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From: buzzard@TheWorld.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: Feminine Curiosity
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Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 18:19:52 GMT
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L. Ross Raszewski <lraszewski@loyola.edu> wrote:
>What I won't do is write something,
>then go back, look it over, and say "aha! I've used 'he' as a generic
>pronoun! I must change it to 'she' to help the never endign battle for
>gender equity in language!'

I've heard from adult women who've said that, yes, when they were
kids, they thought they couldn't possibly ever be firemen, partly
because of the word itself. It really does happen; the gender-bias
in language really can have negative social consequences. It's not
something I think it appropriate to poo-poo. Whether it's related
to past male-societal-domination is irrelevant; I don't view it as
somehow "making up to women for past wrongs".

I'm also not sure how you think language changes, other than through
conscious effort. When people coin new words, it's usually not an
accident. So I'm not sure some kind of complaint about "political
agenda" is fair here. I'm basically saying that "he" *means the
wrong thing*. Oh yes, according to the dictionary it means the
right thing, but it also has other meanings, and words with multiple
meanings often carry their alternate meanings as connotation to the
first one. If I find this an inappropriate connotation, of course I'm
going to pick a different word. English lacks a different word, so we
are forced to coin a new one, or in this case, a new meaning for an
existing word.

In practice, I "change" 'he' to 'she' before the word ever comes
out my fingertips, so I never change them after the fact either;
yet if it came down to it, I certainly would.

SeanB
