that we might use to define a male or female — from clothing to chromosomes — has a counterfactual. There are women who grow beards and there are men who grow breasts. There are people with chromosomes different than either XX or XY. Some people choose to live differently than their purported gender, and as I see it we have two options:

We can call these counterfactuals exceptions, mistakes, or even failures. We can say these people are “flawed” men and women, and not worth upending our binary view of the world.

Or, we can listen to Earth-0 and recognize that our view of gender is not “natural.” It’s not inherent to our beings, it’s imposed. If someone were to ask “what’s your gender,” my only honest answer has to be “that’s not up to me.” It’s something that other people decide — has always been what other people decide.

Okay…this has gotten a little off track…What does this have to do with Mr/Ms/Mx?

I recently received a wedding invitation that included an RSVP card. While the invitation was addressed incorrectly to “Mr. and Mrs.” the card had a line for us to fill in our name, and it began with M; like this: “M_________”

Obviously, we were supposed to add our own “r” or “rs,” but it drove the point home for me. If Gender is something we create ourselves — something we “add on” to our genderless nature — then that’s perfect. We are all M, and some of us add on our own r or rs. Really, Miss is a perfect title for agender folk. Miss/Missus/Mister. Clean, simple, clear.

As the world shifts, and as differentiating married versus un-married women becomes less and less common, it’s possible Ms. will fall by the cultural wayside. Should we agender folk pick it up and adopt it as our own?

Maybe not. It’s just as likely that Mrs. is the one that goes, and we call men and women by Mister and Miss. What will we call ourselves then? Will we reject the idea of formal/respectful titles altogether? Maybe Mistrum is the only option for we agenders? Or perhaps the consonants will drift and we’ll be missms? Mr, Mrs, Msm?

Who knows? The future is a strange place, and all we know is our language will continue to evolve through use, not because some foolish NB on the internet lectured about how it should be.