The English Language Needs a Neutral Gender

[cuppajoe_9]

Anybody who has ever written about hypothetical persons of unspecified sex knows what I'm talking about. Sentences like "Any person can execrise his or her legal rights how ever he or she sees fit" are awkward, ugly, hard to read and self-concious. I have heard of the word 'hir' used as a neuter possesive pronoun, so let's work on getting that one into the dictionary. However, I don't know of any replacements for 'he or she', aside from the craven '(s)he' and 's/he', which are no less irritating, and read as 'she' anyway. Suggestions?

[Virgil]

I have no problem using the masculine pronoun when being general. I don't give a hoot about political correctness when it comes to grammer.

[cuppajoe_9]

I have no stomach for political correctness. It's factual and gramatical correctness that concerns me.

[Charles Darnay]

I'm reminded of that scene from "Life of Brian"...... hahahah, if you've seen it you know what I'm talking about.


I, as well, generally use "he" as a general pronoun

[SleepyWitch]

they

from LDOCE:


used when talking about someone who may be male or female, to avoid saying 'he or she':
If anyone has any information related to the crime, will they please contact the police.
Every child, whoever they are, deserves to have a mum and a dad.
..If anyone doesn't like it, they can leave.

it works fine most of the time but in some sentences it does sound a bit awkward

PS: didn't you say you were from Iceland, cuppa? have you moved to Canada for your studies?

[Kaltrina]

yep I generally use he as a pronoun, because it is very tiresome reading both of the pronouns every time... a professor of mine used (s)he, it is more practical but then I usually read it as she only...

[grace86]

Political correctness..bah!! I always use "he" it is a pain to do (s)he or s/he or he or she!

Professors always mark it out when someone uses the word "they."

Although the administration might find my essays a little un politically correct...my capital punishment essay uses "he," they might rag on me for women also being death row inmates...oh well..I just put "he" for the fact that it makes things easier.

[Thorwench]

German has a neutral gender "das". (you have "it" or for us "es" as well, but we also have "das" as an article) No one uses "it" or "das" to address a person apart from persons who are not yet persons, children for instance. I personally hate the female versions of generals and never use them to denote myself and think "person" is a fine term to make a general reference to either gender. For any information and some philosophical fun with "das" see Martin Heidegger's "Holzwege" (I don't know the English title unfortunately).

[SleepyWitch]

when i was studying in England, professors didn't mark "they" out ..or should I say "them" ? ;) maybe it's different in the UK and US?

about German, some academic writers even use the female form of nouns (e.g. Lehrerinnen - female teachers, or Schülerinnen - female pupils) to mean both male and female.. now that's so much more confusing than using the male form for both. whenever i read stuff like this, I first assume they are talking about females only but then it turns out they mean both sexes... ???
i don't see how that is any more PC than using the male form for both.

[Turk]

The English Language Needs a Neutral Gender

YES.

We have "o" in Turkish as neutral gender. And sometimes even someone like me (who doesn't know English very well) having problems with this. For example you mention about someone you don't know, and you can't decide if you should call him or her. It's annoying.

[MCory1]

I completely agree. Although I'm vocally against PC in just about any context, I subconsciously force myself to either use "they" or if possible reword a situation to where I can use either pronoun (i.e. instead of "Imagine he/she grabbed a gun" I'll try to find something like "Take Johnny for example; imagine he grabbed a gun." A bad example and not perfectly PC anyways, but if it's done right it puts it in a slightly different perspective.)

If you're writing something with lots of different situations, one thing I'd recommend is alternating--it's something I've seen a lot of modern college texts do. One chapter will be from a "he" perspective, the next will be from a "she" perspective. Sometimes it works, other times it's more confusing than anything else.

Of course, "they" is always a good throwback in a pinch--you'll get dinged for it, but if you're more comfortable with that (or strictly "he" or strictly "she") you'll probably put out better work anyways and compensate.

[cuppajoe_9]

PS: didn't you say you were from Iceland, cuppa? have you moved to Canada for your studies?
The other way around. I'm from Canada, but I am interested in attending the University of Iceland in a year or two. I actually got the idea for a neutral gender while I was stuying Icelandic.

'They' is usually plural, but I sometimes use it anyway.

[SleepyWitch]

wow, you're studying Icelandic? that's too cool :)
a friend of mine went on a Geography field trip there this summer and brought back some breathtaking pics of glaciers and other things only geographers delight in :lol:

[cuppajoe_9]

wow, you're studying Icelandic? that's too cool :)
a friend of mine went on a Geography field trip there this summer and brought back some breathtaking pics of glaciers and other things only geographers delight in :lol:
Yeah, I can imagine a geographer would love it there. A linguist would probalby enjoy him or herself (see?) as well. Tenses galore.

[Jtolj]

We do have a neutrel gender pronoun. "One".

[cuppajoe_9]

"A linguist would probably enjoy one's self" is not gramatically correct. We need a plural form of 'one' (besides 'two', I mean).

