# It's "He" goddammit. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 1, 2000, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230 "2000-07-01T02:33:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2014, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/81 "2014-06-15T21:22:54Z")
So the hen came first…? ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/82 "2014-06-16T04:14:59Z")
Sort of like how scientists looking at light from distant galleries are actually looking back into time. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/83 "2014-06-16T06:10:00Z")
Can they find my car keys? I haven’t seen them since yesterday. ---
**Author:** ![Not\_Carlson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bc79bd/32.png) [@Not\_Carlson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Not_Carlson)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/84 "2014-06-16T08:09:02Z")
> [@Cyros](#): > > you is singular. Yo’ mama is singular! ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/85 "2014-06-16T08:55:02Z")
So, **friedo** , do you still agree with your rant? According to the preface to the 2011 NIV Bible, linguists have discovered that “they” is the most common gender neutral singular personal pronoun. Hence the the Bible now uses singular they to avoid gender confusion. For me, at least, that’s when I figured singular “they” had won out. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/86 "2014-06-16T09:54:28Z")
I think she’s learned his lesson. ---
**Author:** ![tapu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@tapu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tapu)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/87 "2014-06-16T11:51:40Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > So, **friedo** , do you still agree with your rant? According to the preface to the 2011 NIV Bible, linguists have discovered that “they” is the most common gender neutral singular personal pronoun. Hence the the Bible now uses singular they to avoid gender confusion. > > For me, at least, that’s when I figured singular “they” had won out. Precisely. I probably didn’t need to make a case for singular ‘they.’ Language develops naturally. It will take time after that for the more formal (prescribed) writing version to be accepted all around. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Shine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr_shine/32/464_2.png) [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/88 "2014-06-16T12:50:20Z")
One thing that champions of singular they forget about is the difference between a generic single person and a known single peson. If I want to dicuss the character Vaarsuvius form _The Order of the Stick_, who is either male or female but a running joke is that no-one except him/her knows, and he/she does not care about the issue. or my particular doctor who is obviously either male or female, calling either individual “they” is very ugly language. By contrast a sentence beginning “any doctor who …” flows fine with they ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/89 "2014-06-16T13:30:55Z")
“He” is masculine gender. “It” is neuter gender. [del](“She” is a book by H. Rider Haggard, and may be neglected for the nonce.)[/del] In standard modern English of the last several hundred years, a person of the female sex takes the feminine, one of the male sex takes the masculine, and one of undefined sex (for whatever reason) _also takes the masculine._ This is not “neuter gender.” That would be using “it,” which is disparaged. _All of this_ (though conventional to us) _is essentially arbitrarily constructed._ We could have used “it.” We could have used “they.” We could have used “she,” except that the culture considered calling a man by a feminine pronoun a provocative insult, whereas presumably calling a woman by a masculine pronoun was…less likely to get one challenged to a duel? Anyway, we could have used something else, but we use “he.” We use the masculine for a person of undefined sex, whether “he” is unknown, yet-to-be-determined, or represents a position open to persons of either sex. Except when we don’t. Most English speakers know jack-all about linguistics and gender. They think gender is something intrinsic to a person, rather than a colorful conceit of Indo-European languages. So they worry. The ones that do _get it_ think, well, isn’t it sexist that the masculine gender is used for both male sex and undefined sex? Does that imply something, _particularly in a culture which considered women not to be legal persons for generations?_ So we get constructions like singular “they,” or, “he or she.” Then there are the books that just sometimes use “she” for person of undefined sex, kind of to make a point. (This is kind of charmingly simple. [I don’t mean stupid. I mean, well, elegant.]) And then there are the weirdos who start making up their _own_ personal pronouns. [I seriously considered putting “personal pronouns” in scare quotes and decided that was unfair.] So we have, iirc, “s/he, hir, hir, hirs,” and um, something with “zie” in the nominative… Look, it’s language. It may evolve according to what people think is semiotically correct, what they find easy to say, what they find familiar, or what they hear others doing. You ask me, we should’ve just gone with “it” several hundred years ago, but that ship has apparently sailed. In English specifically, neuter gender pronouns seem to imply a level of non-personhood below that of female gender pronouns. So I expect to see a lot of custom-built pronouns with an ostensible gender of, “neuter but not inanimate,” or the like, for a while. Until the euphemism treadmill eats them all, and they are mainly used to indicate genderqueers and other social deviants or to mock those we want to insult by that association. Because we do in fact do that. Oh, well. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/90 "2014-06-16T13:45:09Z")
Wait, this is a zombie thread? Oh, well, _twaddle._ > [@Disgruntled\_Penguin](#): > > Heh, as a southerner not living in the south I find y’all is an excellent choice for a singular pronoun too. It dodges the sex issue and people already think you’re a moron so it’s neutral in those terms. Plus, they don’t really know if that’s how the term is actually used so they won’t call you on it. You use “y’all”\* in the third person?\* :dubious: Alternatively, what “sex issue” are you having\* in the second person?\* > [@Steve\_MB](#): > > _ **“You”** _ refers to MORE THAN ONE PERSON, thou dumbass. I think I love you. ETA: Wait… ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/91 "2014-06-16T13:54:30Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > So I expect to see a lot of custom-built pronouns with an ostensible gender of, “neuter but not inanimate,” or the like, for a while. Until the euphemism treadmill eats them all, and they are mainly used to indicate genderqueers and other social deviants or to mock those we want to insult by that association. Because we do in fact do that. > > Oh, well. To be fair, even a lot of GQ people mock the whole “idiosyncratic personal pronoun that probably starts with a x or z” thing on the grounds of it often (not always, but often) being a little full of special snowflakeness. These people tend to take the “he or she, don’t really care” or “my pronoun is ‘they’” route. And, of course, some prefer to just be called by some preferential gender – consistently “he” or “she”, but depending on what degree they feel female or male, or whichever is socially easier (usually being their physical sex). ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/92 "2014-06-16T14:44:15Z")
