What would a non-binary tā （他／她） look like?

Question

He and she in Mandarin looks like this:

Male tā: 他

Female tā: 她

What would a non-binary tā look like? 也?

它 is for animals and inanimate objects, not exactly fitting.

祂 is for gods, not really appropriate.

牠 is the same as 它.

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For practicality purposes 你 could work the same:

male nǐ: 你

female nǐ: 妳

non-binary nǐ: 尔?

Answer 1

The best candidate for a non-binary TA is in fact 他. This is particularly obvious in the word 他們 (them), which definitely does not refer to a group of specifically males. 他 did not acquire the specific meaning he until well after 她 was invented, and 他 originally was a generic word meaning other (e.g. 他人 the other person).

她 did not actually exist before the new culture movement; its creation was from the direct influence from European languages. This is commonly seen in older popular novels like Dream of the Red Chamber, where 她 makes no appearances and it is incorrect to assume that 他 means he or him.

Note: In Taiwan, 他 is still sometimes used to refer to both he/him and she/her, although this practice is declining.

Answer 2

TA (exactly what you see here in Pinyin, not in Chinese character) is widely used by media in China when the gender is not certain. For example:

孩子的眼睛需要你和TA共同守护
news.youth.cn

你 is good for both sexes in mainland China, in Taiwan and Hong Kong, some people like to change the left side to be a 女 if it refers to a female, but with too much exchange and communication with mainland, things have been changed.

Also in mainland, there is not a special word for the third person noun for God or deities or fairies.

Answer 3

While not an official character, a recent article put forth the pronoun:

_{Cathy Lai, ‘X也’and ‘Ta’: The gradual rise of gender-neutral pronouns in Chinese, July 2020}

It's typed "X也" since the character is not currently in use.

The article describes non-binary people also use 他 (acknowledging its history as non-gendered), 佢, and TA (the Latin letters).