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https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html Can somebody explain, what's wrong with `he' refe

https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html Can somebody explain, what's wrong with `he' referring to a person of unknown sex? At least in German (er) and in Russian (он) masculine pronoun is still being used for that purpose.

crooked-v 7y ago
Two reasons: first, it contributes to general presumptions of male-ness as the societal default and female-ness being out of place, and second, using either gender as the default in English just plain sounds weirder and more jarring than "they" in a variety of sentence constructions. For the second factor, the example sentence presented first in the original article: > She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes. ...sounds pretty jarring when you make it 'he'... > She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in his clothes.
deleted 7y ago
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ajkjk 7y ago
It just.. doesn't mean that in English. It doesn't sound right, like in the examples in this article.
- ernst_klim 7y ago
  Doesn't mean what? Generic he doesn't exist in English? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Generic_he https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Generic_h...
  - ajkjk 7y ago
    You know perfectly well what I meant. It is never genderless. The quote from the article makes that obvious: "At the funeral, everyone was dressed to the nines, each wearing his swankest tie or nicest dress." When it's used generically, it is still casting all the antecedents to males.
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    It's out of fashion in a lot of places in English. I'm not saying it's gone entirely, but there are definitely places or communities where generic he would sound very awkward.
Pfhreak 7y ago
Stallman's article about singular they has always struck me as Stallman just reserving the right to be rude. Pronouns are a lot like nicknames or shortened names. You can ask people to call you Richard instead of 'Richie', 'Rich', or 'Dick' and generally expect that people will try to respect that. If someone wrote and essay that said, "I object to using the nickname someone prefers, because I found an equally correct replacement of my choosing..." I think we'd all raise an eyebrow. Sure, go ahead and reserve that right, but did you really need to?
afastow 7y ago
It sounds weird. Using singular "they" instead sounds perfectly natural. Yeah there's also the fact that it implies that male is the "default" which isn't ideal, but that's really secondary to the fact that using "he" for an unspecified person doesn't sound right and probably never has. If it had ever sounded right, people would have been using it naturally and grammar prescriptivists wouldn't have had to spend so much time complaining about singular "they".
- ernst_klim 7y ago
  >It sounds weird. Using singular "they" instead sounds perfectly natural. Interesting, because for me it's the opposite, meybe because I'm used to German and Russian, but > The patient should be informed of his therapeutic options. Sounds sound, and > The patient should be informed of their therapeutic options. Sounds gravely wrong.

crooked-v 7y ago

Two reasons: first, it contributes to general presumptions of male-ness as the societal default and female-ness being out of place, and second, using either gender as the default in English just plain sounds weirder and more jarring than "they" in a variety of sentence constructions. For the second factor, the example sentence presented first in the original article: > She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes. ...sounds pretty jarring when you make it 'he'... > She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in his clothes.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ajkjk 7y ago

It just.. doesn't mean that in English. It doesn't sound right, like in the examples in this article.

ernst_klim 7y ago
Doesn't mean what? Generic he doesn't exist in English? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Generic_he https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Generic_h...
- ajkjk 7y ago
  You know perfectly well what I meant. It is never genderless. The quote from the article makes that obvious: "At the funeral, everyone was dressed to the nines, each wearing his swankest tie or nicest dress." When it's used generically, it is still casting all the antecedents to males.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  It's out of fashion in a lot of places in English. I'm not saying it's gone entirely, but there are definitely places or communities where generic he would sound very awkward.

Pfhreak 7y ago

Stallman's article about singular they has always struck me as Stallman just reserving the right to be rude. Pronouns are a lot like nicknames or shortened names. You can ask people to call you Richard instead of 'Richie', 'Rich', or 'Dick' and generally expect that people will try to respect that. If someone wrote and essay that said, "I object to using the nickname someone prefers, because I found an equally correct replacement of my choosing..." I think we'd all raise an eyebrow. Sure, go ahead and reserve that right, but did you really need to?

afastow 7y ago

It sounds weird. Using singular "they" instead sounds perfectly natural. Yeah there's also the fact that it implies that male is the "default" which isn't ideal, but that's really secondary to the fact that using "he" for an unspecified person doesn't sound right and probably never has. If it had ever sounded right, people would have been using it naturally and grammar prescriptivists wouldn't have had to spend so much time complaining about singular "they".

ernst_klim 7y ago
>It sounds weird. Using singular "they" instead sounds perfectly natural. Interesting, because for me it's the opposite, meybe because I'm used to German and Russian, but > The patient should be informed of his therapeutic options. Sounds sound, and > The patient should be informed of their therapeutic options. Sounds gravely wrong.