https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html
Can somebody explain, what's wrong with `he' referring to a person of unknown sex? At least in German (er) and in Russian (он) masculine pronoun is still being used for that purpose.
Can somebody explain, what's wrong with `he' referring to a person of unknown sex? At least in German (er) and in Russian (он) masculine pronoun is still being used for that purpose.
For the second factor, the example sentence presented first in the original article:
> She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes.
...sounds pretty jarring when you make it 'he'...
> She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in his clothes.
Pronouns are a lot like nicknames or shortened names. You can ask people to call you Richard instead of 'Richie', 'Rich', or 'Dick' and generally expect that people will try to respect that. If someone wrote and essay that said, "I object to using the nickname someone prefers, because I found an equally correct replacement of my choosing..." I think we'd all raise an eyebrow.
Sure, go ahead and reserve that right, but did you really need to?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Generic_h...
Yeah there's also the fact that it implies that male is the "default" which isn't ideal, but that's really secondary to the fact that using "he" for an unspecified person doesn't sound right and probably never has. If it had ever sounded right, people would have been using it naturally and grammar prescriptivists wouldn't have had to spend so much time complaining about singular "they".
Interesting, because for me it's the opposite, meybe because I'm used to German and Russian, but
> The patient should be informed of his therapeutic options.
Sounds sound, and
> The patient should be informed of their therapeutic options.
Sounds gravely wrong.