Normally, in English, like most languages, the default pronoun is masculine:
Bylaw 1.2: “If the corporate director files a complaint, he shall be heard forwith.”
I graduated from college, and then returned to academia for grad school. Now EVERYTHING is like this:
Bylaw 1.2: “If the corporate director files a complaint, she shall be heard forwith.”
So did the feminists somehow take power? And only change the pronoun rules (and not reduce, say, the rape rate?) Why are even older ‘white male’ professors using this? It sounds bad to my ears, and if it’s wrong to use only masculine, would it not also be wrong to use only feminine pronouns?
I think it’s simply political correctness. People figure nobody will be offended if you use “she” by default, whereas there’s a possibility of trouble if you use “he”.
You must live somewhere far from me. I haven’t heard this. VERY rarely I will hear “She” or “her” for a general pronoun, but it’s still rare enough to make you take notice, and wonder if it’s general or if they’re talking about a specific person. We’re still very far, I think, from using “she/her” even 50/50, let alone all the time.
The only time I ever see ‘she’ used is when there’s multiple sections (examples, word problems, etc) to a document, and then it usually alternates with ‘he’ per section.
Ouch. That must be really awful. Anybody with enough of a problem with ‘he’ as the default to insist on this surely could cope with the grammatical stretch needed to accept the ‘they’ pronoun so often used in speech in such contexts.
Some people feel they should not be used in the singular, remaining reserved only for the plural. When those people die off, we will finally live in a world of sunshine and flowers.
“It” is awful as a gender-neutral personal pronoun. Does it even have a history of being used as such? “They” and its declensions, on the other hand, have a centuries of use as gender-neutral pronouns, so would be a much more natural choice, from a speaker’s point of view.
Btw, to repeat a conclusion I developed in a previous thread:
It’s only sexist when you use both ‘he’ and ‘she’, and use them with a pattern. Eg doctors are 'he’s and nurses 'she’s. If everyone always used ‘he’, it could never possibly be sexist. One might say, “well if all the professionals are references as ‘he’, then that would be sexist.” Yes, but ‘unemployed loser’, ‘parent’, and ‘nurse’ would also be ‘he’ and the word would be as implicative of women as ‘fast’ means ‘unmoving’.
Actually, I think many people who use ‘he’ and ‘she’ “50/50” are guilty of constructing their own patterns with their usage. Those patterns are designed, in contrast, to be the opposite of statistical trends. A sort of ‘fire with fire’ propaganda war that may be worthy, but ain’t exactly gender neutral.
We should choose one pronoun. Maybe ‘they’, since it’s natural and precedented (yeah… “precedented” meaning like how we killed singular ‘thou’ so we could all refer to eachother respectfully). Maybe ‘it’. Maybe ‘he’.
When the subject is indefinite “he”, “she”, “it” and “they” all are inaccurate in various ways.
However referring to a person as an inanimate object is likely to cause offense. Making assumptions about someone’s gender also contains the possibility of causing offense. But referring to an individual in the plural is relatively innocuous.
So … “they” it is. After a few decades it will become the correct usage and all the old documents with “he” or “he/she” will sound faintly anachronistic.
I’m guilty of this. I always use she if the person is a ‘positive’ (client, executive etc.). Using ‘he/she’ looks and sounds stupid.
Using ‘he’ will probably earn you a lecture unless you are talking about someone unpleasant (stupid person, ignorant person…someone who is doing something wrong)…then you use he.
Watch TV commercials and you will see the same thing. Females are knowledgeable, confident and right. Males are imbeciles and wrong.
I do this to not make waves. I figure everyone knows why I do it.
