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The idea that male is default

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Comments

  • MillerCrossMillerCross
    edited 2011-10-20 16:18:43
    You can change. You can.
    Sending as a PM. 
  • glennmagusharveyglennmagusharvey
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    1. "He", and especially "man", are very much used to refer to one specific gender.  When a bar says that every man must wear formal attire, I wonder why an equivalent demand is not made on the women.

    2. However, "he" also continues to be used as a generic pronoun for gender-neutral instances, in formal writing and such.

    3. If you want an existing gender-neutral pronoun, just go with using they/their and themself/themselves.  Half the time no one will notice the reference error.  This is much better than how most of the time someone will notice that you're implying that men wear pantyhose.

    4. If you want to go with a new pronoun, I suggest " 'ey".  Yes, that's they/their/them/etc. with an apostrophe replacing the "th".  This is similar to the idea of using "ey" that some people have floated (without the apostrophe), but I think that the apostrophe makes it more acceptable since it seems like you're just pronouncing things with a twang than actually trying to force some politically-correct neologism onto people.  Do this subtly, in text and (especially) in speech, and you might be able to get away with it.

    5. Discussing things is okay.  Sniping at people is not.
  • NyktosNyktos
    a little muffled
    But the apostrophe just makes it look like a short form of "they".
  • glennmagusharveyglennmagusharvey
    edited 2011-10-20 19:17:10
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Exactly, and that's why it'll go over easier.  Because people who want to hear a gender-neutral pronoun will hear one, and people who aren't expecting a neologism will hear a pronunciation accent instead.
  • BlackHumorBlackHumor
    @PrincessApricot: Out of your three sentences, 2 and 3 are about equal. There's totally nothing wrong with 3; if you don't like it that's personal taste and not some kind of universal grammar rule.
    However, if a suitable replacement for "he" and "she" were to be
    created, the blandness and repition would be much more pronounced,
    leading to its damnation amongst English professors everywhere.
    THAT EXISTS. IT'S CALLED SINGULAR THEY.

    If you don't like Shakespeare as a source, how do you like the King James Bible? As well as at least one Bible translation per century since the Bible has been translated into English?

    Singular they IS grammatical, it IS a perfectly correct gender-neutral pronoun, and there's no good reason not to use it whenever you need one.
  • MillerCrossMillerCross
    You can change. You can.
    Psssst

    In a situation where "he" does not fit (such as when women are INCLUDED, and thus, an exception), no singular pronoun can be used because it doesn't exist. Well, it does, as BlackHumor's article more or less demonstrates, but most English professors will strike it down faster than you can say " ".
  • NovaNova
    If you must eat a phoenix, boil it, do not roast it. This only encourages their mischievous habits.
    . . . the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.

    For an example on the correct usage of the 'singular they'.
  • vandrovandro
    edited 2011-10-21 00:55:01
    He who laments and can't let go of the past is forever doomed to solitude.
    I could interpret the they to refer to the cambrige police arresting somebody at their home.
  • NovaNova
    If you must eat a phoenix, boil it, do not roast it. This only encourages their mischievous habits.
    You could. I'm pretty sure that it would be incorrect to deduce such, though. That is due to the qualifier 'own', when it was referring to the person being arrested, meaning that the 'their' there is referring to the person being discussed (which is the arrested person here).

    Pretty sure that's right. If I'm incorrect, I'd like to be told why though :c
  • vandrovandro
    He who laments and can't let go of the past is forever doomed to solitude.
    "there was already proof that they were in their own home" is its own clause, the own didn't directly imply the somebody in the dependant clause at all.
  • NovaNova
    If you must eat a phoenix, boil it, do not roast it. This only encourages their mischievous habits.
    I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure this out, and I've now managed to give myself a headache. I'm pretty sure that when multiple people are specified in a sentence, regardless of which clause it's in, things that come after the subjects automatically specify the last person mentioned in the sentence. However, I can't find a rule that supports this, mainly because I have no idea where to start looking when I'm looking for multiple subjects in a sentence being referred to.

    So, all I can say really, is that English is ambiguous. Unfortunately :C
  • captainbrasscaptainbrass

    ^ Yes. However, whilst the ambiguity might leave room for humour, no-one would really misunderstand that "they" and "their" didn't refer to Cambridge's finest. The context tells you that. You don't get whole police forces living together in one house.


    Anyway, if they wrongly arrested someone, presumably we'd know who this person was, and hence their sex.

  • vandrovandro
    He who laments and can't let go of the past is forever doomed to solitude.
    You are depending entirely on context rather than grammar there, captainbrass, which was the point I was trying to make.
  • captainbrasscaptainbrass
    You have a point there, vandro - but is that a problem, if it works i.e. people understand it?
  • vandrovandro
    He who laments and can't let go of the past is forever doomed to solitude.
    A simple  "it works" shouldn't be enough, that's just mediocrity.
  • captainbrasscaptainbrass
    I prefer to call it pragmatism.
  • BlackHumorBlackHumor
    @vandro: Oh come on, ALL languages rely a great deal on context.

    As an example, Japanese uses context for its ENTIRE FUTURE TENSE. I think English can totally get away with context to specify antecedents for pronouns.
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