Gender neutral terms: Ann Bodine as an antidote to David Gelernter.

[Amy Sheldon]

David Gelernter's rant against women ruining English is not very  
original and not well-informed. He'd do well to do some background  
reading in Ann Bodine's  eye-opening history of singular 'they' and  
the so-called generic 'he':

Ann Bodine. 1975. Anfrocentrism in prescriptive grammar: Singular  
"they", sex-indefinite "he", and "he or she". _Language in Society_  
4:129-146.

Bodine writes about the far older and more pervasive masculinist  
ideological incubator. 16th Century male grammarians were prescribing  
usage based on masculinist gender ideology served up as  the  
"natural" order of things.  They were arguing that the word order in  
the phrase 'he or she' was justified because males are more worthy  
than females.  The feminist attempts to reform sexist language  
practices and pronouncements that he maligns  are a response to such  
bias.  Since singular 'they' has been in common use for centuries,  
that hardly counts as a feminist conspiracy either.

Language Log also weighed in on March 2, 2008, on Mr. Gelernter's  
rant and you can find it here:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005423.html

Amy Sheldon