You’re not from around here, are you? 
Nope. Why, how is “yo” actually pronounced?
scrambledeggs writes:
> Now EVERYTHING is like this:
>
> Bylaw 1.2: “If the corporate director files a complaint, she shall be heard
> forwith.”
This strikes me as another case of “Hey, I’ll make a ridiculously exaggerated OP and then we can spend the rest of the thread arguing whether this (nonexistent) situation is good or not.” I read a lot of writing of all sorts, and it’s fairly rare to see female pronouns used as the defaults. The claim that “EVERYTHING” is this way is just nonsense.
You’re right, not quite every time, but most of the times.
I can reaffirm that in the vast majority of every law book I have seen, published since 2000, the feminine pronoun is used the majority of times. Most professors, even the older white male tenured ones, seemed to use it.
“A lawyer may reveal such information to the extent she reasonably believes necessary to prevent a person’s reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm.”
“A defendant has the right to defend others if she reasonably believes that the person assisted as the legal right to use force”
"A person may use deadly force in self-defense if (i) she is without fault; (ii) she is confronted with “unlawful force”, and (iii) she is threatened with imminent death . . . "
Law books are a small subset of all writing. Even if it were true that law books usually use female pronouns as the default, that says nothing about most writing. Would someone other than scrambledeggs who has some recent law books please look through them and tell us whether the female pronoun is the default nearly all the time?
I read more of more things than you do (I say this because I read more of more things than anybody, except maybe John Updike 
) and I’ve been seeing the use of “she” as the generic term more and more recently, especially in books.
I think it is political correctness. Not political correctness as the right uses the term but a true and proper determination that reminds us that the default use of “he” historically speaking was a continual draining nerve pain that sapped women of their will to live. (Hey, if the OP can use hyperbole…) Needless to say, I disagree with Alex’s position on this subject. Decades of research on the issue, some of it alluded to elsewhere in this thread, shows that the default use of “he” was pernicious.
Personally I write every possible sentence so that the plural is the proper referent. My second preference is to rewrite so completely that no generic person is needed. Those very rare times when it can’t be written around I use he or she. That makes the referent invisible to all readers, which is almost inevitably the effect I want.
I’ll bet anything it wouldn’t change a thing. Not if it’s consistent. Don’t get me wrong: language affects thought. But only when you’re subtle about it, shifting borders and tweaking connotations. If you bluntly take the indefinate pronoun and completely change it to ‘she’. No change. Not a damn wink.
Btw, in languages like Russian nouns have gender and the pronoun takes its own gender from the noun.
Our family recently got a male dog. The dog is fucking male it should be a ‘he’, right? Well, no. The noun ‘dog’ is female. If you say a sentence that uses the word ‘dog’ you have to use the pronoun ‘she’ afterward. If you refer to the male dog with a pronoun out of the blue, chances are you would say ‘she’. Only if you use the dog’s name, which happens to be a masculine word, would the pronoun change to ‘he’.
It threw me off at first because I’m not a very good Russian speaker. But then I get used to it. Of course people who are good speakers don’t even think about it. So fancy that: people do use ‘she’ and even when the subject is pretty definately male! I’m not sure, there might also be an example involving humans.
In any case, I assure you there’s no preconceptions of Russian dogs being somehow “feminine.”
When I mentioned it to a good speaker they said, “oh yeah… that’s kind of funny.” Like if I came up a guy and said “hey, did you know stressed is desserts spelled backwards?” Language is like that, and it wouldn’t change a thing if the indefinite pronoun consistently became “she”.
No hold up, I don’t disagree. It was but because the ‘he’ usage wasn’t consistent and actually had sexist patterns.
It would be fine, to use “he” in a consistent, non-sexist, completely generic, gender-neutral way, in many contexts, if people actually spoke that way naturally. But they don’t. And you can’t legislate language, really. It changes, but not really by external imposition (just look at how little anyone cares about the French Academy). People do not use “he” in a generic, gender-neutral way, almost ever, and you could hardly force or expect them to. [Which is why accepting behavior that they do naturally use, such as neutral singular “they”, is the best way to deal with this pseudo-problem]
We can legislate language. Isn’t this what the whole discussion is about?
No, it’s about what kind of usage each person wants. English doesn’t have an academy like other languages, so it’s all convention, not legislation.
My preference is to use “they” while speaking, since one can’t edit the spoken word, but to write in such a way that doesn’t necessitate making a choice (people have provided examples upthread).
I find ‘she’ jarring, but I suppose that’s because I grew up with the default ‘he.’ I don’t feel as jarred if, say, a female uses it. Suppose a female professor said, “When a researcher confronts a problem, she usually consults…” I imagine that she’s imagining a researcher who’s female because she’s a (female) researcher.
Pity we can’t get around this with “one.” One confronts a problem. But one has to confront his problem or her problem. No dice.
Going to the plural, they/their, doesn’t help. IMO one of the most common errors in the English language is here. It’s common usage: “When a person gets their license…” A person=singular, their=plural. So you’d have to go all plural: “When people get their license…”
I wonder if there are any books where females object to the new usage. “When a mass murderer kills her first victim…”
The wording of your comment reminds me of this pattern that I’ve noticed all the way through this thread. Whenever there have been references to the pronouns of both sexes, they have consistently been written “he and she” – never “she and he.”
I think this would indicate that even when the subject is on our minds, we habitually fall back on familiar patterns. I try to use “she and he” all the time for a little bit of balance to what everyone else does. If there is ever equity of usage for the order, then I will vary my usage.
Right here at SDMB, I have seen the participants in Great Debates addressed as “Gentlemen.” That really sucked.
Exapno Mapcase writes:
> I read more of more things than you do (I say this because I read more of more
> things than anybody, except maybe John Updike ) and I’ve been seeing the
> use of “she” as the generic term more and more recently, especially in books.
What do you do that you read that much? I read a lot of magazines. Whenever I notice “she” as a generic term it still sticks out for me, which suggests it’s still not that common. It’s possible that most writers are now rewriting so that neither “he” nor “she” is used that much.
I find this to be using the language to advance a political agenda. I sometimes find constructions like this:
- If the student selects the correct answer, she should be praised.
- If the student selects an incorrect answer, he should b corrected.
Where was the research published? Social Text? 
In this case, it does bear observation that the subject is complaining and must be heard immediately. Perhaps that has some bearing on the choice of pronoun.
A student who selects the correct answer shall be praised.
A student who selects an incorrect answer shall be corrected.
There is always a way to change the sentence so the false generic is not used.
I once read an anti-abortion book that consistantly referred to the fetus as “he.” I thought my head was going to explode.