He/ She/ It
Usually written in that order, this way of cataloguing human beings starts from the generic human (‘he’- used to denote males and people of unknown or both genders), to the other (’she’- has been used as a book title to suggest otherness, when used with a certain tone of voice by a male can sound particularly damning), to the nonhuman (‘it’). There is no word in English for ’she or he’, and conventional wisdom insists that one use ‘he’ when speaking of what the generic human being thinks, or is doing. To use ’she’ is to draw attention to otherness, and men are expected to be insulted by being referred to as female. ‘They’ is commonly used as a neutral singular in the place of ‘he’, but the Honoured Grammarians will insist that it is wrong.
And then there’s ‘it’. ‘It’ is an insult when used to describe a human being as it denies the humanity of the person addressed. This is because it is assumed that to be a human being one must be gendered; one must exist in one or the other of two classes of human being, whose behaviour, quality of life, abilities and role become dependant upon their biological sex. The effort which is used to keep the categories of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ seperate is suggestive of the importance of sex classes to patriarchal society, and of just how alike the sexes really are. After all, if men and women were so naturally different, the effort would be unnecessary.
Man/ Mankind
While women are told that complaining about the use of ‘he’, ‘mankind’, ‘man’ and so forth to denote all human experience is pathetic, and shows a lack of understanding of the words, men are permitted to use feminine words as insults among themselves. To question the use of ‘man’ or ‘mankind’ as opposed to the better (but nonetheless problematic) ‘humanity’ or ‘humankind’ frequently results in eyerolling. To belittle another’s complaint about the use of language is to regard their experiences as unworthy of record, as meaningless. Who after all, has decided that masculine words can include women as well? Control of language includes the ability to control the articulation of experience, particularly that of marginalised groups whose lives do not accord with the accepted norm, or who are unhappy with that norm.
In 1984, the creation and development of Newspeak is entirely geared towards abolishing words to describe aspects of human experience that allow people to question the lives they must lead. This is well worth a read, as is Julia Penelope’s fantastic Speaking Freely.
Great stuff, Laurelin. Reminds me of learning french verbs; they are always written out:
I am
You are
He is
We are
You (pl) are
They (masculine) are
‘He’ is inevitably used as the default in example sentences too.
Whenever I’m in a grammar lesson I replace ‘he’ with ’she’ in my notes.
Comment by Laura — February 7, 2007 @ 11:35 am
I do that exactly same thing in my English, French and Swedish lessons as Laura.
In Finnish,there is just one pronoun that means the third-person singular.It can refer to both male and female person, and people guess the sex of the person.If the person of the sentence is doing something “feminine” they assume that it’s a female.Fucking gender roles…
Comment by Reetta — February 7, 2007 @ 12:03 pm
Try this experiment. Use the generic she when describing an individual who works in a field which is predominantly female but which is not thought of a pink ghetto. Watch the men who fall within that field react with anger. Belittle their anger. Point out that statistically speaking your choice of gender was appropriate.
THEN have a conversation about the generic he and how all women should feel included.
BTW, in my area of academia most people use he and she in rotation–often in the same sentence. For example, “the typical candidate will find that he has to go press conferences regularly even though at these conferences she is seldom asked meaningful questions.” It does far more than the he/she/it construction to undermine the understanding that only ‘he’ is generic.
Comment by mmy — February 7, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
I think research has clearly demonstrated that language shapes thinking. (The Whorfian hypothesis is what it’s called. I think a mild version of it is quite correct.) Research done in the 80s by psychologists Crawford and Chaffin showed women read the “generic masculine” with less sense of applying to them than inclusive language.
Bottom line: language matters.
Comment by dreamy5 — February 7, 2007 @ 4:54 pm
It’s called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis; the idea that there’s some kind of systematic relationship between grammatical categories and a person’s understanding of the world. Yeah, it’s certainly not universal, but there’s some weight to it – as much as you can give linguistic theories, anyway. The bulk of counter-research is motivated by a desire to maintain prejudice than to discover things about language, but I guess that’s what happens when you advance an idea that identifies a cause of discrimination.
I use ‘they’. It’s grammatically incorrect, but who gives a rat’s arse. It’s a language for god’s sake. ‘He or she’ is plodding, ‘it’ is dehumanising, and attempts to make ‘he’ gender-neutral are moronic, but they all have their origins and will elicit different ideas and emotions. Then again, I’ve never seen the generic ‘he’ be used to refer to a random from a predominantly female subset. Perhaps it’s not as neutral as people (generally men) claim.
Comment by mistermorgan — February 8, 2007 @ 2:30 am
I was snorkelling in Thailand recently (this is relevant, honestly, not just trying to make you all jealous) and saw an octopus. It kept hiding under a rock. The guy with me says “I’ll just go down and poke him”. I say “how d’ya know it’s not a female octopus?” He did not react well. Mucho eye-rolling going on behind his mask.
Whenever I call animals of indeterminable sex “she” I get funny looks. It really does annoy people. Ladybirds are the only exception.
