Gender neutrality and language

[Ronald Kephart]

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-).