Comments on: When They Became Him

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Sat, 14 Dec 2019 01:44:10 +0000

Thirteen years after this article appeared, and things have become vastly more silly in American English.

By: trytobeunbiased

trytobeunbiased — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 22:55:04 +0000

It did not start with Robert Lowth. It started with Anne Fisher who published “A New Grammar” in 1745.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=0

While it seems probably that some bigots did use this change in the language to further their anti-woman agendas, there does not seem to be evidence that the change in the language was done so that women could be oppressed. The change seems to have been made primarily because it was thought that agreement of number was more important.

By: Some guy

Some guy — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 16:06:19 +0000

I’ve never understood why no one has simply suggested that in cases where gender is unknown, it should be acceptable to use ‘it’ to refer to a person.

By: Hobbs

Hobbs — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 14:27:50 +0000

Great article, but after the 1707 Act of Union there was no ‘English’ parliament, just a British one (based in England).

By: James Marshall

James Marshall — Sat, 27 Dec 2014 06:07:58 +0000

I know of at least one person trying to use xe/xem/xir

By: oscar

oscar — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 11:24:59 +0000

This man who killed anyone in the way of his recreating our earth is a woman hating gey.
So obviously, this he-man lingo embellishment is one of his many sinister signatures we had to live with..
I said ‘had’, hopefully, there is a time when he isnt sure what is what in the future and stops killing people and threatening to pull the plug on our universe..

By: becks54

becks54 — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:57:00 +0000

Cynthia, I love your article, especially the last line. Despite those couple errors (that we’ve all made), it’s concise but says a lot. I’m also all for using ‘their’ as a singular possessive.
My stance is less about the sexist aspect, more about being correct in the communication. Using ‘he’ when gender-neutrality is intended is misleading, just as using ‘her’ would be. Coming up with new words like ‘hir’ or the annoying ‘s/he’ is absurd, since ‘their’ is already there and used most prominently in everyday speech.
While ‘his’ may be less grammatically suspect since it maintains concord in subject-pronoun agreement, it is more erroneous in concept since it intrudes on the gender by adding an element that simply is not true. If a male is not specific to the sentence, ‘his’ should simply not be used. Writing is about telling stories and, unless you are writing a scientific or economic piece—and often even then, gender is usually more important than number.
The fact that grammarians have not distinguished between the singular and plural of ‘your’ or ‘who’ should prove that this is an arbitrary rule, dreamed up by the nit-picky rather than the writers and speakers who actually use the English language in their craft. It should be expelled just as the beliefs that you can’t split an infinitive or start a sentence with ‘And’ have. Of course there should be a standard so that we may properly communicate with each other, but rules that make little or no sense should not be part of that standard. From what I can see, the topic of your article is the most perverse of English rules out there at the moment. Someone of authority needs to come out and state it decisively.
(By the way, the Chicago Manual of Style did promote the use of ‘their’ as a singular possessive recently (14th ed. maybe), but they have since lost their nerve and rescinded)

By: Mirage_GSM

Mirage_GSM — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 09:03:27 +0000

[quote]finsalscollons said: “As a foreign guy who has been learning English for the last 25 years and still find it complicate, I will tell you that the last thing we need is another source of confusion.”[/quote]
As a foreign guy who has been learning three other foreign languages (french, latin and japanese) and dabbled in several more (spanish, romanian and a few others) I can tell you that english is one of the least complicated laguages there are.
[quote]It was bad enough when, centuries ago, the singular “thou” was replace by “you”. Last month, when I protested to a representative of a company, I said “You suck” (referring to the company) and the representative took it as a personal insult.[/quote]
No surprise there. I would feel insulted by that even if I realized you were talking about the company. As a general rule you should avoid cursing and swearing in a language that is not familiar to you! (In a business environment you should avoid swearing and cursing altogether.)
[quote]And what about “can” and “can’t”. Since the “t” is not pronounced, the only difference lies in the vowel. The difference is so tiny that most times I don’t know whether I can do something or not.[/quote]
I don’t know where the english speakers you routinely talk to come from, but in my experience the “t” isn’t dropped at all. There may be some people whose pronounciation is that slurred, but so far I’ve had the luck not to have to interact with them ;-)
[quote]English language has only a handful of words that make the masculine/femenine distinction: personal pronouns, some names of people and animals. A tiny percentage of the language. The vast majority of English words are gender neutral.[/quote]
Which is one reason the english language is so easy to learn. Try learning french or german…
(I’m not saying I don’t like french or my native german, but it is harder to learn for foreigners.)
[quote]So let’s imagine a contract “The trainer will pay the members of the team. They will be responsible of the costs of the clothes”. Who is they? The trainer or the members of the team? Who is responsible to pay for the clothes.[/quote]
Counter-example: “The share-holders elect the members of the board. They are responsible for waiving the budget.” In this case there is no choice but “they” (if you want to use a pronoun) and the wording is still imprecise. That is the reason why you usually don’t find many pronouns at all in legal texts, gender-neutral or not. It is perfectly acceptable to repeat the subject for clarification, like “The members of the board are responsible for waiving the budget.”

By: finsalscollons

finsalscollons — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:45:48 +0000

Please don’t do it. If you want to be politically correct, use “she” as a gender neutral pronoun.

As a foreign guy who has been learning English for the last 25 years and still find it complicate, I will tell you that the last thing we need is another source of confusion.

It was bad enough when, centuries ago, the singular “thou” was replace by “you”. Last month, when I protested to a representative of a company, I said “You suck” (referring to the company) and the representative took it as a personal insult.

And what about “can” and “can’t”. Since the “t” is not pronounced, the only difference lies in the vowel. The difference is so tiny that most times I don’t know whether I can do something or not.

The fundamental distinction in English language is between singular and plural. Almost any word has this distinction (exception: the infamous “you”). English language has only a handful of words that make the masculine/femenine distinction: personal pronouns, some names of people and animals. A tiny percentage of the language. The vast majority of English words are gender neutral.

So try to blur a fundamental distinction (singular/plural between he/she and they), to be accurate in a very unimportant distinction (he/she) does not make sense grammatically. Yes, in the past that was the case, but in the past everybody used “thou”, “shalt” and so on and so forth.

So let’s imagine a contract “The trainer will pay the members of the team. They will be responsible of the costs of the clothes”. Who is they? The trainer or the members of the team? Who is responsible to pay for the clothes.

If you want to help women, please stop domestic violence. Please help the women who are hungry in Africa. There are thousands of ways to help women and make this world better for them and less male chauvinistic. When a woman is discriminated, she doesn’t mind if something refers to her with “he” or “they”. So please spare us all this unnecessary and confusing change of grammar.

By: a1c

a1c — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 00:44:30 +0000

Whom were was here. Who?