Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!elroy!ucla-cs!uci-ics!unmvax!tesla!bevans@ncar.UCAR.EDU
From: unmvax!tesla!bevans@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Mathemagician)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: The unfortunate `generic masculine' in English (long)
Message-ID: <18181@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Date: 19 Jun 89 06:43:10 GMT
References: <14647@duke.cs.duke.edu> <18083@paris.ics.uci.edu>
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In article <18083@paris.ics.uci.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.EDU writes:
>From article <14647@duke.cs.duke.edu>, by gm@romeo.cs.duke.edu (Greg McGary):
>" What follows is a paper my wife wrote in the fall of '88 for her
>" Women's Studies class at Duke U.  In *my unbiased opinion* 8-), it is a
>" very interesting and well written paper (her professor thought so as
>" well!)
>
>It's a very good paper.  I have a couple of minor reservations ...

I agree with you on both accounts.

First one is a quibble: The moon, as far as I know, was considered
feminine long before there was any stereotype added to it for
"reflecting the light of the stronger sun."  That is, the moon was
thought to shine with its own light.  In at least one culture (Ancient
Grecian, specifically), the moon was ruled by a goddess.  This seems
to me more of a reason for the feminization of the moon.  We can get
into bits that the stereotype of "weaker = feminine," but Artemis was
hardly considered a "weak" woman (she killed a man who dared to look
at her nude body.)  I won't mention the phrase, "The Man in the Moon."

Another is sort of a quibble.  I got the impression that her paper was
on sexism in the language.  Yet, I also got the impression, from all
of the examples she gave, that it was PEOPLE who were sexist and not
the language.  That is, given the grammarians defining of the
language, and it's kinda strict concerning the use of the word "he,"
there really shouldn't be any problems using "he" to mean a generic
person since context tells you the meaning.  I will not deny that
people often take this to mean a male gender (even though they may
consciously know that it is gender inspecific, they attribute a gender
to the person when visualizing him), but I will say that I think this
points to a "problem" with the people, not the language.

And it is just this problem that requires a change in the language.
That is, peole are a bit confused by the use of "he" in a generic
sense.  The language, in and of itself, isn't sexist.  It is the
people who are using it in a sexist manner.

>I don't think it's a very good idea to refer to `they' ever as a
>singular pronoun, since when it is subject, its verb would never display
>singular agreement.

We have this situation right now with the pronoun "you" and we do
rather nicely with it.  Granted, many people qualify the plural "you"
to "you all."  However, I think most people would understand a
singular "they" from context.  In fact, it is only the third person,
singular pronouns that take a separate form of the verb in the present
indicative (with some exceptions like "to be").


Brian Evans		|"Momma told me to never kiss a girl on the first
bevans at tesla.unm.edu | date...But that's OK...I don't kiss girls."