Re: "Gender-free masculine pronoun"? Absurd.
From: Helmut Richter (a282244_at_mail.lrz-muenchen.de)
Date: 02/28/05
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Date: 28 Feb 2005 09:04:13 GMT
Maria Conlon:
> Thanks, Helmut. So what do you think about "he" being used when the sex
> could be either male or female? (My apologies if you've already posted
> an opinion; I haven't seen one that I recall.)
In the sequel, I use the terms "gender, masculine, feminine, neuter"
only for grammar and the terms "sex, male, female" only for biology.
I my native language, cognate of English, we have exactly the same
discussion although the facts are very different:
1. In English, there are only few nouns having a different word
explicitly marked as female ("actor - actress"). Using the feminine
forms is often considered misogynic.
In German, most words whose generic form is masculine have a
feminine counterpart marking female sex ("Schauspieler -
Schauspielerin"). Not using the feminine forms along with the
masculine forms is often considered misogynic.
2. In English, many nouns can be used with either grammatical gender
("teacher"). If the gender is recognisable from the grammar of a
sentence, the sex of the person may (sometimes? often? always?) be
inferred.
In German, each noun has fixed grammatical gender, even if the sex
does not match ("Mensch" is masculine even for females, "Person" is
female even for males, "Individuum" is neuter even for males and
females). Thus, the gender does not allow to infer the sex of the
persons.
3. In English, pronouns are the only indication of gender, and many
sentences can relatively easy be worded in a way that they would
not allow inferring gender or sex ("If the teacher examines a
student ...").
In German, many words change with the gender of the nouns, and the
attempt to phrase a sentence so that genders are evenly distributed
yields extremely clumsy wordings ("Wenn der Lehrer oder die
Lehrerin einen Schüler oder eine Schülerin prüft ...").
Now back to your question. As English is not my native language, I
have no axe to grind. For my own langugae, German, I have made up my
mind to consider it nonsense to insist that generic use of words for
both sexes is suddenly (since the 1970ies) sexist and that mentioning
the sex of each person as often as possible is particularly un-sexist.
Rather, it would be normal to recognise that gender has little to do
with sex, with the exception of most (not all!) nouns that can refer
to persons of one sex only. In this context, a generic pronoun ("er" =
"he") serves the purpose of un-sexist language better than repeated
use of "sie oder er" = "she or he").
In English, things are a bit different, as indicated above. So the
English have to take their own decision; it is their language, after
all. Nonetheless, I think that language should follow the society
rather than the society should follow some Newspeak invented to change
society. To what extent the abolition of generic "he" falls under the
verdict of Newspeak is a question the English have to decide for
themselves.
Helmut Richter
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