# Theists: do you refer to God as "He," "She," "It," or "They"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 2, 2010, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-do-you-refer-to-god-as-he-she-it-or-they/541705 "2010-06-02T23:15:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-do-you-refer-to-god-as-he-she-it-or-they/541705/21 "2010-06-03T15:08:48Z")
“He” English lacks a gender neutral pronoun that would be more appropriate. “S/He” is clumsy looking, “It” is for an object. I tend to go with “He” over “She” just out of habit and history, but “She” doesn’t bother me. ---
**Author:** ![SecondJudith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@SecondJudith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecondJudith)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-do-you-refer-to-god-as-he-she-it-or-they/541705/22 "2010-06-03T15:19:00Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I would reply to Rune that using _he_ as the default pronoun is just another way of asserting that _male_ is the default gender; it is inherently dimissive of other possibilities. It’s like treating _white_ as the default race. I completely agree with this. For myself, I use “god” and “god’s”, which can get a bit awkward (“When god hid god’s face from Moses”, etc). But to me it is still vastly preferable to “it”, which removes any sense of characterisation and personality, “she”, which I like for equalising all of the “he”-defaulters but always derails into a Why Yes I Am A Feminist And Yes My God Is Non-Gendered, which is a good conversation but gets tiresome when it’s the _only_ conversation, or “he”, which as you say effectively marginalises half the people in the world. There is also a bit of theological support in the idea that one of the Jewish god’s characteristics is to be _echad_, which is _so_ singular that god needs a very singular pronoun as well. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-do-you-refer-to-god-as-he-she-it-or-they/541705/23 "2010-06-03T16:22:53Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![Paranoid\_Randroid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paranoid_randroid/32/18_2.png) [@Paranoid\_Randroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paranoid_Randroid)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-do-you-refer-to-god-as-he-she-it-or-they/541705/24 "2010-06-03T17:22:49Z")
Edward Feser, a catholic philosopher whom I alternately admire and vehemently disagree with-slash-utterly despise, has [a short article](http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/05/god-man-and-masculinity.html) arguing that the masculine pronoun is more appropriate because God is more analogically male than female or neuter. I offer it here because it is relevant and probably close to what many Christian theists would articulate, but I do not find it very convincing. His first argument: > [@](#): > > For [God’s creatures] are dependent on Him in a way comparable to a family’s dependence on a father; and He has authority over them comparable to the authority a father has over his family. And his second: > [@](#): > > From a classical theistic perspective, God creates the world ex nihilo rather that out of His own substance. Creation is thus in no way comparable to gestation and birth, imagery which, when applied to theology, suggests either pantheism or a pagan cosmogony. The divine creative act is more like the relatively “distant” role played by the father in procreation. My emotional reaction to the first is quite negative; I suspect (even as a budding quasi-catholic) that the conception of male as head-of-household is at best no longer relevant and at worst an unalloyed bad. The second just seems like hardly relevant ex post rationalization. ---
**Author:** ![ErinPuff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dbc845/32.png) [@ErinPuff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ErinPuff)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-do-you-refer-to-god-as-he-she-it-or-they/541705/25 "2010-06-03T17:39:41Z")
I do the awkward pronoun-avoiding thing. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-do-you-refer-to-god-as-he-she-it-or-they/541705/26 "2010-06-03T20:37:24Z")
His Divine Do-Nothingness, The Perpetually Disinterested Absentee Landlord Of All Heavenly Bodies And Compactified Domains, Whom We Shall Also Know As Rodney. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-do-you-refer-to-god-as-he-she-it-or-they/541705/27 "2010-06-03T20:39:56Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > His Divine Do-Nothingness, The Perpetually Disinterested Absentee Landlord Of All Heavenly Bodies And Compactified Domains, Whom We Shall Also Know As Rodney. > > Stranger Can someone help me get these feces off my shoes? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-do-you-refer-to-god-as-he-she-it-or-they/541705/28 "2010-06-03T20:53:47Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Can someone help me get these feces off my shoes? Is it threadshitting if an atheist offers a serious response? I tend to use ‘they’ (as a singular) when referring to a poorly specified god, or sometimes ‘it’ (though ‘it’ often makes for ambiguous-sounding sentences, so it is to be avoided. It the _word_ ‘it’ is to be avoided, I mean. See what I mean?) When speaking about the judaeochristian god ‘God’ or Thor or the FSM or some other god that’s generally considered to be explicitly male, I may use ‘he’ occasionally, either for clarity or by accident. I virtually never capitalize ‘he’, though; I’m a disrespectful cuss. I only use ‘she’ when referring to an explicitly female god, a class of which I do not consider the judaeochristian god to be a member. ---
**Author:** ![InterestedObserver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@InterestedObserver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InterestedObserver)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2010, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-do-you-refer-to-god-as-he-she-it-or-they/541705/29 "2010-06-04T05:54:58Z")
When referring to “God” (the force I believe to be within and behind the Universe, though being of no particular religion…perhaps not even a “theist” as most think of the term) I avoid pronouns whenever possible. When not possible, I use It or She/He. The very IDEA that “God” could be of either sex (as opposed to NO sex or BOTH/ALL) has always struck me as silly and somewhat offensive. Though I will admit that Jehovah/Yaweh is definately a male God in both how He is referred to in the texts and His behavior. But He is not MY God. 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theists-do-you-refer-to-god-as-he-she-it-or-they/541705.md?page=1)