He ? She ? It ?!
Had put up an extended post on this topic – after some thought (and some honest critical reviews for which I’m grateful), decided that just quoting the original passage which prompted the post might be a better idea -
I am distressed to find that some women friends (fortunately not many) treat the use of the impersonal masculine pronoun as if it showed intention to exclude them. If there were any excluding to be done (happily there isn’t) I think I would sooner exclude men, but when I once tentatively tried referring to my abstract reader as ‘she’, a feminist denounced me for patronizing condescension: I ought to say ‘he-or-she’, and ‘his-or-her’. That is easy to do if you don’t care about language, but then if you don’t care about language you don’t deserve readers of either sex. Here, I have returned to the normal conventions of English pronouns. I may refer to the ‘reader’ as ‘he’, but I no more think of my readers as specifically male than a French speaker thinks of a table as female. As a matter of fact I believe I do, more often than not, think of my readers as female, but that is my personal affair and I’d hate to think that such considerations impinged on how I use my native language.
- Richard Dawkins
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Looking forward to views/comments/opinions.
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I find sexism one awful disease whether it comes from man or woman. The discrepancy that arises is obnoxious (lethal to society) and the attitude that is reflected unnecessarily (in fairer cases and by you know who) is exaggerated.
ps: No offence to Feminist movement. It’s a plinth to social and cultural changes.
I liked reading this. Thanks for putting this up. It was quite honest and unpretentious.