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Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:49:28 +0000
From: Richard Polhill <richard.news@polhill.vispa.invalid>
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Subject: Re: her instead of "his or her"
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Lucio Crusca wrote:
> Richard Polhill wrote:
>> However, there is nothing wrong with the sentence as it is. Today many
>> publications will switch between 'his' and 'her' for different third-party
>> cases so as to promote equality and stay slightly more personal, but the
>> practice is questionable.
> I wonder why it's questionable...
Well it begins with the premise that using either 'his' or 'her' exclusively
somehow denigrates the opposite sex. As English does not have a personal
neutral form, only impersonal neuter ('its') we would have no option but to
use one of the gendered pronouns. Like French we have always defaulted to the
masculine to be non-gender-specific and this is perfectly acceptable within
the language. This means traditionally, 'hers' relates specifically to the
feminine, whereas "his", used in a non-gendered context, is correctly
interpreted as "his or her".
It is on the same anthropological model as man the species and mankind. To
insist that the feminine is used in equal measure suggests we should also say
'womankind' when referring to our species. There is no benefit linguistically
from doing this, and promulgates the belief that if one uses
politically-corrected language, then all is well without addressing the real
issues of inequality.
It is a politically motivated practice that has nothing to do with correct
usage and only adds confusion. I hope that it is a passing fad.
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