Women and the generic masculine pronoun

[JustKate]

All I can say is that it most certainly isn't accepted everywhere, particularly in less-than-casual writing. I mean, I myself use ain't, not to mention a few other nonstandard words and expressions, but I'm not going to use it in a business letter. Context means more than one thing.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Technically, the correct term is "he or she", but I honestly think "they" will be an acceptable replacement at some point in the future (right now, it's used in every day speech, its only hold up is in formal writing where people don't like the idea of using a plural word for a singular pronoun).

 

[iguana_tonante]

I fight with this all. the. time. ALLLLLLL the time.

They is - sorry - not completely acceptable to me as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, and the reason is that it is in fact a plural pronoun. Of course it's plural - if it could at times be singular, we would sometimes say/write things like "This person is correct because they is brilliant," and we don't, do we? No.

But you can write "This person is correct because they are brilliant", right? I'm honestly asking. Just as, when the courtesy plural "you" came to replace the singular "thou", the plural verb followed suit. "Thou art" became "you are", not "you art". Since the singular they is also a form of courtesy, I suspect the usage should be similar,

In Italian, as a courtesy form we address the interlocutor as "lei", which is also "she", and the verbs are changed appropriately. "Tu sei bravo" ("you are good") becomes "lei e' bravo" ("she is good"). Funnily, adjectives (which in Italian have terminals that denote the gender of the name they are related to) do not, so for a male interlocutor you can find something like "lei e' un bell'uomo", "she is an handsome man".

 

[JustKate]

^ I couldn't, no. To me and to most nitpickers, they is plural, and while it is often used as a singular gender-neutral pronoun in English, particularly in non-formal English, it has yet to be accepted as such by the majority of us grammar nuts. (Though there are some notable exceptions. It is, for example, widely used in some academic writing, or so I've heard, because of the loathing that the gender-neutral he often seems to engender.) What I could write is "These people are correct because they are brilliant." Assuming they are both correct and brilliant, that is.

Edit: But if plural won't for whatever reason work, I write around the problem, and using their as a singular gender-neutral pronoun isn't one of the ways that I do so.

 

[Deckerd]

You just have a phobia. You have to inure yourself to it.

 

[JustKate]

"Inure" is good.

Baby steps, you mean? Start with everyone/their and gradually work my way into person/their and student/their and so on? Not sure that's going to happen any time soon, but I guess you never know.

I guess it's more likely than my ever voluntarily eating liver, say, or touching a moth. Brrrrrrrrr!

 

[Michael Chris]

"He" is gender neutral.

 

[JustKate]

^ Correction: He can be gender-neutral. Obviously it isn't all the time. I mean, there's a reason why we use he/him for males and she/her for females, right?

 

[Michael Chris]

Yes, it's both.

 

[Middle Earther]

I've used "they" as a gender neutral often in informal writing. I could never get away with it in academic writing, though. The accepted practise for now is to alternate the pronouns.

Eventually, I do believe the singular "they" will become the correct way, only because it's the only non-awkward way of doing things.

I can't stand "s/he" or "he or she" - too silly for me.

 

[Rii]

Using 'she' as a generic pronoun is just feminism gone wonky. Mixing the two like that is just terrible writing. I'm not surprised reading that excerpt gave you pause!

'He' as a generic pronoun IMO works perfectly fine, and probably didn't arise as a sexist thing to exclude women, but more because it worked and gender neutral pronouns didn't happen to arise. Cries of sexism seem to be winning the day though, so here's hoping people come up with something that doesn't sound ridiculously forced. I'm not holding my breath though.

Most of the texts I encounter that consistently use 'she' as the generic pronoun are feminist texts, yeah. The only rational reason to prefer 'he' over 'she' as the generic pronoun is that the former is shorter, which in turn reflects the derivative nature of 'she' (and 'female' and 'woman' for that matter). Whilst I don't subscribe to the notion that inequalities in the language act in any significant way to perpetuate inequality, I do believe that they reflect the patriarchal nature of the societies in which the language developed.

 

[Yoda]

Here's a noodle scratcher... For words like policeman, which is gender neutral, feminism decreed that there must be the word policewoman as well. The only way I'll read policeman as gender specific is if someone says something like "Policemen and Policewomen". If I were to see policewoman by itself I would think police officer that is a women, and if I were to see policeman by itself I would think police officer of no particular gender. If I wanted to specify a single male policeman I would say "male police officer".

But, for some reason feminists also decreed that a term which was already split into gender specific forms should be condensed back down into one gender neutral form. That is actor/actress should just be actor regardless of sex. Strangely ultra-left (and presumably largely supportive of any feminist agenda) Hollywood, and the Academy Awards stick with Best Actor and Best Actress as categories. Calling the categories Best Male Actor and Best Female Actor would highlight the inherent sexism of the categories. That is, there's no good reason why acting ability is dependent on sex. There's no category for Best Directress.... if a woman did the best job directing in a given year (as judged by The Academy of poor taste), then she'll win Best Director. I don't see any logical reason it shouldn't be the same with the acting categories.

 

[zephramc]

Perhaps motherfucker could be used.

