Personal Preference (P)for PHB Pronouns?

[Kahuna Burger]

Ok, ready your slings and arrows.

When I was in school, we were taught to use the male pronoun as generic. Having had that drilled into me for so many years, when I see female pronouns used generically it jumps out at me and screams "Hey, look at us, we're going out of our way to be non-offensive and inclusive."

OTOH, I had an English professor who was also a magazine editor. I asked her about proper pronoun usage. She said the accpeted proper usage had changed to include either male or female pronouns. So, whether I like it or not apparently the times have passed me by. Old habits die hard, and in answer to the OP question, I prefer male pronouns. I'm not trying to make a political statement with my answer - just trying to explain my preference.

I don't consider aknowleging your your education as a factor as political. For instance, while I was taught in school to use "he" as the default pronoun, it was taught as a style rule, not a grammatical one. That is "when you don't know the gender or it could be either, use male gender" not "He is gender neutral" (an idea which I only recently noticed and which seems as bizarre and forced to me as a generic "she" would to you).

Which is to say, while generic "she" may seem forced to you, it's unlikely that the people using it are going out of their way at all. But that doesn't stop it from forming a little speed bump in the flow of your reading, which is a perfectly good reason for a personal preference for "he".

 

[Li Shenron]

ME!

 

[Templeton580]

*

 

[Nifft]

There's also the cutting-edge, literate hipster pseudo-pronoun s/he, but that one's seen most often in gender studies texts, at this point.

I'm not sure if I invented it or not, but my favorite universal pronoun replacement would have to be s/he/it, simply because it's so fun to pronounce.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Umbran]

Read some herstory books, OK?

The last thread on this topic got closed because folks simply could not resist going into the sociopolitics. You are starting that conversation again - to some folks, the fact that you are laughing makes it worse, rather than better.

Our patience with this is going to be very, very thin indeed. This will likely be the only warning the thread gets.

Don't go there again.

 

[Desdichado]

If only those jerks who took the neutral and neuter out of English had known what they had done to us...

They has migrated in to replace it, and still folks hate it. You can't win.

I'm on board with the "don't really care, as long as it isn't jarring" camp. I don't think it's an issue worth getting worked up about. Then again, I'm male myself, so take that with a grain of salt.

EDIT: If only this was a public poll so we could publicly mock people by username who disagree with us! I guess that's a bit frowned upon in these parts, though, isn't it?

 

[blargney the second]

I suspect that regional & age educational differences are cropping up in this discussion.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I suspect that regional & age educational differences are cropping up in this discussion.

Somewhat, but the area of the country I recieved my education is not now and was not then seen as a hotbed of cutting edge inclusive thinking. Descriptive vs perscriptive language arguments seem to be independant of age region and education, and that is the other part of what we are seeing.

 

[mara]

Alternating. If guys don't feel included under she, there's no good reason to expect women to feel included under he.

-Mara

 

[Driddle]

Change is not necessary. There's no need to question old attitudes and language use in new editions.