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Path: utzoo!watmath!watcgl!dmmartindale
From: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: genderless pronouns/nouns
Message-ID: <676@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Aug-83 23:36:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: watcgl.676
Posted: Wed Aug 10 23:36:14 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Aug-83 00:15:04 EDT
References: <5622@watmath.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 21

Judy's example of a female teacher being called "he" really does not
prove there is any asymmetry.  "He" is used to refer to both a specific
person known to be male, and to an unknown "generic" person.  In the
case of you referring to someone known to be a woman as "he", you will
be corrected simply because you are incorrect, in exactly the same
way that you will be corrected if you refer to a man as "she".

In the case of the "generic" person, there is no specific gender,
and I believe either "he" or "she" is acceptable.  A sentence such as
"A private pilot may not share expenses with her passengers" seems quite
natural to me, although I must admit that such usage does startle me
sometimes because I seldom see it.

I will probably continue using "man-months" regardless of the gender
of the person doing the work, simply because "person-months" sounds
so awkward to me as a word.  I do try to use explicitly neutral terms
whenever the resulting sentence seems natural, but "person-month"
always seems too contorted to use.  And isn't what I THINK, what I MEAN, 
much more important than the details of what I SAY?

Dave Martindale