Gender neutrality and language

[L Pierce]

This is not to Mr. Kephart's remarks in particular. 
It is simply at this juncture that I will add my $.02.
 

I find it ironic that the use of a generic she can be
mandated (in preference to he, not in preference to a
more generic one, as it nearly is in many institutions
of higher ed. as well as numerous publications)
whereas it is considered wrong (throw in any number of
more serious and exaggerated accusations here) to use
the generic he and yet the same accusations of
discrimination/bias can not be applied in reverse. Is
it because there are women who want to insist that it
is the beginning of a few thousand years of women
being at the top of the hierarchy because they are
unable to see their value otherwise?  

What some ignorant men wrote hundreds of years ago did
not create the order, God did, and it was an
economical order not a qualitative order.  At that
time single terms were given to denote all
humans/mankind.  Simply because there are some who
wanted to use the generic terms to support a wrongful
idea that men are better, does not make it so.  It is
simply linguistic hijacking.  Unfortunately instead of
simple recovering the true meaning and value of the
words, feminists have convinced many that they should
be thrown out.  What a waste.

Hopefully we'll do better in the next 50 years.

Lisa
--- Ronald Kephart <rkephart at unf.edu> wrote:

> On 2/29/08 10:59 AM, "Anthea Fraser Gupta"
> <A.F.Gupta at leeds.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> > ... it seems to me that it's now generally
> considered best writing practice to
> > avoid generic he (and, indeed, 'one' and
> 'he/she'). The blogger needs to be
> > directed towards modern styleguides!
> > 
> 
> And maybe away from "philosophy," but I'm being
> grumpy. And the writer he
> quotes approvingly is at The American Enterprise
> Institute (a thinktank for
> people who know a lot of stuff that's wrong- like
> the late William F.
> Buckley). Anyway, in both cases, they naturalize
> what was originally an
> unnaturally imposed "rule" of English.  And we know
> who the perpetrators of
> this unnatural imposition were, e.g.:
> 
> Thomas Wilson (1553): In lists, it¹s more natural
> for the man to be listed
> before the woman because males come first in the
> natural order (cf. Adam
> before Eve, etc.) Examples: male and female; husband
> and wife; brother and
> sister; son and daughter
> 
> Joshua Poole (1646): The male has Œpride of place¹;
> male is the worthier
> gender.
> 
> John Kirkby (1746): ³Eighty Eight Grammatical
> Rules." Rule 21 states that
> male is more "comprehensive" than female. Therefore:
> man is generic for
> human being; he is generic for she and he.
> 
> Here, at least, the "feminists" were right: the
> rules were consciously added
> to the social rules for using English by
> phallocentric misogynists in order
> to reinforce the subordination or even invisibility
> of women. And the whole
> problem is so easy to avoid; take for example
> Article 13 (2) of the
> Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
> 
> "Everyone has the right to leave any country,
> including his own, and to
> return to his country."
> 
> Rewrite:
> 
> "Everyone has the right to leave any country,
> including their own, and to
> return to their country."
> 
> Or, if you're squeamish about using "their" in a
> historically valid way that
> is still accepted in some dialects (including mine):
> 
> "All people have the right to leave any country,
> including their own, and to
> return to their country."
> 
> Every linguist worth their salt knows that "he" and
> "man" are not true
> generics.*
> 
> Ron
> 
> *The form *man- apparently was generic in
> Proto-Indoeuropean, though. But in
> those days they had specific roots for male person
> (*wir-) and female person
> (*gwen-).
> 
> 
> 



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