Gender Preference

   Movable genders have issued a challenge to editors as to which pronoun to use.
   A person in the process of physically changing biological equipment to conform to that person's sexual preference or identity has the right not only to choose a gender, but with that transition comes the choice of pronoun.
   Selecting "he" or "she" is easy enough once the process is complete, but what does one do while it's under way?
   An online newsletter in Berkeley, CA, tried to deal with this in a story about a UC Berkeley student taken into custody over a stabbing who prefers the pronoun "they." The person has a male name.
   So what's an editor to do?
   To use the plural pronoun, as the newsletter did, results in this: "According to Gomez Jr.'s Facebook page, they are a UC Berkeley student ... " The writer/editor added parenthetically that a friend contacted Berkeleyside, the online newsletter, to say Gomez Jr. uses the pronoun "they."
   That's his/her/its/their right, but the construction makes for clumsy reading at best, and implies a grammatical error at worse.
   There was no indication that the person involved is straight, gay, bisexual, transgender, in transition, none of the above or all of the above.
   Solution: Don't use a pronoun at all, but repeat the person's name in every reference.