From: utzoo!decvax!cca!hplabs!hao!menlo70!sytek!zehntel!teklabs!ucbcad!ARPAVAX:CSVAX:npois!npoiv!harpo!ihps3!ihuxv!lew@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Title: he and she
Article-I.D.: ihuxv.238
Posted: Mon Aug 16 10:02:22 1982
Received: Fri Aug 20 02:50:00 1982

I looked at a book called "Handbook of Non-sexist Writing" expecting
to have a good sneering session, but found it to contain calm, well
reasoned arguments for the reality of sex discrimination in language.

Studies were cited which showed that when people read "he" they
think of a male. This is not hard to believe! What really nailed
me personally was a section titled "The male animal". This meant "the
animal as male", not "the (human) male as animal". Having been
involved in dinosaur books with my five year old son, I realized that
I implicitly thought of all dinosaurs as male, eggs notwithstanding.

Anyway, it's not a trivial issue. I like the idea of the author's
sex determining the use of his or her for unspecified gender. There
was an article in Scientific American on child development which
referred to children as female (the author was a woman.) I found
myself thinking "Hey, what about the little boys!" ... and there
you are.

				Lew Mammel, Jr. - BTL Indian Hill