amazon: Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress: A Hip Girl's Guide to the D&D Game

[dcas]

All right! That's IT! We need a gender-neutral singular pronoun in English that everyone can use, and we need it now!

He.

 

[Cutty Sark]

I will never understand why terms like "actress" could be offensive to women.

I've always heard it argued along the same lines of Mr/Mrs/Ms - the use of language is making a sexist assumption. Actor describes both an actor and an actress, comedian describes both a comedian and a comedienne, etc. By default English nouns have no gender, so adding a new feminine version of a profession implies that there is an important difference between a male and a female in that profession. When you add these types of words to chairman instead of chair and Congressman instead of Representative, the argument goes, these words constitute an attitude of gender inequality and therefore sexism.
And I have met a couple of Latin American women who were pretty close to apoplexy about how sexist Spanish is.

The difference is that these are male professions. There are lots of female professions that don't have male equivalents; viz., maid, nurse, charwoman, housewife, seamstress, governess, babysitter, matchstick girl, alewife, spinner, damsel in distress, etc.

Which begs the age-old question: which came first, the bartender or the fish?

We need a gender-neutral singular pronoun in English that everyone can use, and we need it now!

There may have been a time when "they" was incorrect, but that time is past. I feel comfortable using it, it's easy to read, it's in common usage and it doesn't force you to change the structure of the sentence.

 

[der_kluge]

http://cgi.chime.com/cat-bin/board/show?topic_id=240&tid=329&id=6902&ctid=118

I'd hit it.


Oh, everyone was thinking it. I'm just the only one to say it.

 

[Hypersmurf]

OTOH, Barbarianess ain't a word.

Yeah. Everyone knows it's Barbarianne.

-Hyp.

 

[the Jester]

Women do not exist in a hive mind.

There are women in MY hive mind.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Oh, everyone was thinking it. I'm just the only one to say it.

I was thinking that she doesn't look hip enough to be giving hip girls advice on anything, actually.

But the picture is probably an old one?

 

[Darklone]

Ah well. She's cute. Being hip is easy.

 

[dcas]

There may have been a time when "they" was incorrect, but that time is past. I feel comfortable using it, it's easy to read, it's in common usage and it doesn't force you to change the structure of the sentence.

Actually, "they" was used in the past. It's incorrect now. And you might be forced to change the structure of the sentence to avoid references to "themself."

 

[hexgrid]

It's incorrect now.

Based on what?

Dictionary.com has "used with an indefinite singular antecedent in place of the definite masculine he or the definite feminine she" as a definition of they.

I agree that "they" is annoying because it's internally inconsistent with how the language works, but it's hard to be prescriptive when even the dictionaries don't back you up.

 

[dcas]

Based on what?

You can find a discussion at this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

I don't know what the academic world is like now, but when I was in high school and college using "they" as a third person singular was definitely not permitted. As a sop to "gender equality," however, some recommended alternating "she" with "he" as is done currently in the 3.x rulebooks.