the forbidden genders of lambdaMOO

Before we start, I have to say that this narrative is a reconstruction of tumblr posts I created and messages I sent on discord while doing my research. It's highly likely that my reconstruction isn't 100% accurate to what actually happened, but I do think it follows vaguely the path I took and I know the end result (the discovery of the Forbidden Genders) is the same.

This journey of discovery started back on April 2 of 2021. This was the height of my historical neopronoun special interest, and I had discovered that LambdaMOO, a text-based internet community started in 1990, had the option to use Spivak pronouns* as well as at least three others, Male, Female, and Neuter. I was invested. Looking further, I found an article (1, Sue Thomas) that also mentioned a Plural option, and claims that the programmer "created a bunch of extra, fake ‘genders’. And when I was done, I left them in place, figuring that just having the usual male/female/neuter was boring, anyway." So...there's more than five. Continuing to read, I was able to confirm that the Spivak pronouns were, in fact, E/Em, as I had expected.** The article didn't provide the other genders, but it did provide me with a sentence that I, currently, am feeling very emotional over. "And with my short grey hair, and wearing a black protective hairdresser’s cape tight around my neck that flowed across the form hidden underneath, it was as if I were lifted altogether away from my genitalia. My face floated above a constellation of silver clippings scattered on the dark nylon, and I wondered what the hairdresser was thinking as e snipped eir way across the planetary landscape of my skull. But then, from eir vantage point, I suppose this is nothing new. Before the salon glass, we are all reduced to this." It's a beautiful article. I highly recommend reading it.

Back to the forbidden genders (as I had now begun to call them). The Wikipedia page for Spivak pronouns says that MOOs might have "masculine, feminine, neuter, either, both, splat, plural, egotistical, royal, and second" (2, wikipedia). This gave me some more keywords for my search, and led me to The Social Geography of Gender, which provided nothing beyond some cool statistics on gender switching online and confirmation that LambdaMOO had male, female, spivak, neuter, either, splat, egotistical, plural, second, and royal pronouns as options (3). I only skimmed this paper, but I wasn't able to find a concrete list of pronouns in relation to the given gender.

Many of the articles I read were people talking about Eir own experiences using the different gender options in Lambda and other MOOs/MUDs, or Eir experiences with other people using the gender options. While these were interesting, I wasn't getting any concrete information about what pronouns were actually used until I stumbled upon Samantha, Among Others by Julian Dibbell (4). The first several paragraphs detailed the authors' exploration of gender perception through LambdaMOO, as well as a friends exploration that centered around sex. Tucked away, almost seeming like an afterthought, was the most beautiful paragraph I'd ever laid my eyes upon.

For example, in addition to the hermaphrodites (to whom the gender-tracking subroutines assigned the label either and the pronouns s/he, him/her, his/her, his/hers, and him/herself), there were those who opted at least occasionally for neuter (it, its, itself; useful when playing talking toaster ovens and the like), plural (they, them, their ... ; nice for collective organisms: bee swarms, codependent couples), egotistical (I, me, my ... ; no third person references allowed, see also the royal gender's we, us, our, etc., and second person's you, your, yours ... ), or the graphically noncommittal splat (*e, h*, h*s, h*self).

Holy shit, I thought. This was it. I had found the pronouns. I immedietly posted to tumblr, because of course I did, and I sent everyone I'd been messaging on discord the final list.

• male: he, him
• female: she, her
• Spivak: E, Em
• neuter: it, its
• either: s/he, him/her
• splat: *e, h*
• egotistical: I, me
• plural: they, them
• second: you, your
• royal: we, us

Now, I won't get in to how often these pronouns were used, the users' perception of those who used them, etc. The first, third, and fourth sources all go in to that aspect, and they're all really neat reads. I'd rather talk about the choice of pronouns here.

Male, female, splat, and spivak were all somewhat predictable. Men traditionally use he/him, we know spivak pronouns are E/Em, and splat pronouns, while not the most common, were referenced by Dennis Baron (I'm not checking that one, I'm a solid 83% sure I knew these ones beforehand and the most likely source of that knowledge was Baron). They/them being referred to as plural, while it/its gets the designation of neuter was surprising to me, with my 2020s conception of a neutral pronoun usually being they/them. However, it does make sense, they/them is gramatically plural, and it/its is the most neutral someone could go when it comes to preexisting third person pronouns. Either was also strange, but I've seen enough liability forms to understand the whole concept of s/he and not really be bothered by it.

What really got me was egotistical, second, and royal. Looking back on it, I think egotistical was the refusal to accept third person pronouns, instead asking other users to call the person by the persons' name, which is a thing today, but having it be called egotistical is so baffling. Royal makes sense, LambdaMOO is a roleplaying experience so there's a non-zero chance players will want to have a royalty inspired character, plus, royal allowed the programmers to test different gramatical plurality edits (she/he/E/it/ goes to the store vs they/you/we go to the store. Second was also odd, because generally when using third person pronouns, you want to use third person pronouns, instead of second person pronouns. I just find that one neat, honestly. It's similar to egotistical but more focused on you/your instead of the name, maybe?

Anyway, I think that concludes the first post on this particular page. I'm probably going to go back and edit it a few times to make it better, but it was fun reliving the experience of finding these pronouns

*Spivak pronouns, named after Michael Spivak and used in his 1986 book The Joy of Tex, are E/Em/Eir/Eirs/Emself. Yes, capitalized. I'm planning on making a series where I read books that include neopronouns to see how I feel about them, and this one...man. Unsure how I'm going to feel about reading a typesetting guide just for the pronouns, but whatever. I would like to do a whole post about Spivak vs Elverson pronouns because I think that whole sphere is so interesting

**The Thomas article accessed the full set of pronouns by using the command "help spivak" in LambdaMOO. It also started by asking the reader to join LambdaMOO via a guest account to find this yourself. I need you to understand that this entire time, I could have joined LambdaMOO and just looked at the actual sites description. LambdaMOO is still running as of 2026. All of this pain and suffering was for fun.

sources

1: Spivak, by Sue Thomas, in The Barcelona Review issue 35, march-april 2003. Accessed 4/21/2026

2: Spivak Pronoun page on wikipedia, accessed 4/21/2026

3: The Social Geography of Gender, by Lynne Roberts and Malcolm Parks, accessed 4/21/2026

4: Samantha, among others, by Julian Dibbell, in Mots Pluriels, accessed 4/21/2026