April 21st, 2005
Gender Neutral Pronouns
Today I found myself in a brief online discussion about gender neutral pronouns. The author of a story wrote “everyone and his brother” to deal with gender neutrality. Then he later changed that to “everyone and his his/her brother”. This change caused some readers to complain about both choices. The first because of its’ obvious masculine bias. The second because of its’ asthetic. It’s plain ugly! So what is a writer to do? As one observer commented “Gender Neutral Language is very popular now” and another “using his is so 1920′s!”.
However, we can’t go around writing his/hers or s/he all the time. It is stupid and ugly. We have the fabulously complicated language with rules and exceptions for everything yet we have no way to specify, neutrally, a singular person of unknown gender. What gives? English is always adapting to common usage patterns. New words are introduced every year yet nothing is being done to solve a problem people everywhere face every day. The short and sweet of it is we need a new pronoun.
After reading the story that inspired this post I did a quick Google search on the topic and bumped into this article that discusses the history behind our gendered pronouns. It even put forth a few odd gender neutral new pronoun suggestions such as thon, co, E, tey, hesh, and hir. I think, if forced to choose one of those, I would go with E. We already have ‘I’ for talking about ourselves. So we could use ‘E’ for talking about someone else.
I honestly don’t have any great generic neutral pronoun suggestions. Maybe Ish and Iss. (replacing he and his). “Everyone and iss brother” or “As ish advances in iss program, the medical student has increasing opportunities for clinical work..” I guess that sounds kind of like Jar Jar Binks. Maybe ish and iss aren’t that great of set of replacements after all!
Comments
Why not assume he to imply both genders. That would make it simpler. We talk about significant others and not wife or husband anymore. It is getting ridiculous. Most people do not mind at least in professional environment. Few prudes however do mind. Personally I think we should ignore them rather then change the language using strange constructs like: E is good!
That’s plain tacky.
Angsuman Chakraborty
April 21st, 2005
“He” is the pronoun I have always used. However, I have found myself in more, and more, situations where people (my audience) find it improper and actually vocalize a complaint about it.
I agree, E is a pretty poor choice. However, it is probably the best in the list proposed by the article I link in my initial post!
Overall, I don’t have a good solution. Typically, when writing for folks who insist on gender neutrality I put the s/he and his/her combinations in place. I prefer to use “their’ but grammatically that is incorrect and I ended up getting called to task on that as well.
It just doesn’t make sense to me with as full a language as English is that this hasn’t already been handled in some manner.
You are right of course, that for the time being at least, I should just use He and His. That is the proper convention. However, even on this blog you will encounter some of those “prudes” who won’t like i.
Bill
April 21st, 2005
Bill, dude. You are looking way too far into this. Your last sentance. “However, even on this blog you will encounter some of those ‘prudes’ who won’t like i.” My thought, is ignore them. He, as it was, described a male. It has now been turned into a term such as “guys” which those certain “prudes” still consider offensive/annoying or however inappropriate they seem to think it to be. As all of our ancestors have done, we must in fact ignore the idiocies in the world such as the people that look into a word so deeply that they can find some sort of offense in it. Let it be, and dont come up with any more of those possibilities. They were making my brain hurt.
Joe.
April 21st, 2005
Life isn’t so easy :O) While I am happy to always use “He” or “His” I do have a job – and it isn’t always appropriate for me to say “Screw ‘em” I’m doing it my way!
If the customer wants a gender neutral user guide – then I’ll do my best to give them a gender neutral manual. One of the solutions I did like was to avoid writing yourself into a position where you need a pronoun.
Anyway, I’m not looking to far into it. I was just making an observation based on experience. Someone else, however, has looked too far into it and that is what brought it up in the first place.
Bill
April 21st, 2005
I find it odd that someone reading a manual would really give a damn what you were using in the way of gender specific pronouns. I say this because it seems they would be more interested in the information, as opposed to any thoughts on whether or not the author of the manual in question really had some deep sense of how neutral gender pronouns should be written.
Though I have to admit, I find myself in a fortunate situation where I can decide where I not I want to use them in my own writing just because I can! I donnae pity yer situation lad! Enjoy..
Justin,
Justin
April 22nd, 2005
Ok, I’ll explain a bit more. Typically when we have a customer they represent some large organization. They hire us to write software for them (and the accompanying manual). We then deliver these products to the person representing that company.
That person then has a job to do. First and foremost they have to make sure the software fullfills their requirements. Then later they get to review the manual we created. When reading it they check for various things; grammer, puncuation,spelling, and how safe it is for them to release it into their company.
Corporations, and Government Entities, are constantly trying to create a “non-hostile” workplace for everyone. Non-hostile is a pretty generic and broad reaching term at times. Especially in these days of constant litigation. So, in order to protect themselves, and their company, these proofreaders will often be over zealous in their efforts to sanitize even something as mundane as a user manual.
That is just one reason I need to provide gender neutrality.
You may very well end up having to face a similar situation in College. It all depends on your professor and what they are trying to teach you. Whether you like the idea or not; you have to write for your intended audience. If you fail to write to your target audience then it won’t matter how well it is written – your audience won’t like it and they will discard it.
Bill
April 22nd, 2005
What’s wrong with “Everyone and their brother”??
BauB
April 23rd, 2005
I agree with you completely, it can be a tough road to walk. I personally dont enjoy the necessity, yet I can understand the need sometimes.
Justin
April 23rd, 2005
I’m not sure. that is valid. You can’t say everyone and their brother – because then you are saying that the one person is EVERYONE’s brother.
everyone and their brothers would work – but that forces a pluralization of the word “brother” which isn’t exactly what was the intended phrase.
However, it is pretty common usage to use a plural like “their” in a singular way and is a convention I have used as well in the past. However, those self same proof-readers always nab me on it.
The article I reference in my post, http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cjacobso/gender.html, even touches on that exact same example idea. I personally think that this is probably the “cleanest” looking solution. Sure, it might raise even more ambiguity to what is already a pretty ambiguous language. But at least, in general, people will know what your talking about :O)
Bill
April 23rd, 2005