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From: breuel@h-sc1.UUCP (thomas breuel)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: "he or she" - a grammatical problem solved
Message-ID: <978@h-sc1.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 8-Mar-86 12:21:21 EST
Article-I.D.: h-sc1.978
Posted: Sat Mar  8 12:21:21 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Mar-86 01:43:06 EST
References: <2859@amdahl.UUCP> <830@cylixd.UUCP>
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center
Lines: 19

> The problem is, of course, that writers and speakers *need* a singular
> pronoun of indefinite gender, and they need one that doesn't offend
> their sensibilities.  The singular "they" and "he/she" both offend
> nearly every writer that I know.  "He" for a person of unkown gender is
> likely to offend the reader.  So what is a writer to do?

Why is 'he' for a person of unknown gender likely to offend the reader?
Why don't you just consider 'he' the singular pronoun of unknown gender?
From context it is usually quite clear whether 'he' is intended to convey
natural gender or is used just as a placeholder.

> an "aviatrix"?  Those forms have died.  Why don't we simply do away
> with the remaining grammatical gender as well?

That is unrealistic. Why don't we simply do away with pretentions that
grammatical gender has anything to do with the social problems of sex
discrimination? Or is that equally unrealistic...

						Thomas.