Re: Gender neutral


mb wrote:
Tighe wrote:
[...]
There would be no gender issue involved here. [Sc. in German and Spanish]

Not here, but elsewhere. In fact, English has way, way less
interference of grammatical gender than a long list of different
tongues but surely it's the language that wastes the largest amount of
time, ink and saliva in the inane discussion of it.
[...]

But I think it's a political issue for English-speakers precisely
_because_ we don't have grammatical gender: our few feminine and
masculine forms do map to sex. Inclusive "he" is the only exception,
and we've seen that it's semantically unreliable in many contexts:
objectors to it aren't being stupid or needlessly picky.

I'd like it very much if so many surgeons, jockeys, and judges were
women that arguing about "he" really was the waste of time you suggest
it is; but, as things are, the argument is far from inane.

--
Mike.

.

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