dehumanizing oneself in english doesn't stop at it/its pronouns and "thing"! here's some other words that mark grammatical inanimacy:

interrogative pronouns: "guess who what just cooked a whole pot of noodles!" "who which (one) wore it better, the robot or the doll?"
relative pronouns: "now it is the one who's which is / that's to blame"
※ which as an inanimate relative pronoun is getting less common, and that is being used animately as well. still, either is better than the explicitly animate who.
indefinite pronouns: "there's someone something new in the club" "nobody nothing could be nicer than this one!"
whatever this one is called: "you're the only one thing it's obvious to"
("the ___ one" constructions can often be changed to "the \1 thing" to make them explicitly inanimate)

i'll add to this list when something comes to mind