There’s been another kerfuffle about gender-neutral language. Although it’s mostly anecdotal outrage, the main issue seems to be whether, as is claimed by traditionalists, the masculine third person pronoun should be used in cases where no gender is specified. For example, “If a student writes an essay, he should not be marked down for his choice of pronoun”. People have had fun with some extreme cases, like “since Man is a mammal, he suckles his young”. But I think the problem can be posed with much more standard sentences. Let’s take sentences of the general form “If you ask a [worker of occupation X], [pronoun] will say the biggest problem with the job is …” The traditionalist claim is that, in all cases, the appropriate pronoun is “he”. Think about that for a moment, and then
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There’s been another kerfuffle about gender-neutral language. Although it’s mostly anecdotal outrage, the main issue seems to be whether, as is claimed by traditionalists, the masculine third person pronoun should be used in cases where no gender is specified. For example, “If a student writes an essay, he should not be marked down for his choice of pronoun”.
People have had fun with some extreme cases, like “since Man is a mammal, he suckles his young”. But I think the problem can be posed with much more standard sentences. Let’s take sentences of the general form
“If you ask a [worker of occupation X], [pronoun] will say the biggest problem with the job is …”
The traditionalist claim is that, in all cases, the appropriate pronoun is “he”. Think about that for a moment, and then I’ll give some examples.
“If you ask a plumber, he will say the biggest problem with the job is …”
“If you ask a secretary, he will say the biggest problem with the job is …”
“If you ask a doctor, he will say the biggest problem with the job is …”
“If you ask a nurse, he will say the biggest problem with the job is …”
“If you ask an economist, he will say the biggest problem with the job is …”
You get the idea, I hope. The sentences with stereotypically male occupations sound natural and elicit the image of a male worker. But, contrary to the traditional claim, the sentences with stereotypically female occupations are jarring, and produce an element of confusion.
That’s true even when the stereotypes are inaccurate and outdated. Nearly half of all doctors, and a majority of younger doctors are women, but the doctor sentence doesn’t strike me as odd. The assumption that doctors are men is sufficiently ingrained that it can still form the basis of a puzzle that fools many.