"gender neutral pronouns"

[Robert Chandler]

Dear Emily and all,

Yes, Emily is absolutely right.  Age seems to be the single most important
factor in how people feel about this.  And yes, I was born in 1953 and my
editor may well be in her twenties.

Best Wishes,

Robert

> Your many examples, I would posit, further confirm my two points:  1)
> that several of the uses are emotionally and rhetorically charged
> (references to Founding Fathers and "we...call on the United States")
> and 2) the fact that George W. Bush is over 40.  If I may dare to put
> forth an unproven hypothesis that a good number of the examples you've
> given were written by people who were born before 1970.  It is also
> possible that Robert Chandler's editors are closer to my generation
> than to his own.  Precedent and grammatical rules will have an effect,
> certainly, for those who are aware of them.  But I would argue that
> habits of speech in a younger generation will ultimately, with time,
> have an effect on written norms.  There seem to be enough postings on
> this topic that refer to younger people having a different attitude
> towards the debate.  I would say that both points of view have
> validity within the differing norms of speech:  "its" sounds fine to
> me and my husband (and even, dare I say, preferable), "her" sounds
> better to others.  Determining the relative age or speech norms of the
> target audience may be more relevant than anything.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Emily
> 
> On Sep 5, 2008, at 8:37 AM, William Ryan wrote:
> 
>> Look around though and you may be surprised - just try googling "her
>> interests" or "her borders":
>> 
>>       Protecting family & country: America can best protect her own
>>   people and their freedoms by embracing the noninterventionist
>>   foreign policy our Founding Fathers envisioned [title of article,
>>   New American,  April 14, 2008]
>> 
>>       We are friends; and we want to continue to be the friends of the
>>   United States. We safeguard her interests, and all we ask is that
>>   the United States should not support Israeli expansionism and
>>   aggression. We do not call on the United States to throw Israel into
>>   the sea or even to break her special relations with the State of
>>   Israel. Let America give Israel whatever she wants, provided she
>>   remains content with her borders. This will never affect our
>>   relationship with the United States in any way. We, as her friends,
>>   care about her interests. [Time, 30 March 1978]
>> 
>>       Such a future, in which America - her laws, her culture, her
>>   borders and her economic base - has ceased to exist, is closer to
>>   reality than most Americans would dare to imagine.[New American,
>>   Sept 6, 2004]
>> 
>>       "I believe there ought to be a Palestinian state, the boundaries
>>   of which will be negotiated by the parties, so long as the
>>   Palestinian state recognizes the right of Israel to exist and will
>>   treat Israel with respect, and will be peaceful on her
>> borders"    [George W. Bush, Press Conference 11 Oct 2001].
>> 
>> I also found several published legal documents in which individual
>> US states are referred to as 'she'.
>> 
>> Just a quick trawl, but it seems 'her' with country names is very
>> much alive, in both American and British English, in literary, legal
>> and journalistic English and in colloquial blogs, without any
>> 'affected, quaint or poetic' associations (adjectives which neither
>> his friends nor his foes would normally apply to George W. Bush).
>> The internet is a wonderful playground for linguists.
>> 
>> Will Ryan
> 
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