Re: Gender neutral


mb wrote:
Mike Lyle wrote:
mb wrote:
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.

You got something there, but at a remove. It maps to sex only because
of the usual, total absence of thinking of us speakers. Where the
mapping is direct, as with mostly latinate words like actress / actor,
there is no major outcry.

You are mistaken. Feminists want NO marking of sex in language,
especially of occupations. 'Actor' is being used by some actresses.

Where said mapping is totally in-your-face,
like "The Rights of Man" or "mankind", they are already practically
obsolete (their replacement by the equally macho "human rights /
humankind" is another story).

I see nothing wrong with either.

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.

They certainly aren't. They may be forgetting that there is most always

'almost', not 'most'.

some other, less conspicuous way of wording one's thought. Also,
calling that "inclusive he" is improper;
it obscures the radical difference between a definite personal pronoun
and an indefinite (or even impersonal) personal pronoun.

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.

Equality of the sexes is not exactly total where Turkish is spoken. Or
Persian, or many other languages that don't mark gender.

What is relevant is that there is this pressure for language change as
a result of social change and it has to be taken into account. Not much
discussion there; you don't argue with a juggernaut. Inanity is in
quibbling to excuse and justify it.

There is no justification needed. Language is inherently arbitrary.

.