Posted June 22, 2015
dtgreene: People using "he" as a generic pronoun. It's as if people who go by different pronouns (particularly "she") are invisible.
Similar, people using masculine terms to refer to generic people or mixed gender groups of people.
What are the solutions to that. I come from the french language, where masculine is (masc+fem) plural and the default neutral pronoun. The only alternatives are tedious constructs such as "il/elle" etc, which I sometimes employ but it makes the sentence look like a math formula (and only functions in written format). In university, we had a cool reversal of it, where everything was feminized and a footnote specified that feminine default and plurals were meant to include masculine. That was a fun and refreshing perspective, but isn't more of a neutral solution than the traditional way... Similar, people using masculine terms to refer to generic people or mixed gender groups of people.
So, in english, you have "they", which, if I got it correctly, can be used as a singular neutral ? I sometimes use it, but it "sounds" plural to me (due to how english was taught here), and I'm not totally at ease with that (english is still too foreign to me to feel completely self-assure when using unusual formulations). Also, at least you don't have gendered profession names. In french we often struggle to de-masculinize professions as these words often end with a very masculine suffix. A female "auteur" (author) is sometimes called "auteure", sometimes "auteur", sometimes (argh) "autrice", none is satisfactory. Greek is even more radical, as all profession words are 100% masculine (it sounds like we talk of a man whenever we call someone by her profession), which sounds even more awkward to me.
Gender hierarchy is deeply entrenched in language structure, but I don't think it's an easy issue that makes criticisms of language users very fair. Language, at this level, is a tough thing to overhaul. And, on this matter, seems to lack of any smooth alternative...
(Using accurate words when available, and avoiding stupid metaphors, is a whole other issue, and is much easier. So reproaches would be more justified there.)
Post edited June 22, 2015 by Telika