"gender neutral pronouns"

[William Ryan]

Languages develop in all sorts of ways which cannot  necessarily be 
predicted or controlled. Deliberate attempts to modify them, whether by 
Communists, Nationalists, the Academie Francaise, gender warriors, or 
any other kind of would-be social engineers, rarely have the success 
that was hoped for them. The notion of gender-neutral language can only 
be meaningful in languages which do not have grammatical gender, or 
effectively restrict it largely to pronouns as in English. Why do we 
English speakers have to agonize over this when speakers of most other 
European languages do not? Does a Russian female judge regard herself as 
oppressed because sud'ia, despite appearances, is a masculine noun; does 
a German Fraulein regard herself as being belittled because she is 
grammatically neuter (while her Swiss cousin is feminine)? (Against this 
I have to say that several Russians at various times have expressed 
surprise to me that babies in English are often referred to as 'it' - 
and this despite the Russian neuter 'ditya'.)  There is an extensive 
specialist literature on this, but I cannot see that a desire for 
gender-neutral usage in English, which seems to have arisen originally 
from the desire to avoid the ambiguity caused by using ostensibly 
masculine forms as the inclusive form, rather than as a feminist issue, 
should exclude treating countries or ships as feminine. Why look for 
gender slights were there are none, and where there is no ambiguity?

If you look at the Oxford English Dictionary you will find that 'she' 
historically has had a whole range of referents, most of which cannot be 
seen to have pejorative overtones: all female animals, some animals or 
birds of either sex if male is not specifically intended (e.g. cat), 
ship, boat, carriage, train, gun, kettle, the Church, a city, individual 
states of the USA, the Moon ('Softly, silently, now the moon / walks the 
night in her silver shoon'). In dialect, and colloquial Australian and 
New Zealand English, 'she' can have much wider usage. I do not know why 
some of these words appear to be feminine, although some may have 
inherited this from Latin - country, continent and some regional names 
tend to have latinate forms ending in -a, which suggests that this 
really is a survival of grammatical gender and not 'gendered emphasis'.

There are many English words where the default (unmarked) form implies, 
or may be thought to imply, a male (e.g. fireman, policeman) and is 
where its use could be seen either as making a condescending assumption 
or as factually inaccurate in the modern world, and most people have 
adjusted their usage accordingly. But the use of 'she' for a country or 
a ship ('God bless all who sail in her' - imagine saying 'it' in that 
context) carries no such implications. For a publisher to insist, 
without the author's permission, on changing 'her' to 'it' in such a 
context, even if 'it' is also common usage, is ignorant and a form of 
censorship.

Will Ryan

Francoise Rosset wrote:
> I would be he fourth non-anglophone to address a question about
> English usage. Good thing Claire and William stepped in.
>
>> Gender-inclusive or gender-neutral language has to (or should have 
>> to) do with avoiding or minimizing the emphasis on the gender of a 
>> human being or group of human beings. 
>
> Well said, but that's not all. As Claire pointed out, it is also about
> removing gendered emphasis where it should NOT be, i.e. when dealing
> with objects. We do not refer to Congress as "he" or the Supreme Court
> or parliament as "she." In my opinion, if institutions fall into that
> category, so do countries.
>
> Yes, there is a long tradition of calling Russia and other countries 
> "she."
> Is tradition right or immutable per se?
>
> Perhaps the language itself determines a gender for the name of the 
> country, as in Russian, French (French has the excuse that if only 
> offers male/female). It seems that grammatical gender was extended to 
> invest the name of the country with an entire gendered persona.
>
> Why should a country be a woman? Do we have a she reason? Because it 
> takes strong men to run "her"? Ick.
>
> I too welcome the effort to make language more gender-neutral, since I 
> firmly believe that language encodes (and affects) culture. Sometimes 
> those efforts result in weird formulations. This is not one of them, 
> at least not to my non-anglophone ears.
>
> That said, they are Robert Chandler's words: he is entitled to his
> preferences, and I appreciate his careful, thoughtful phrasing of a
> legitimate question.
> -FR
>
> Francoise Rosset, Associate Professor
> Chair, Russian and Russian Studies
> Coordinator, German and Russian
> Wheaton College
> Norton, Massachusetts 02766
> Office: (508) 285-3696
> FAX:   (508) 286-3640
>
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