See, that’s another sort of case where I might do that - for clarity. If the mother is a female, then there’s bound to be “she” and “her” in the text referring to her. Rather than have an awkward sentence referring to both the mother and the fetus as “she” and say things like, “she - that is, the mother - may experience increased frequency of urination as she, the fetus, grows in size and begins to press on the mother’s bladder.” Sure, you could delete the pronouns entirely, but “the mother” and “the fetus” repeated over and over again gets tedious, especially in a non-medical context. Easier to assume a male fetus and write: “She may experience increased frequency of urination as he grows and begins to press on her bladder.” I’d mix it up with plenty of "the fetus"es, but when a pronoun flows better, I’d probably choose male for clarity, not politics.
When you keep reading about how bad it is to destroy a male fetus (he & him), your mind wonders if the author had any negative thoughts on aborting female fetuses.
I definitely would use “it” when referring to a fetus of unknown gender, but that would make the anti-abortion crowd heads explode.
I have a word addiction.
I read 30 or more magazines regularly.
I said it’s becoming more and more common. I wouldn’t venture a guess as to the exact proportion of its use.
I do see it more in books than in magazines. I think this is because books tend to deal with larger, more sweeping examples and articles tend to deal in specifics relating to individuals. The need for the generic is more acute in books.
You need to clarify this. The use of “he” as the generic was universal - except when the context was specifically about women, even in ways we would find odd today. In the 20th century, doctors were always he and nurses were always she, even though a few percent of the professions were the opposite. This reinforced the unspoken assumption throughout the society that boys would grow up to be doctors; girls would grow up to be nurses. This false usage was as consistent as anything in the English language.
Are you saying that to be “consistent” he had to be used in every single case? If so we can agree that the use of “he” except for stereotypical women’s professions was a sexist pattern.
I read maybe 20 or so magazines. I read a lot of books. I don’t see “she” being used that much as the default pronoun. If the OP had stated that it was being used more often than before as the default pronoun, I wouldn’t have objected. The problem is that scrambledeggs wrote:
> Now EVERYTHING is like this:
>
> Bylaw 1.2: “If the corporate director files a complaint, she shall be heard
> forwith.”
This strikes me as a typical example of “I’ll wildly exaggerate in the OP so people will need to exaggerate in their replies too. After all, a thread in which everyone overstates their positions is so much more informative than one in which people are accurate.”
I think one problem being elaborated here is that during the time that people grew up with “he” as the default, males pretty much ignored it and took it to mean he or she (with some subconscious influences, no doubt, as has been pointed out), and many females pretty much ignored or accepted it, too, also with its undertones of implication. Some females resented it. Not many males did. But overcoming that problem by using a female pronoun, one that has NO generic connotations as “he” did, definitely makes it ineffective as a generic. Some solutions offered are better than using “she.” Using “they” can work sometimes. Rephrasing can certainly work. I like the “s/he” formulation. But using “she” only replaces one problem with another version of the same problem.
I really don’t understand all this resistance. When he, him, and his were the default pronouns (they still are in most places,) most people were comfortable with the idea that the male pronoun was accepted as neutral. I popped out of high school in 1967, and it was nearly universal then. Why, then, is it any harder to accept the female pronouns as neutral?
If we take they and their to the word forge, and we hammer on them to make them singular, how can we tell a singular their from a plural their? If you make a change and lose clarity, it is not a good thing.
FORCRYINGOUTLOUD! How do you tell a singular “you” from a plural “you”? Same thing.
Just to play devil’s advocate, this already happened in English with the second-person pronoun. The same word, “you,” fills at least four functions: the singular and plural in both objective and subjective cases. People seem okay with it, thus far.
Ahem, or what Annie X-mas said.
It’s been cited before, but “they” and “their” used to be perfectly acceptable singular pronouns in English. “He” was made “neuter” (NOT) for a while, and now, quite naturally and with no hammering required, colloquial English (the only real kind) is moving BACK to the original usage of “they” and “their” as either singular or plural third person neutral, as “you” and “your” is either singular or plural second person neutral.
Really, no legislation needed. It’s already happening.
Or…uh…what they said.
Many people mentally sound out the words they are reading, and there is no accepted pronunciation for s/he. This causes them to stumble whenever they encounter it. That’s why I prefer avoiding it whenever possible.
No use in suggesting a pronunciation, either. If it doesn’t evolve one organically s/he will simply disappear. As it’s already mostly done.
I’d actually like to find out if your assertion is true in that case, and if so, exactly what do people sound out? My feeling is that females would tend to subvocalize “she” and males “he,” since both are visually present.
I subvocalize it with a speedbump: “sh[glottal stop]he”. Very distracting, indeed.
I hear “s’ he” in my head when I see that word.
-FrL-
There may always be a way, but it gets old fast when the document is many pages of prose rather than a few bullet points.
Which is why I am firmly in the “they” camp. It solves so many problems so nicely.
This often adds the awkwardness of passive voice, however, which I can only handle in small amounts. “The teacher shall correct the student who…” is better, IMO.
I have always felt that mixing up the genders of the pronouns can make writing easier to read. When I have an example using two people, I always make one female and one male so that it will be obvious who the “he” and “she” refer to.
Casting sentences in the plural to use “they” and “them” is good, but using “they” as a singular is the work of the Devil themselves.
Simple. Singular = “you” and plural = “y’all” or “youse guys” or “you’uns,” depending on whether you’re from Mississippi, New Jersey, or Pittsburgh. If you’re from parts of Georgia, then singular = “y’all” and plural = “all y’all.” If you’re from the Amish areas of Pennsylvania, then singular = “thou” and plural = “you.” If you’re from California, singular = “dude” and plural = “dudes” or “dudes & dudettes.”
You’re welcome. 
Shouldn’t that be “y’all are welcome”? 
Around here, some like to make multiple contractions.
“Y’all’re crazy.”
And of course they need the possessive: “Don’t forget y’all’s coats!”
:smack:
I hate “they” in the singular. Won’t do it.
I happily alternate between “he” and “she.” It seems the perfect compromise to me.
But he’s a more interesting question: Weren’t “her” and “girl” originally masculine words?
Back in the bad old days, actually, men and women both accepted that men had priority. The pronouns followed the social convention. Men using the pronoun often didn’t think about women at all. Men went out and did things, while women stayed out of the way unless they were quietly supporting. Men would use ‘he’ both with the unstated understanding that, since they were writing about important things, then obviously they couldn’t be writing about women, and also as a generic, with women just not being noted because they weren’t important.
(I’m having an electric monk on horseback moment, here, and trying to fight it.)