Xref: utzoo comp.edu:3715 uw.general:1959
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From: bruce@mks.com (Bruce Payette)
Subject: Re: Assumptions about sex (Was Re: Recursion Summary)
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 15:57:54 GMT
Message-ID: <1990Oct25.155754.16065@mks.com>
Organization: Mortice Kern Systems, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Distribution: uw
Reply-To: bruce@mks.com (Bruce Payette)
References: <1990Oct23.211651.10227@contact.uucp> <1990Oct25.030752.6568@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1990Oct25.145511.13202@mks.com>

In article <1990Oct25.145511.13202@mks.com> linda@mks.com (Linda Carson) writes:
>In article <1990Oct25.030752.6568@watdragon.waterloo.edu> eafournier@lion.uwaterloo.ca (Wade Richards) writes:
>>In article <1990Oct23.211651.10227@contact.uucp> rrwood@contact.uucp (roy wood) writes:
>
>>It's far too awkword to use (s)he, and for some reason both genders seem
>>to object to the gender-neutral `it'. 
>>
>We could use the colloquial "they" exactly the same way we do in
>our day-to-day spoken language:
>	"I don't know what your boss studied at school, but they might
>	be more convinced by a data processing argument (like sorting &
>	searching) than by arithmetic functions (like factorials)."
>
>
>Linda Carson

Good heavens Linda, take care lest the League for Language Purity hunt
you down and burn you at the stake. How dare you propose such a thing!
Leading an innocent language into decadence! Tsk!

Seriously, this doesn't seem to to be a unreasonable approach to the
problem. The English language currently does not have an asexual
singular pronoun. The other common approachs in written English:  using
'(s)he', or continually altering the sex of the pronoun either can't be
used in the spoken language or are simply unwieldy.  Using 'they' as
both a singular and a plural pronoun seems to be the best solution.
There is even a 'precedent' in the language. If I remember correctly
(trivia-mode on) 'you' is/was the plural of 'thee' however it has been
common practice to use 'you' to address either a group or an individual
for a (very) long time.

-- 
--Bruce Payette, Mortice Kern Systems Inc., 35 King Street N., Waterloo, Ont.
Internet:  bruce@mks.com		UUCP:  ..!uunet!watmath!mks!bruce