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Path: utzoo!utcsri!west
From: west@utcsri.UUCP (Thomas L. West)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: sexist language/bad attitudes
Message-ID: <1065@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 27-Apr-85 18:24:17 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.1065
Posted: Sat Apr 27 18:24:17 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Apr-85 18:41:55 EST
References: <846@druxo.UUCP> <674@wlcrjs.UUCP> <299@mhuxr.UUCP> <1039@utcsri.UUCP> <250@sbcs.UUCP>
Reply-To: west@utcsri.UUCP (Thomas L. West)
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 60
Summary: 


Tom West:
>>   There are those who claim that 'he' is the gender neutral pronoun in the
>> English language.  They are, in a grammatical sense, correct.  The problem
>> comes with the people.  When the term 'he' is used, a *male* image is 
>> thought of, regardless of the fact that the term was supposed to be neutral.

Saumya Debray:
>This is an example of the fairly sloppy post hoc egro propter hoc reasoning
>that seems to be becoming increasingly prevalent these days.  As Tom points
>out, studies have shown that "when the term 'he' is used, a *male* image
>is thought of".  So far, this merely establishes a correlation between the
>two events.  How one can infer, from this correlation, that there's some
>sort of causal connection between the two isn't clear to me.  It reminds me
>of an article in net.flame a while back, suggesting that portable
>radios should be banned because of the correlation between high incidence
>of ghetto blasters and high crime rates in big cities.

  I also pointed out that when a neutral term was used, people tended to
have a non-gender specific image or one the same sex as theirs.  While
you are quite right about the fact that the job will often conjure up
images of the person in accordance with the typical worker, it seems a
little bit unusual that the standard image conjured up for *all* jobs
would be male (as happens when 'he' is used).
  When somebody talks about a generic teacher as 'he', do you think 
female despite the fact that the profession is not terribly male
dominated?  Personally, I will usually conjure up a female image if dealing
primary school teacher, because they do constitute the majority of primary
school teachers...  UNTIL A 'HE' IS USED.

  Yes, use of the word 'he' *is* responsible for a much of the fact that
we conjure up male images for non-gender specific jobs, *regardless* of
what the actual true ratios are.

  Also, if you can actually say (with a straight face) that the use 
of the 'he' construct over a non-gender specific equivelent has
*NO* effect on the developing youngster (specifically the female)
then I appreciate that we have found the basis case for our disagreement.
However, I really don't see how such could possibly *not* have an effect.
Remember, that unless the profession is *TOTALLY* female dominated, the
image evoked is male when 'he' is used. (And that is really only because
a generic nurse or some such completely female dominated professional
is probably termed as 'her' if the gender is unknown).  Used
"properly" as a non-gender specific term, the word 'he' will evoke
a male image in each and every non-gender specific pronoun reference for
the entire developmental period of every english speaking adult.  I
can't imagine how *anyone* could say that this would not have an effect
on society!

If you can not, then you fall into one of the other two categories of
(1) not caring enough about the effect to change.
(2) considering the preservation of the language in its present form
    more important than the effect on our society.

  Choose.

  The offense never rests.

  Tom West            (The offensive never rest either...)
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