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Subject:Re: He/She From:"Janet K. Christian" <janetc -at- AUSTIN -dot- APPLE -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 8 Aug 1995 08:01:22 +0100
>>From Mary Bull <Tdbull -at- AOL -dot- COM>, on 8/7/95 11:27 AM:
>>If "he" was supposed to be "all-inclusive," why is "she"-terminology often
>>used in the following manner:
>>
>>The manager wanted to check on the status of a project. _He_ called in his
>>secretary to ask _her_ how things were going.
>John -dot- Renish -at- conner -dot- com responded:
>Because in this case we are discussing individuals, not generic persons.
>Every language in my limited experience uses a single (and singular) pronoun
>to identify a generic person, and that pronoun is almost universally in the
>masculine gender. English doesn't even _have_ gender except as implied by
>sex. We _do_ have a sex-neutral pronoun, one, that serves the purpose as
>well as he, but it sounds stuffy and false. Finding a sex-neutral pronoun in
>English is a bit like trying to find a rhyme for silver or orange.
But I believe that was exactly Mary's point. If "he" et.al. is supposed to
be "generic" then why does it always seem that the boss is male and the
secretary is female. If the sentence were written the other way, (some)
people might even laugh at the use of "he" for secretary.
>So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with a new
>sex-neutral pronoun (including all the necessary cases) that everybody will
>quickly embrace.
Hey, it worked for Ms. There was originally no "courtesy title" for a woman
that did not immediately identify her marital status. Sure, there was some
grumbling at first. As far as I could tell at the time it was mostly from
men. They cracked jokes about it; they refused to use it. Well, today, as
my "American Heritage College Dictionary" says, "Ms. has come to be widely
used both in professional and social contexts." It even appears on most
official government/company forms. And it didn't take that long, either. I
can remember when Ms. was first "invented" and I like to think I'm not that
old. :-)
Comparing English to Spanish, Latin, German, etc. is, IMHO, interesting but
not really applicable in this instance. We aren't talking about what these
other languages do with gender. We are talking about English and what it
does/should do.
