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From: ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould)
Newsgroups: net.nlang,net.women
Subject: Re: Gender-specific responses to s/he
Message-ID: <238@mtxinu.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 6-Jan-85 23:06:00 EST
Article-I.D.: mtxinu.238
Posted: Sun Jan  6 23:06:00 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 8-Jan-85 05:41:51 EST
References: <218@cmu-cs-cad.ARPA>
Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 33
Xref: watmath net.nlang:2335 net.women:3987

> From: sun!sunny@DECWRL.ARPA (Sunny Kirsten)
> >Try using "their" whether referring to one generic person or many persons:
> >it's easier to read than he/she or his/her, and is gender non-specific.
> >				Sunny
> 
> No, no, no!  Please!  *cringe*
> 
>                                             Not that I can speak for women in
> general, but I prefer "he" to "their" by several orders of magnitude, and I
> think that all this "he/she", "he or she", and "s/he" nonsense is more
> distracting than useful.
> 
> 						-Dragon
> -- 
> UUCP: ...seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!lll-crg!dragon
> ARPA: monica.cellio@cmu-cs-cad or dragon@lll-crg

I found the use of "their" in the singular distasteful when I first heard
it, too.  Now that I've gotten used to it, I like it just fine.  I still
don't use it for most written things; there I rephrase things to be neuter
in different ways - usually by writing in the plural whenever possible.

Overall, I'm glad that I put up with a minor distaste for a while.  It
allows me to be happier about the way I talk about non-gender specific
third persons.

I agree, too, that the multi-specific forms (he/she, s/he, et. al.)
are too distracting to be useful.

-- 
Ed Gould		    mt Xinu, 739 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
{ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!ed   +1 415 644 0146
			    (I'd rather not be parochial.)