When The New York Times identified a bookstore employee this weekend as “Mx. Hardwick,” it wasn’t a typo — “Mx.” is fast becoming the preferred pronoun for persons who do not wish to be assigned a gender, and the Times is using the emerging honorific with increasing frequency.
In an article that appeared in print on Nov. 29, the Times explored the roots of Bluestockings, a New York City-based bookstore and “activist center.”
The following is the opening paragraph:
“Are we anarchist?” Senia Hardwick asked. “Technically, yes.” Mx. Hardwick, 27, who prefers not to be assigned a gender — and also insists on the gender-neutral Mx. in place of Ms. or Mr. — is a staff member at Bluestockings, a bookshop and activist center at 172 Allen Street on the Lower East Side. Mx. Hardwick was explaining that the ethos of Bluestockings, which is run by a collective of volunteers, is difficult to classify. But if you must: “Anarchist is OK.”
The report later quotes “Mx. Hardwick” as saying, “Nobody gets paid. All money made goes back into the store.”
This isn’t the first time that the 164-year-old newspaper has employed “Mx.” when referring to a person who wishes to remain gender neutral, the New York Observer noted.
In June 2014, the Times used “Mx.” three times in a report detailing Barnard’s efforts to become a women’s college that accepts transgender applicants. The paper also investigated the term in June 2015 in an article titled “Me, Myself and Mx.”
However, though the newspaper appears to be leaning towards using the gender-neutral pronoun more often in its reporting, the Times’ standards editor Philip B. Corbett told the Washington Examiner it’s not a clear-cut style decision quite yet.
“In my view, it’s too soon to set down any clear-cut style guidelines in this area. Our approach on style decisions is generally to follow accepted, settled usage, not to make the rules,” Corbett said in a statement provided to the Examiner and the Observer.
“But in referring to people who don’t identify as male or female, I think usage is still evolving and there’s not one settled or widely recognized set of guidelines. In the meantime, we just have to discuss situations case by case. The two main goals are to be respectful to those we write about, and to be clear to our readers,” he added.