"Once the child feels safe again, (the) motherfucker is free to play or explore the environment. The attachment figure thus becomes a safe base from which the child can explore and to whom (the) motherfucker can periodically return for 'emotional refuelling'."

Indeed it is a dynamic word which may be used as a noun, verb, adjective or adverb. As an example. "That motherfucker was going faster than a motherfucker!" It stands to reason that motherfucker could be used as a pronoun as well.

 

[Yoda]

^your idea has much merit.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

Here's a noodle scratcher... For words like policeman, which is gender neutral, feminism decreed that there must be the word policewoman as well. The only way I'll read policeman as gender specific is if someone says something like "Policemen and Policewomen". If I were to see policewoman by itself I would think police officer that is a women, and if I were to see policeman by itself I would think police officer of no particular gender. If I wanted to specify a single male policeman I would say "male police officer".

But, for some reason feminists also decreed that a term which was already split into gender specific forms should be condensed back down into one gender neutral form. That is actor/actress should just be actor regardless of sex. Strangely ultra-left (and presumably largely supportive of any feminist agenda) Hollywood, and the Academy Awards stick with Best Actor and Best Actress as categories. Calling the categories Best Male Actor and Best Female Actor would highlight the inherent sexism of the categories. That is, there's no good reason why acting ability is dependent on sex. There's no category for Best Directress.... if a woman did the best job directing in a given year (as judged by The Academy of poor taste), then she'll win Best Director. I don't see any logical reason it shouldn't be the same with the acting categories.

But when it comes to acting, there are distinct differences in the roles available to men and women. As much as we would like to think we are past that, there are still clearly defined gender roles within our society. As such, the portrayals of male and female characters on screen differ enough to warrant the separation of categories. Direction may differ with the sensibilities of the person, but traditional gender diffences do not play as great a role.

 

[Yoda]

^That's something I considered, but ultimately rejected. Lots of roles aren't realistic for actors for all sorts of reasons. Ian McKellan couldn't have have played Frodo any more than Elajah Wood could have played Gandalf. I don't necessarily agree that a woman can't play a male role either. There have been examples of women playing women who were pretending to be men that fooled people before the ruse was revealed to the audience. Just as there have been times where they fail to pull it off and it's utterly transparent. But if a woman can play a male up until a 'big reveal' then she could probably play a male character straight up if she really wanted to.

For a lot of stories whether the protagonist is male or female doesn't really matter outside of superficial and easily changed details anyway. But really, is comparing Mickey Rourke playing a washed up wrestler to Frank Langella playing Richard Nixon any more valid or fair of a comparison than comparing Rourke and say Angelina Jolie playing a distraught mistreated mother in the 1920s?

 

[Rii]

Here's a noodle scratcher... For words like policeman, which is gender neutral, feminism decreed that there must be the word policewoman as well. The only way I'll read policeman as gender specific is if someone says something like "Policemen and Policewomen". If I were to see policewoman by itself I would think police officer that is a women, and if I were to see policeman by itself I would think police officer of no particular gender. If I wanted to specify a single male policeman I would say "male police officer".

I disagree that the "man" suffix is gender neutral, indeed in this and other similar cases (fireman, rifleman, midwife) the role has historically been open only to folk of a particular gender, that fact contributing to the name.

I'd just call 'em all police officers. Oddly enough most, err, "colourful colloquialisms" for such are actually gender neutral.

But, for some reason feminists also decreed that a term which was already split into gender specific forms should be condensed back down into one gender neutral form. That is actor/actress should just be actor regardless of sex.

See above.

Strangely ultra-left (and presumably largely supportive of any feminist agenda) Hollywood, and the Academy Awards stick with Best Actor and Best Actress as categories. Calling the categories Best Male Actor and Best Female Actor would highlight the inherent sexism of the categories. That is, there's no good reason why acting ability is dependent on sex. There's no category for Best Directress.... if a woman did the best job directing in a given year (as judged by The Academy of poor taste), then she'll win Best Director. I don't see any logical reason it shouldn't be the same with the acting categories.

Works for me, make it so.

 

[JustKate]

Where a nice, understandable and concise gender-neutral term is available (e.g., police officers, firefighters), um, why NOT use it? I am not a fan of going to goofy lengths to avoid using a quasi-masculine/feminine term, but where a non-goofy one is available, what's the problem with using it?

So actor works for me. I wish the world had settled on waiter as a gender-neutral term, but alas, it seems server or, worse yet, wait staff, are currently the gender-neutral preferences.

 

[Holdfast]

I just use "he" if I need a generic pronoun.

Sod political correctness. Everyone understands it, hardly anyone gets het up about it.

 

[Tim]

Language has a tendency to evolve the words it needs. In the case of the need for a gender-neutral pronoun, the word 'they' has come into use, which is perfectly appropriate, if perhaps not yet accepted in the ivory towers. The establishment always lags behind. 'He' is also acceptable, in the same sense that 'Man' or 'Mankind' is. Other invented solutions are just awkward. Alternating pronouns is inconsistent (and distracting), and 's/he' works on paper but is unpronounceable.

Well, "they" is plural, so using it as a direct replacement for "he" or "she" often results in a grammatically incorrect sentence. I use "one" in such cases, but only if I am unduly concerned that the reader might perceive some degree of sexism from using either "he" or "she."