The use of the pronoun “he” as a bound pronoun of neutral gender is problematic on two grounds. First, its use is blatantly sexist (although the sexism is of a historical nature, so that those who continue to use “he” in this way have a defensible position). Second, and more importantly, many readers confronted with such a use of “he”, including myself, tend to find that it causes a jarring effect as they stop to wonder whether or not the writer intended to imply that the referent of the pronoun is male. Anything that causes a jarring effect like this on a substantial portion of your readers should be avoided, as it serves only to distract them from the important substance of your writing.<\/p>\n
Now, I turn to a more recent variant of the same problem. The use of the pronoun “she” as a bound pronoun of neutral gender is problematic on two grounds. First, its use is blatantly sexist (although the sexism is of an anti-historical nature, so that those who continue to use “she” in this way have a defensible position). Second, and more importantly, many readers confronted with such a use of “she”, including myself, tend to find that it causes a jarring effect as they stop to wonder whether or not the writer intended to imply that the referent of the pronoun is female. Anything that causes a jarring effect like this on a substantial portion of your readers should be avoided, as it serves only to distract them from the important substance of your writing.<\/p>\n
But what alternatives are there? In everyday speech, “they” or “them” is used for this purpose, but this disturbs the sensibilities of prescriptivists, who, I should remind you, are a substantial portion of your readers. And anything that causes a jarring effect like this on a substantial portion of your readers….<\/p>\n
Rewriting the sentence is the only practicable alternative. Do it and be done with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The use of the pronoun “he” as a bound pronoun of neutral gender is problematic on two grounds. First, its use is blatantly sexist (although the sexism is of a historical nature, so that those who continue to use “he” … Continue reading