Curious as to what the "experts" think of this little article that’s sparked some debate:
"He" has died and gone to the flames of patriarchal hell. The pronoun "he," I mean. But if we accept that "he" is no longer valid as a singular, genderless pronoun, what alternatives exist?
I propose the oft-chastised singular usage of "they" as the easiest and most effective replacement for the genderless "he."
I’ve looked at the site mentioned and can only agree with the proposal to use a singular ‘they’. I know that many will disagree - but it’s certainly better than s/he.
A new word (Er, EM etc.) could be good too - but getting people to accept it would be an impossible task. Only regular SF readers could hope to come to grips with a new word easily - loads of practice already!
As I recall, something similar was suggested in Sweden back in the torrid days of the Women’s Lib movement. The proposed new genderless pronoun "hän" lasted for a couple of newspaper articles and died of public indifference.
As a result of my university study, I am already used to the singular they/their as s e xist language, such as the use of he to encompass both s e xes, is a proscribed practice.
During my time as a management tutor 15 years ago we used the sigular they and thought we’d come up with a clever new idea. I’m chuffed to see that it has such an excellent heritage. If it’s good enough for Thackeray and George Bernard Shaw then it’s good enough for me!
Sorry folks, I mark they/them/their used as singular as erroneous each and every time I see it in a student’s paper. If you must remain gender neutral, cast the sentence in the plural. The need to remain gender neutral happens when you are writing about a generic person anyway, so why can’t he or she be generic people instead? Instead of "When a kid goes to camp they need a sleeping bag." write, "When kids go to camp they need sleeping bags." or "Each kid will need a sleeping bag at camp." Until we can agree on a suitable gender neutral pronoun, writers will just have to spend two or three more seconds to choose a different, less lazy way of writing, or take the chance of having their writing corrected by a teacher or discounted by a self-righteous reader.
This group certainly knows of self-righteous readers, don’t we? :-[
When I use ‘they’ as a singular neutral pronoun its usually because I do not want to reveal the gender. I might say, " When this person goes to a store, they will….." in that case the tenses do not match. The verb is singular and the pronoun is plural. So, What I’m asking, Rosewoman, is how would one go about this situation? Should I say, "When Heshe goes to the store, heshe will…"?
[quote author=Milestone link=board=grammar;num=1056088024;start=0#14 date=06/24/03 at 16:37:23]When I use ‘they’ as a singular neutral pronoun its usually because I do not want to reveal the gender. I might say, " When this person goes to a store, they will….." in that case the tenses do not match. The verb is singular and the pronoun is plural. So, What I’m asking, Rosewoman, is how would one go about this situation? Should I say, "When Heshe goes to the store, heshe will…"?
"This person will go to a store and then (insert verb phrase such as buy bread, shoplift jewelry, raise an outcry, whatever, here) before going home for a nice evening of watching TV."
