ジェンダーニュートラル代名詞だいめいしを示しめす新漢字しんかんじ、ユニコード採用さいようで入力にゅうりょく環境かんきょうの変革へんかくへ

Lou Siufan, a well-known activist, identifies as non-binary—meaning they do not belong to either male or female—and has been repeatedly asked in media interviews which pronouns they would like to use.

However, for Lou, who is from Hong Kong, while English has gender-neutral pronouns like they and them, Chinese mainly uses gendered personal pronouns for men and women, and neither fits their own identity.

In 2017, Lou finally found a solution.

It is a new pronoun informally created by the intersex and non-binary communities.

This character resembles an existing pronoun in Chinese, but with the addition of the X radical, which evokes the concept of X-gender.

X-gender is a concept that, in some countries, is used as a third gender on identification documents and passports.

Even though it has already been about ten years since this new pronoun appeared, it still hasnt become widely used.

One of the main reasons is that, since this is an unofficial character, it cannot be typed on a keyboard, so users are forced to substitute with expressions like X也, which causes complexity and confusion during input.

However, the situation is changing significantly.

In September 2023, this pronoun was officially added to the international character encoding standard Unicode.

Therefore, it is expected that, from now on, it will be possible to input, search for, and display this character on smartphones and computers, which will also contribute to greater social recognition.

In fact, this move has been particularly welcomed in China and is seen as a significant step forward for the sexual minority community, which faces many difficulties due to conservative values and government control.

Lou said, The existence of more specific pronouns can be a valid option for people who do not want to be bound by male or female pronouns.

Currently, Lou is studying in a doctoral program on gender and sexuality.

Originally, Chinese pronouns are not necessarily binary.

In the past, ta was used for everyone regardless of gender, but in the early 20th century, as exchanges with Western countries became more active, many new characters began to be actively created.

In this process, under the influence of the first feminist movement, which advocated for womens independence, education, and diversification of written expression, the new feminine pronoun 她 was created.

Currently, there are opinions that it is not necessary to create gender-neutral pronouns like X-ya, but the development of language has a significant impact on society as a whole.

Chinese is the language with the largest number of native speakers in the world, and it is widely used from Hong Kong and Taiwan to Chinese communities around the globe.

Thanks to the efforts of people like Michael Bauer, the character X也 has been added to Unicode.

He submitted his application at the end of 2020, and it took about five years until it was approved this September.

According to Mr. Bauer, technology platforms and font manufacturers need to update their systems so that users can easily use this character, and it may take several more months to years before it is fully implemented.

Even after the technical issues are resolved, social persuasion is necessary to actually popularize this new character.

For example, in Hong Kong, there is already a unique gender-neutral pronoun in Cantonese, so there isn’t necessarily a high demand for new characters.

However, many stakeholders, especially representatives of local human rights organizations, emphasize the symbolic significance of this move.

In Chinese-speaking regions, there is still a strong conservative tendency toward the rights and expression of sexual minorities, and especially since President Xi Jinping came to power, regulations against the LGBTQ community have become even stricter.

The pride parade has been canceled, movies and TV shows about homosexuality have been banned, and even social media accounts are being shut down one after another.

Hong Kong was once a British colony and developed into an international financial center. It is more open than mainland China, but it has not legalized same-sex marriage or enacted laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Recently, with the enforcement of the National Security Law, many LGBTQ activists participating in movements opposing the government or advocating for democratization have also been arrested all at once.

On the other hand, Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, making remarkable progress.

In this kind of social situation, Lou emphasized, The existence of pronouns that acknowledge us is extremely important, and sounded the alarm about the ongoing anti-LGBTQ movements around the world and the enactment of laws against transgender people in the United States.