Pronouns and Triviality

Have you considered the fact that there are many people who support equality and have even championed rights for women who think that this pronoun thing is silly?

There are important issues. There is ending violence against women. There is addressing pay equality and making equal opportunities for women in the top levels of business and politics.

Trying to change the way that the English language is commonly used, and has been used for centuries is, in my opinion, a ridiculous waste of time. I really hate the use of the plural which sacrifices grammatical correctness in the name of political correctness.

Of course everyone is entitled to his own opinion.

I suppose I should have read my own source more carefully. I misremembered the meaning of the term, thinking it meant a kind of mild sexism, seemingly benevolent etc. Actually it seems the definition is narrower than I remember.

Still, the point holds. It excludes half the human race when you use a sexist pronoun. I repeat this is a simple point.

I regret that I'm seeing so much pedantic opposition to what seems to me to be an uncomplicated objection to an easily-averted discourtesy.

God no . . . really ? ! ? ! ? We're screwed now.

This is simply untrue. You are just making up rules to fit your political agenda.

And I learned it in grammar school in the fifties...

I tend to reconstruct a sentence to avoid the universal his, to avoid confusion, but not all the time; I'm also not advocating the usage be condemned. One thing I react to, though, is the current trend to use they or their - now that really bothers me, as I consider making a singular into plural as folly.

I can think of few things as pedantic as insisting that you are referring to a "sexist" pronoun. I see you completely avoided the issue of whether those who choose to substitute "she" and "her" are being sexist.

In french, they frequently use "on" rather than a masculine or feminine pronoun. But when there is a group, even if it's a thousand women and one man, all gender agreement defaults to the masculine adjectives and pronouns. You better get your skinny little butt over to France--you've a hell of an Augean stable to clean out there.

That seems to be quite another, rather monolithic, discussion.

Of course one can be a feminist and still use outmoded language which is problematic. I would have no problem in conceding that there are more pressing feminist issues, but none of them happened to have moved me to make a post on this forum. Yet.

And changing the way language is used is not really more foolish than opposing any other social convention that people, over the decades, have found distateful or directly harmful.

The use of they and their in the place of singular pronouns is far older than institutionalized feminism and wild charges of sexism.

You should check out this thread--it'll really piss you off.

YES, that irritates me.

I get changing this:

"A teacher knows that she must be strict at the beginning of the year."

to this:

"Teachers know that they must be strict at the beginning of the year."

but not this:

"A teacher knows that they must be strict at the beginning of the year."

(And by the way, that was an incidental but in context worth noting -- gendered pronouns can be sexist in the opposite direction as what is being talked about here, as when professions are assumed to be female when there are actually also many male teachers, nurses, etc.)

Well I apologise if you feel I deliberately avoided the "she" and "her" point -I've been responding to a lot of opposition this evening!

Having reread it I can simply say that I agree. Using "she" in a carte blanche manner is just as sexist as using "he" in that way. Perhaps this will convince you that I don't have an agenda here, other than what I consider to be fairplay in language use?

I am deliberately ignoring the other points you made about going to France and doing whatever, however.

Oh come on . . . somebody needs to slap those Froggies silly . . .

Now we see who has the agenda...

Actually, i like the French. I was just attempting to introduce some levity . . . obviously, you're Angle-ish. You speak English almost as well as an American, and you commented about "this evening" when it's mid-afternoon in North America. I deduce that you live in Angle-land. Look around, i'm sure you can find someone who will explain to you about a sense of humor.

humour

Well I couldn't see any better to way to indicate sarcasm than the ellipsis...

Apologies for insufficiently indicating my jest...

...

Pronouns and Triviality

i am vehemently anti-noun, but desperately pro-trivial

Directly harmful? Don't you think you are getting a little herterical about this.

any more clues? maybe? I tried googling gender neutral language + positive effect and got 4.4 million hits ... (added " " and got down to 88,000 but that's still a lot of reading )

him/heretical if you don't mind