In Search of a Singular Gender Neutral Pronoun

[Danoff]

I'm of the opinion that "man" in generic. WoMAN, huMAN, or MANkind all refer to "man" as the species. So when one refers to "man" one is not necessarily refering to the male of the species, but the species in general.

This is where the use of the pronoun "he", as a generic term, stems from. The only other generic way of refering to a single person is by saying "it", which doesn't work very well for people.

It went to work today.
When do you think it will get here?
That's a cute baby, how old is it? (<- we get away with it there)

Recently (relatively), people have been substituting the word "she" as a generic term. Just to point out how supposedly sexist we all are by using "he" generically.

The doctor was busy, so she blah blah...
When a lawyer is faced with this scenario, she should blah blah...

But I've noticed that the people who do this are not even handed with it. They'll still use "he" when faced with a generic term for a criminal.

When someone breaks into your house, he has committed a crime.
You've seen a picture of the rapist? What did he look like?

No equal opportunity there. It's always he. For rapists or any criminals - anything negative - the people who would use "she" to make a point end up using "he"... because they're sexist apparently.

My point is this, huMANity needs a gender neutral pronoun. So either we all start using the word "it", or we make a new word, or we stick with he or she. If we're going with she, we're going all the way. We use it for rapists too. However, since we've already established "he" as the gender neutral term, I suggest we stick with it.

What do you think?

 

[FoolKiller]

My English high school teacher told me not to be gender specific once so I started using they. She also informed me that this was also wrong since it was plural. I got tired of typing "he/she" for everything so I would type "he" the way I wanted to and then do a replace all function to make it "he/she".

I always thought of man/he as gender neutral myself but it drives English teachers and womenists crazy, that is until, as you pointed out, the action has a negative conotation.

You mentioned rape, which I found interesting considering that sex offender registries do have females, including rape charges.

 

[Famine]

They/them.

"That's a cute baby, how old are they?"
"The doctor was busy, so they blah blah..."
"When a lawyer is faced with this scenario, they should blah blah..."
"When someone breaks into your house, they have committed a crime."
"You've seen a picture of the rapist? What did they look like?"

You are correct though - he really stems from homonid and so ought to be a gender-neutral pronoun, as well as a gender-specific one. Peculiar, huh?

 

[Danoff]

They/them.

"That's a cute baby, how old are they?"
"The doctor was busy, so they blah blah..."
"When a lawyer is faced with this scenario, they should blah blah..."
"When someone breaks into your house, they have committed a crime."
"You've seen a picture of the rapist? What did they look like?"

You are correct though - he really stems from homonid and so ought to be a gender-neutral pronoun, as well as a gender-specific one. Peculiar, huh?

They/them implies plurality. What do we do for the singular case? Simply use the plural pronoun? How do we distinguish between plural and singular cases then?

 

[Sage]

This is something that’s always bothered me. I hate he/she, and I can’t bring myself to use they, so I usually rewrite the entire sentence until it can be written without specific reference to the genderless subject. For example, instead of writing When a lawyer is faced with this scenario, she should…, I would write A lawyer, faced with this scenario, should…. It’s a little obtuse sometimes, but I really hate the other options.

Maybe GTP should be the first to come up with a gender-neutral pronoun – let’s come up with one, then use it as much as we can.

I can’t think of one though. I was thinking hit, which, if I recall correctly, was the predecessor to it, but then we’ve used hit as a verb for so long that it would sound funny as a pronoun.

 

[Famine]

They/them implies plurality. What do we do for the singular case? Simply use the plural pronoun? How do we distinguish between plural and singular cases then?

Usually it does, but when the subject is stated as singular earlier on in the sentence, they/them takes a singular form too.

I can’t think of one though. I was thinking hit, which, if I recall correctly, was the predecessor to it, but then we’ve used hit as a verb for so long that it would sound funny as a pronoun.

Maybe we should use a portmanteau word, like spork or foon.

We need a word which encompasses she, he and it all in one... Hmmm...

 

[Danoff]

Sage, how about "gorpf"? We could use "gorpf"! Or "klegspin". "Derpondle"?

 

[skip0110]

College english taught me to use he always. They is plural, and he/she is actually an incorrect use of the forward slash.

 

[Zardoz]

Seems odd that, considering how otherwise-rich the English language is, no gender-neutral pronoun ever came into use. I agree that its needed, but what would it be?

It really is a "peculiar" sort of problem, but with all the geniuses that frequent this forum, certainly we can come up with a new word and solve it...

 

[James2097]

Just use "he". Stupid PC world.

 

[Famine]

Hop.

Short for "Homonid person".

 

[F1GTR]

How about 'that person'? That's what I always use.

 

[James2097]

So after god created us in 6 days, we're all Seventh Day Advent Hoppists?

 

[Zardoz]

How about 'that person'? That's what I always use.

