Pronouns

[Philotomy Jurament]

That is not what the generic he signifies, any more than the subjunctive "If I were ...." signifies the past tense.

Exactly.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

That is not what the generic he signifies, any more than the subjunctive "If I were ...." signifies the past tense.

If a sufficiently large number of people find the gender-neutral "he" suggestive of normative masculinity, then that is a factual problem. Considering that in the past English spelling has been altered to suit the Francophilic tastes of certain influential individuals - "programme", anyone? - I would suggest that altering English grammar to eliminate that perceived suggestion is a pretty reasonable course of action, considering that no-one ever felt excluded or marginalised by "program".

Besides which, the indisputable age of the gender-neutral "he" doesn't mean it's not sexist; it just means it's more evidence that the development of the English language was informed by the assumption that one of the defining attributes of humanity is masculinity.

You can't suggest with a straight face that "he" as the gender-neutral pronoun has nothing to do with "he" as the male pronoun. That the collective contributions of the individuals whose speech and writings shaped the English language settled upon the same word to indicate an unknown person as the word for indicating a male person is not coincidental; it's indicative of a deeply sexist mode of thought concerning the nature of "people".

Now, there are male-dominated societies whose languages don't distinguish between the genders of their pronouns - the Mandarin Chinese ta, for instance. Gender-bias isn't all down to pronouns!

But to suggest that there's no possible effect upon individuals and upon society from constantly using the same word for "person of unknown gender" and "male person"? That's frankly laughable, and demonstrably incorrect in the former case.

You can put it down to people being "ignorant" of the "real meaning" of the gender-neutral "he", but the perception by many of its being gender-biased is real and, I think, more important than the technically correct interpretation.

After all, we're only talking about some women feeling socially marginalised in comparison to some people being irritated that grammar is being "misused".

 

[Agback]

the word nurse (and similar words like "librarian") carries an implicit feminine gender

Did you know that Casanova was a librarian?

 

[prosfilaes]

Clearly? In "Each actor must go to his trailer", does that include females?

Yes, of course.

The sentence before that was "Every actress must stay on the set." Do you still think that "Each actor must go to his trailer" includes females?

IMO, the "gender baggage" in your example is attached to "nurse" rather than "his." Rightly or wrongly, the word nurse (and similar words like "librarian") carries an implicit feminine gender, so you expect a feminine pronoun. Replace "nurse" with a truly ambiguous term that carries no gender, like "employee," and the sentence sounds fine: ambiguous subject and ambiguous pronoun.

But if he were truely gender neutral, you could use it with things that were implicitly female. If we are talking about firefighters, how do I tell whether we use "he" because firefighters are implicitly male or because "he" is gender-neutral?

 

[prosfilaes]

You are of course the sole and arbitrary judge of what "is ungrammatical in my idiolect,"

Of course I am, but someone else has already confirmed that it's not limited to my idiolect.

You are attempting to redefine words that hundreds of millions of people have continuously used for hundreds of years, and then insist on that basis that we really mean something other than what we said.

Really? It was completely coincidental that the male pronoun ended up as the generic pronoun? In a world that excluded the vast majority of women from anything but "women's work", was there really such a concept as gender netural?

It is not plausible to me that the author believed that all schoolteachers are male, thought of schoolteaching as a characteristically masculine profession, or had a mental image of a man when writing that editorial.

Why is it not plausible to you? When you say "he makes a list", a male teacher comes to my mind. And certainly this one example doesn't the world of cases make; it's entirely possible in an article such as that, that "their" or "her" was written and it was "corrected" by an editor.

 

[Agback]

In a world that excluded the vast majority of women from anything but "women's work"

Quite tangentially, I note that the same world excluded the vast majority of men from anything but the work they were raised to. Precious few men had any more choice of career than women, and most of the work was back-breaking, monotonous, dead-end labour, dangerous and unhealthy.

 

[cmanos]

they/their, and he/she are twice as long asusing the alternative of chosing one point of view. Using a longer pronboun will either reduce the amount of material you get, or make the book bigger and cost more. I have absolutely no problem glossing over a pronoun and changing it to the opposite sex, but I can see where some rules lawyers would point out that since the pronoun in the description of the monk class is 'she' that only females can be monks.

WotC is trying to be diverse and bring in females to play. Making everything 'him/he/his' isn't diverse at all. Making everything 'he/she', 'his/hers', etc, is unwieldy. I'm perfectly fine with the way it is, and applaud wizards for being inclusive.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

The sentence before that was "Every actress must stay on the set." Do you still think that "Each actor must go to his trailer" includes females?

If someone used "actress" in the first sentence and "actors" in the second, immediately after, I would assume that they are drawing a male vs. female distinction, and that only the males are supposed to go to their trailers, in that case.

But if he were truely gender neutral, you could use it with things that were implicitly female.

You hypothetically could. Nevertheless, in practice, if we conceive of the subject of a word as feminine, then we tend to apply a feminine pronoun, not an ambiguous pronoun.

If we are talking about firefighters, how do I tell whether we use "he" because firefighters are implicitly male or because "he" is gender-neutral?

Context. I think people are generally intelligent enough to pick up meaning from context; we do it all the time.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Did you know that Casanova was a librarian?

No, I didn't. I knew he was something of a dilettante, and bounced from one profession to another (an approach he applied elsewhere, as well, I suppose), but I didn't know he was ever a librarian. It's a pity he wasn't a nurse, instead; such knowledge might have been useful during his venereal disease flare-ups.

 

[glass]

I'd still prefer traditional English.

Yes, I understand the point about correct language being a relative thing. We could just as well bitch about Noah Webster and how he imposed HIS spelling on all of us. Perhaps we should...it offends me that my spelling creativity is chained to the earth by those rules when I could be flying free...

If you prefer 'traditional English', shouldn't you use the Oxford English Dictionary?


glass.