Comment by jo22 — February 8, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
It’s the same with un born babies, they are almost always referred to as ‘he’
Comment by sparklematrix — February 8, 2007 @ 9:40 pm
I’ve seen it argued that “they” as singular and plural *is* grammatically correct. Apparently there is record of it being used as such in the 17th and 18th Centuries. At any rate, it’s immaterial as language is flexible and evolves over time anyways, and what better reason to change language than to eliminate bigotry? Although I do understand how it might make Honoured Grammarians twitch
Another minor reason why I use it comfortably is because when I tried saying “he/she” or “he or she” it kind of almost felt like I was talking about two people, heh, so switching to “they” flowed naturally. This has nothing to do with grammar, of course, but rather noticing how language affected the images/feelings in my brain as I used it. And of course, now I don’t even think about it and it feels completely natural.
Having spent the last four years in university where the overwhelming majority of what I was reading was recent archaeological peer-reviewed articles or feminist writing (the former rarely uses such obvious sexist language nowadays), encountering “Mankind” and “he” as generic is particularly jarring. It’s always pissed me off, but now I’m like “jeez people, get with the freaking program! Y’all say “Ms Jane Doe” all the time now, why the hell can’t you just say Humanity/Humankind etc?” gah! Especially when watching supposed “educational” programing such as what’s on PBS.
I’m less familiar with the problems around “human/humankind.” Hmmm… *heads off to dictionary to look for clues to its original meanings*
Comment by Cinder — February 9, 2007 @ 8:06 pm
Cinder – good to hear that the mighty ungendered pronoun was being used alongside fine words like ‘fie’, but age alone does not make it correct (that accolade goes to its utility and fine intentions). God knows, even the mighty ‘irregardless’ and ‘for all intensive purposes’ were common in the late 19th century.
That people still cling to the term ‘mankind’? Truly astonishing.
Comment by mistermorgan — February 10, 2007 @ 8:44 am
I’ve just been on a copywriting course, and one of the tutors (a male tutor) said he was no longer comfortable with using ‘man’ to refer to humanity. He based this on the idea that the noun ‘man’ conjurs up pictures in the ind of a man (and not a woman or child) so acts as a barrier to the message when refering to humanity as a whole. He alluded to feminist studies too in his reasoning. Happiness.
Comment by TP — February 11, 2007 @ 4:04 pm
Wow, great post. Language really does matter – especially when young people (namely, my sister’s generation as she’s 17) are using words like ‘pimps’ and ‘hos’ and so on in general language now. It worries me, because it seems like its okay to treat women badly. Luckily my sis has sense.
TP – that sounds fantastic. If only other teachers were as enlightened
Comment by Liz — February 15, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
My civil litigation course text book uses a generic ’she’. The claimant, defendant, judges, solicitors and barristers are all female. I love reading that book.
Comment by la somnambule — February 16, 2007 @ 8:30 am
I like s/he when I write. I also like the alternation of “she” and “he”, although for the first few paragraphs it often keeps me from getting into the flow of the writing.
I’ve read several articles (sorry, no cites, it’s been awhile ago) that seemed to view using “they” in place of “he” becoming common enough that eventually it’ll be accepted as proper. While this is a little distressing for me (having a “grammar ear”), I’m sure I’ll get over it, since the more inclusive construction is nicer than the exclusive one.
Comment by Jodie — February 23, 2007 @ 6:08 pm
I’m not sure if you realized, but men call things they think are dear to themselves “she” or “her”.
like sailors and their ships; they were always referred to in the female.
When do we use male pronouns?
On useless things.
Also, mankind does speak for all of “humanity”. Wo-man is an extension of a man (in whatever sense you want to think about it), so man-kind is the basic both men, women and children share.
It’s all just how you think about it.
Comment by K. — March 1, 2007 @ 11:01 pm
Hey FredX, you’re back! And you’ve learned some new vocab! Good for you.
You’re not going to be linked on my blog though. Nice try, moron.
Tip: Saying so doesn’t make it so. ‘We can think away oppression’; ‘mankind does speak for humanity’… nope. I suggest some elementary reading on the history of the English language, and a little feminist theory. I mean, you need to know what you’re arguing against, right?
Comment by Laurelin — March 2, 2007 @ 12:04 am
Submarines, boats, and other water-faring vessels are referred to as female for some reason (ie: “Hurrah, her sides are made of iron!”) I’ve never understood this.
Comment by Laser Potato — March 16, 2007 @ 5:54 pm
This is way late to be commenting, but I couldn’t resist.
I actually prefer to use “it” as a singular 3rd-person pronoun; “they” tends to make me start counting, “she” and “he” alternated can really confuse me, any of the gender-neutral creations floating around look like someone can’t spell, and the problems with just picking either “he” or “she” are obvious.
I know that “it” is often seen to be lacking personhood or denying it, but there are a number of constructions where we DO use it to refer to people (“It’s a boy!” for example), and I think that if the context is clearly referring to a person, that should override the inhumanness of “it”.
I also think it’s easier to reclaim “it” as a pronoun for people than it would be to get either the singular “they” or a new pronoun in the vocabulary, largely because we already use “it” in some cases to refer to people.
Anyway, just a lurker’s random pennies.
Comment by Alix — March 23, 2007 @ 7:41 am