14-Y-O gender-neutral zombie thread warning. It’s way too early on a Monday morning for this gender-neutral shit. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/93 "2014-06-16T14:51:05Z")
Could someone please give me an example where another word that precludes half the population is used to describe both segments? White doesn’t include blacks. Male doesn’t include female. Father doesn’t include mother. Yet, he and man include she and woman. I think not. I still believe in rewriting the sentence and using the indefinite article. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/94 "2014-06-16T14:59:47Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > So the hen came first…? Only if you’re a creationist. The joke is a shibboleth that way. Coincidentally, one of the novels up for a Hugo this year includes an ambulatory AI whose main language didn’t include gender markings on pronouns. ( **Ancillary Justice** , Ann Leckie) Its narrative voice defaults to she unless its thinking of communicating with another character in another language. So it sound like there are a lot of women around, and then you slowly pick out which characters are and which aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/95 "2014-06-16T15:09:42Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Could someone please give me an example where another word that precludes half the population is used to describe both segments? White doesn’t include blacks. Male doesn’t include female. Father doesn’t include mother. > > Yet, he and man include she and woman. I think not. Well, it’s not like someone sat down and **decided** on this by any sense of logic. It’s a pretty fun quirk of linguistic evolution. The reason “man” includes “woman” is because “man” meant “person”. “Wer” and “wyf” were used for man and woman, while “wer-man” and “wyf-man” were collective nouns for “men/women in general”. Eventually the default devolved to male, so we were in an awkward position where “man” meant both “wer-man” but retained its archaic meaning of “man”. It’s not a case of someone up and deciding that women should be honored to be lumped in with men or anything like that. We still see it to a weaker degree with actor/actress and the like, where there’s a bit of a schism about the gender neutrality of the word (some argue that lumping actresses under “actor” is wrong for the same reason as lumping them under “men”, and some argue that splitting actress into its own category implies women and men aren’t equal). I’m not sure about the gender neutral “he”, but I suspect that it may have been strongarmed in after the fact to match with the fact that since “man” was gender neutral sometimes, so much the matching “he” as well. You see this happen in a lot of languages, actually. I’ve been told there are a lot of Chinese words with the “woman” radical somewhere in them, which effectively mean things like “this profession, except done by a woman”. To be clear, I support using gender neutral pronouns. Especially since by now I feel it’s moved to actually uncommon to use the gender-neutral “he” and “man”, but I don’t think you can really make an argument of logic about a linguistic quirk like this. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/96 "2014-06-16T15:10:54Z")
**foolsguinea** touched upon a few points I’d like to expand on. A man is a human of the male sex, a woman is a human of the female sex … only words have gender. English has almost depreciated this completely from it’s germanic origins. Other than pronouns, I can only think of the word “ship” that still carries her gender. Any pronoun used to replace the word “ship” must be the feminine form, “She displaces 108,000 tons.” > [@nonferrous\_guy](#): > > I’m impressed by how many people are on top of thier english.At the same time i’m crying tears of laughter reading these posts. Thank you for bringing fresh humor into my day. We’re holding people to account for something they posted … four … teen … years … ago … ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/97 "2014-06-16T15:26:12Z")
The use of the masculine to talk about an individual who’s gender is not known is simply convention. But so much so, that using the female form send the clear signal that one is talking about females specifically. I think he/she works okay when there is just going to be one reference to the people involved, and I do use it. But the problem arises when you need to keep doing it through a paragraph or more. It makes for a horrible read. I sometimes try to use “one”, as I did above, but that can become stilted when done repeatedly. So, sometimes it really is better to just go with the convention and use the masculine article. I think anyone who writes a lot will have come to this conclusion. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/98 "2014-06-16T15:30:02Z")
I like to be in a second person when it comes to sexual distinctions. The default pronoun is “she”. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/99 "2014-06-16T15:45:01Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > Go take your Wymyn’s Rights bullshit to the kitchen and make me some fucking pie. I think you mean “chicken pot pie” ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2014, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230/100 "2014-06-16T16:30:47Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > All you man-hating dykes who insist on saying “She” can suck monkey dung. It’s been “He” for a long, long, long time. There is no reason to change it just because you are afraid of dicks and facial hair. Go take your Wymyn’s Rights bullshit to the kitchen and make me some fucking pie. This is pure poetry. > [@BigT](#): > > So, **friedo** , do you still agree with your rant? According to the preface to the 2011 NIV Bible, linguists have discovered that “they” is the most common gender neutral singular personal pronoun. Hence the the Bible now uses singular they to avoid gender confusion. > > For me, at least, that’s when I figured singular “they” had won out. The Straight Dope which mostly hates the bible and thinks anyone who follows it is retarded and evil but will happily and readily use it to try to back up their pendantic bullshit. Brilliant! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-he-goddammit/24230.md?page=6)