#and one of them i know is gnc and uses neopronouns and ae is so fucking cool i need him to know that i look up to him so much

[catboy-autism]

what if i was EMOTIONAL

[neopronounsmybelovaed]

Ae/Aer History

Not done on request, I just like them. :)

These pronouns were coined by David Lindsay in his book A Voyage To Arcturus, written in 1920. In chapter sixteen, Leehallfae, a character named Leehallfae is introduced. Ae looks humanoid, but especially androgynous, and is described as "neither man nor woman, nor anything between the two, but was unmistakably of a third positive sex, which was remarkable to behold and difficult to understand."

Since Maskull, the main character, finds that he, she, or it, or any "earthly" pronoun wouldn't apply to Leehallfae, he decides to use the pronoun ae.

Leehallfae belongs to a species called phaen, which is an ancient, nearly extinct, species that predates men and women. Despite being from 1920, the main character uses ae/aer pronouns until (spoiler alert!!!) ae, like basically everyone else in this book, is killed.

Other than there being an entire nonbinary species, A Voyage To Arcturus has a lot of gender exploration and fuckery.

One character, Panawe, started life with both male and female "souls" inside him, and though he would have preferred to live as both, the female sacrificed herself so the male could live fully. Still, he seems to express sadness and a sense of loss at this. Quite possibly bigender, to use today's terminology. There's another character, Oceaxe, who does identify fully as a woman, but is quite gnc. Then Tydomin very explicitly says he wishes to transition from female to male. I don't know how much clearer Lindsay could make it.

Finally, the main character, Maskull- he has several gender crises throughout the book. At one point in the book, he's referred to as a "person of mixed sex," and replies "I have always regarded myself as a man." So, not entirely sure what this implies, but the book holds a lot of ideas about gender, and coining a new set of pronouns is very on brand.

A Voyage To Arcturus only sold about 600 copies, so it wasn't wildly popular within the general public, especially as trans and nonbinary identities became more popular, considering the book was written in 1920. As a result, ae/aer pronouns were not particularly well known.

However, in the last few years, ae/aer pronouns have gained more popularity, with .44% of participants in the 2021 gender census entering those pronouns (which calculates to 196 people). Ae/aer and fae/faer are also considered by some, like the pronouns page on the NDSU website, to be in the same group of pronouns that can be used with or without the F, similar to how ze/hir and ze/zir are grouped together. Since fae/faer is one of the most popular neopronoun sets at 6.4% of respondents, its popularity might account for some of the popularity with ae/aer pronouns as well.

You can read a little more about the history of fae/faer here, if you're curious.

Sources: Voyage to Arcturus ebook, NDSU pronouns page, gender census 2021