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From: arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold%CGL)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: He and She
Message-ID: <790@ucsfcgl.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16-Mar-86 20:32:53 EST
Article-I.D.: ucsfcgl.790
Posted: Sun Mar 16 20:32:53 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Mar-86 01:41:42 EST
References: <555@cisden.UUCP>
Reply-To: arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold)
Organization: UCSF Computer Graphics Lab
Lines: 40

In article <555@cisden.UUCP> john@cisden.UUCP (John Woolley) writes:
>This is sort of in response to Ken Arnold's recent posting on the
>he/she question of English pronouns. ... I'm sure you'll all be happy
>finally to have The Answer.

Thanks for responding.  I await Enlightenment :-).

>The rule in English seems to be that the speaker uses feminine pronouns to
>refer to individuals of unspecified or unknown sex if the antecedent noun
>is either in the feminine or in the tends-to-feminine class.  He uses 
>masculine pronouns if the antecedent is masculine, or tends-to-masculine,
>or gender-neutral.
>
>There are two issues here, which we ought to separate:  which particular
>nouns ought to be or are perceived as being in which categories?  and, Is
>it somehow inappropriate to use masculine pronouns for actually gender-
>neutral nouns?

Actually, you are going sideways of my argument.  You are addressing
real questions, but not the one I was trying to raise.  That question
is "why does the use of 'he' conflict with 'nurse'", to which I answer,
"the word 'he' retains its gender specifying function despite the
clearly genderless context."  Which would mean that "he" is *not *the
generic pronoun it is alleged to be.  You rather accurately describe
the usage, but it doesn't answer the question.

>In answer to the second (Should "he" be used with reference to, say,
>"performer"), I see no compelling reason to call out the thought police to
>enforce a change in the language.  We don't have a special pronoun for
>this use, the fact that we don't is no more insulting to one sex than to
>the other, and there's no alternative available that strikes right-thinking
>people (me, that is) as anything short of barbarous, awkward, ugly, like
>totally gross.

Well, I agree up to a point.  I don't think either sex should be
offended by the *lack* of a general pronoun.  But I think women (and
men, obviously) have good reason to object to *solving* this problem by
using masculine forms for the general case.

		Ken Arnold