[WikiEN-l] Sexist pronouns

Fri Jul 18 13:29:14 UTC 2003

At 12:09 AM 7/18/03 -0700, Delirium wrote:
>Dante Alighieri wrote:
>
>>Why are people so unwilling to use "they" to mean "he/she"?
>
>Well, to some people it seems ungrammatical, since "they" hasn't been used 
>as a singular pronoun until very recently,

Your definition of "very recently" must include the early 19th century, 
then: Jane
Austen used "they" as a singular pronoun. In fact, singular they is older than
"generic he".

>so you end up with the "wrong" verb tenses.  So when you say something 
>like "They fall asleep as they watch TV," it sounds very much like you're 
>talking about multiple people.

And when you say "Ask your doctor what he thinks" it sounds entirely as
though you're talking about a man, whereas it's entirely likely that you're 
talking
about a woman.

Neither is perfect.
-- 
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org