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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 2578495" data-attributes="member: 3146">Bah. They're just repeating what they were told in orientation when they were in college and what they read in feminist papers back in the 60's and 70's. Any honest student of historical english would know that the male pronoun was default in English from before the time of Shakespeare until the late 20th century. (And honest teachers have an obligation to mention that fact if they discuss it). Even now, it is a highly controversial topic anywhere except universities. You'll note that the first and second edition D&D books used the male pronoun as gender neutral and 3e chose to avoid the problem by using iconics (which are more or less evenly divided between men and women).As for "tantamount to telling women to get back into the kitchen," I suppose they also get faint and have trouble breathing if they hear any speculation that men and women might be biologically different. If they can't handle people disagreeing with their politicized declarations of how language should be used, they don't belong in a university. One could just as easily call their approach to language "tantamount to newspeak" but that might be a little more accurate than the first.</blockquote>