The doctor was busy, so that person blah blah...

When a lawyer is faced with this scenario, that person should blah blah...

Doesn't really work in cases such as the above.

 

[Famine]

So after god created us in 6 days, we're all Seventh Day Advent Hoppists?

"...and the greatest of these is hop."

 

[Kylehnat]

This is a quandry. I use "they" when faced with the situation. Yes, it's grammatically incorrect, and yes, it's plural, but as Famine said, with context, there's little ambiguity. I was always told to use "he or she", but this bothers me for two reasons. 1)That sounds really stupid in ALL situations, and 2)what if the person is a transsexual? "One" kind of works ("when in this situation, one should..."), but not very often ("someone mugged you? What did one look like?") Meh. Language changes over time. Let's just accept "they". I mean, "ain't" ain't a word, and I don't use it (even though I just did ), but if someone said it while talking to me, I would have no problem deciphering what they mean. Thus, I consider it to be an acceptable word and part of our language, even though it breaks several grammar rules.

 

[Danoff]

What's wrong with sticking to our previously defined gender neutral word, "he". I don't see what the problem with using "he", "him" and "his" as gender neutral. But I do admit a slight bit of descriptive advantage if we use another word that only has the one definition.

So I'm voting for "derpondle".

 

[Duke]

We can use "fan", like sf folks do. As in "The group of fen staggered out of the con hotel's bar, filk singing the old favorite One Small Step For a Fan, One Giant Step For Fankind."

 

[Ghost C]

This is a stupid problem, and the person who came up with this crap? She should be shot.

I wasn't being politically correct there - Take what you will from it.

 

[Emohawk]

It's not politically correct to encourage violence.

There are tons of gender neutral pronouns; people keep seeing the problem and inventing a solution, but it never catches on.

 

[niky]

Face it, English is stupid. In my second language, Filipino, we don't have gender specific pronouns, unless you're talking about a relative. I guess they were politically correct even before the term was invented.

I vote for "E". It's easy to type, is gender neutral, and should be as common as "I" once it catches on.

E' was a nice guy, wasn't E?

And that girlfriend of is, E was a very pretty girl.

 

[Danoff]

Face it, English is stupid. In my second language, Filipino, we don't have gender specific pronouns, unless you're talking about a relative. I guess they were politically correct even before the term was invented.

I like the gender specific pronouns.

 

[Zardoz]

E' was a nice guy, wasn't E?

And that girlfriend of is, E was a very pretty girl.

Well, then people will just think you've got a British Cockney accent:

'e was a nice guy, wasn't 'e? And that girlfriend of 'is, 'e was a very pretty girl.

They'll also think you're a bit confused about genders...

 

[James2097]

'E just sounds like a lazy abbreviation of "he" (and it is in cockney land and 'bogan' Australia). Its JUST as gender specific as "he" really, just shorter.

 

[Slicks]

'One' will work in some circumstances and is gender-neutral.
"When a lawyer is faced with this scenario, one should ..."

 

[James2097]

'One' will work in some circumstances and is gender-neutral.
"When a lawyer is faced with this scenario, one should ..."

Except, one feels that one will always sound like yoda, will one.

 

[DeLoreanBrown]

How about Hit ?
"That's a cute baby, how old is hit?"
"The doctor was busy, so hit blah blah..."
"When a lawyer is faced with this scenario,hit should blah blah..."
"When someone breaks into your house, hit has committed a crime."
"You've seen a picture of the rapist? What does hit look like?"

btw , do you read many manpages ? when describing a computer user , she is quite common i.e She does'nt link directly to the site .

 

[Sage]

'One' will work in some circumstances and is gender-neutral.
"When a lawyer is faced with this scenario, one should ..."

Naw – the problem with that is that the antecedent of “one” is usually anybody or you, both of which don’t work for that sentence (the antecedent should be lawyer). In other words, that sentence makes it sound like you’re giving an order to someone in case they know a lawyer faced with a scenario (e.g., When a lawyer is faced with this scenario, one should help him out). The antecedent of “one” is never a specifically defined subject.

 

[skip0110]

btw , do you read many manpages ? when describing a computer user , she is quite common i.e She does'nt link directly to the site .

Never noticed that...

They also have a manpage reader "woman" (as in, "woman grep" rather than "man grep")

 

[sumbodycool]

Well, the word "they" has he in it, with a T and Y, which in turn may represent plurality. Or, you can take "she" and replace the s with a t, and add a y at the end. If you put "it" with T and Y, you get tity, but I don't like that. You can in turn replace the first letter of "it", with a t and end the word with y, and end up with tty, which isnt really a word. Drop the extra T. I like "ty", (sounds like tie, rhymes with thy), if a gender neutral pronoun actually existed, were necessary. I'd rather stick to "he or she" and "it", though.