she as a gender-neutral pronoun

[Jonathan Lighter]

My immediate reaction is that, rather than a clumsy try for gender equality,
this is simply a case of a rhetorically shifting perspective (HIS pain vs.
HER point of view).

Gender equality must have inspired it in part, however.

JL



On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 6:48 PM, Federico Escobar <
federicoescobarcordoba at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Federico Escobar <federicoescobarcordoba at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: she as a gender-neutral pronoun
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I might be overdoing it by posting again on this thread, but there was this
> bit of grist for the mill that I couldn't resist:
>
> "The virtue of compassion requires us to put ourselves consistently in
> somebody else's shoes, to feel his pain as though it were our own, and to
> enter generously into her point of view."
>
> This is from chapter 1 of *A Compassionate Life *by Karen Armstrong. I'm
> reading the Vook version, but perhaps the sentence is also found in the
> book
> version (same title).
>
> I don't recalling seeing this close variation of personal pronouns,
> masculine and feminine, both referring to the same "somebody" in the same
> sentence. It's a logical derivation of the gender-neutral phenomenon, but
> it
> still seemed shareworthy.
>
> F.
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 12:13 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu
> >wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: she as a gender-neutral pronoun
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > At 10:52 AM -0500 1/4/11, Garson O'Toole wrote:
> > >...
> > >One of the foundational papers in computational cryptography was
> > >written in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman. The
> > >paper introduced the RSA cryptosystem, and it used the names Alice and
> > >Bob. An article on the Network World website claims that the Alice-Bob
> > >convention began with the RSA paper. Here is an excerpt containing
> > >comments from Ron Rivest:
> > >
> > >Security's inseparable couple
> > >Network World
> > >February 07, 2005 12:04 AM ET
> > >
> > >RSA co-founder Rivest, who is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> > >(MIT) professor, says he came up with Alice and Bob to be able to use
> > >"A" and "B" for notation, and that by having one male and one female,
> > >the pronouns "he" and "she" could be used in descriptions. Rivest says
> > >it is possible that Alice came to mind because he is something of an
> > >Alice in Wonderland buff.
> > >
> > >Never did he expect the names to take on lives of their own.
> > >
> > >"Nor did I imagine that our proposed cryptosystem would be so widely
> > >used," he says.
> > >
> > >http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/020705widernetaliceandbob.html
> > >
> > >Garson
> > >
> >
> > So now we know something about the secret identity of half of that
> > fun-loving film foursome from the late sixties.  Now we just need to
> > figure out what Carol & Ted were up to...
> >
> > LH
> >
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> >
>
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