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From: rh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Randy Haskins)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Net Language Use
Message-ID: <581@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Aug-83 15:11:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.581
Posted: Thu Aug 11 15:11:41 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Aug-83 05:55:22 EDT
References: <542@cvl.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 36

Okay, enough already.  I have been using HE,HIM,HIS all my life
when gender was not known.  But I will try and repent.  On the
other hand, using IT offends me because IT is usually reserved
for objects or even less-defined things.  By using IT, you are
objectifying people, which there is certainly too much of in the
computer-hacker community (things like, so-and-so is broken, etc.).
I don't like that.  Here, however, in the age of rampant surveys,
is what we will do:

Send to me your nomination for a new personal pronoun to be
"third person singular neuter personal" and IT will be "third
person singular neuter impersonal."  If the pronoun changes
spelling for case, include all cases (objective, possessive, etc.)
Here is a summary:

Predicate nominative    Objective	Possessives
I			me		my,mine
you (sing)		you		your,yours
he			him		his,his
she 			her		hers,hers
	      -- mystery pronoun goes here --
it			it		its,its
we			us		our,ours
you (pl)		you		yours,yours
y'all (provincial)	y'all		y'all's,y'all's   (it does, however,
							   avoid ambiguity)
they			them		their,theirs

So, mail me your favorite idea, and I'll compile and post the 
results, and maybe we can even vote on it.  Then, maybe we
can start using it a lot and get people around us to do this 
also.  THIS IS NOT A :-) !!!  We are going to influence language.
Somebody has to do it.
-- 
Randwulf
 (Randy Haskins);  Path= genrad!mit-eddie!rh   or... rh@mit-ee (via mit-mc)