[RobinHood3000]

...'three'? :confused:

[Jtolj]

"A linguist would probably enjoy one's self" is not gramatically correct. We need a plural form of 'one' (besides 'two', I mean).
They is the plural form of one, and oneself is a word. You can also say half, two, three, all, many, some, etc. An amount without an article can be a neutrel pronoun.

[Jtolj]

"A linguist would probably enjoy one's self" is not gramatically correct. We need a plural form of 'one' (besides 'two', I mean).
That is correct.

[SleepyWitch]

Doesn't "one" only refer to either the person speaking (like when the Queen talks about herself as "one") or 'people in general'? Whereas if you want to talk about a specific person whose gender/sex is unknown you'd still need a different word?

[cuppajoe_9]

That is correct."A linguist" is in the third person, "one's self" is in the second person.

[dejitaru]

It doesn't. That would turn it into another language. Say he, she, it, they, or be poetic. Use a title. Use pleonasms and prolixity.

[SummerSolstice]

Ha! This is one of my favorite rants. ^_^ A plural neutral-gender pronoun isn't what English needs... just that bothersome old singular. "They" is the plural personal pronoun in English, and it does just fine as that--it's when people use it singularly that really steams my broccoli. I can't even imagine who got the idea first. I mean, sure, it sounds normal now, but that's because you hear it everywhere!

'One' is suitable, most of the time, although passages that use it excessively come across as very florid. The "A linguist would probably enjoy one's self" example is certainly problematic. What I do is make the hypothetical linguist plural--"linguists would probably enjoy themselves." Ta-da! The construction doesn't always work, but it does most of the time.

[cuppajoe_9]

'One' is suitable, most of the time, although passages that use it excessively come across as very florid. The "A linguist would probably enjoy one's self" example is certainly problematic. What I do is make the hypothetical linguist plural--"linguists would probably enjoy themselves." Ta-da! The construction doesn't always work, but it does most of the time.

Nice! That still doesn't solve the old 'his or her' problem, though. I'm in favour of 'hir', but that still leaves us with the problem of how to pronounce it in a way that isn't identical to 'her'.

[Shalot]

I was called out in a literature class for using they instead of he/she. I suppose for what I was writing (an explication of some william blake poem - I don't even remember which one) it wasn't appropriate to use they. The sentence had a pronoun-antecedent aggreement problem. I wish I could remember the exact sentence but I had a singular pronoun followed by the plural antecedent "their" to avoid the awkward he/she construction.

I remember doing it because in one of my writing classes the prof told us that it was acceptable to use a plural so as not to have so many he/she constructions. But I guess since I wasn't repeatedly having to write he/she, that one sentence was very noticable and not appropriate in that paper.

[4rum]

My biggest problem with ANY strict adhearance to 'proper' grammer is when it stifles creativity. There is a time and a place for everything, grammer is certainly no exception.

[Vada Dagon]

I suppose you could construct the sentence to avoid the wording of he/she or it's alternative formats.

However I do like the use of one and oneself but I also like to use the you especially in examples.

Let's say you went to the market and bought 3 eggs....

instead of

Let's say he/she went to the market and bought 3 eggs...

However, when dealing with legal jargon, as it seems in the first post, it is rather more appropriate to use (s)he because you don't want any legal loops due to omitting a letter. Legal jargon is not meant to be pretty or easily read. Instead it is meant to be precise, which I suppose translates to a very boring reading.

Granted the you doesn't always work either but it is gender neutral just as one is.

I suppose you could use whatever term you like that is gender neutral when writing a sentence as long as you construct the sentence to work for that term.

us
them
they
we
one
you

are all gender neutral as well as

member
payee
landlord
debtor
creditor

When it comes to literature though, I am not sure you want to have a gender neutral. Poetry and Fiction certainly have very little need for gender neutrality or for pc. Just to point out that I don't consider Reference, self-help, or cook books literature.

As for speach writers they would probably have more flexibility than legal documents.

My 2cents!

[bacchante]

Anybody who has ever written about hypothetical persons of unspecified sex knows what I'm talking about. Sentences like "Any person can execrise his or her legal rights how ever he or she sees fit" are awkward, ugly, hard to read and self-concious. I have heard of the word 'hir' used as a neuter possesive pronoun, so let's work on getting that one into the dictionary. However, I don't know of any replacements for 'he or she', aside from the craven '(s)he' and 's/he', which are no less irritating, and read as 'she' anyway. Suggestions?


Russians have "ono", but i've never met this word used in the context you mentioned. so i think it's not exactly neutral gender, you're talking about.
Anyway, the suggestion is a good and almost-necessary one, but not the variant "hir", I think.
somebody will create smth to use it in his work and it will be accepted maybe.. that somebody may be even you. or me. but not yet;))

[cuppajoe_9]

However, when dealing with legal jargon, as it seems in the first post, it is rather more appropriate to use (s)he because you don't want any legal loops due to omitting a letter. Legal jargon is not meant to be pretty or easily read. Instead it is meant to be precise, which I suppose translates to a very boring reading.

My example was not supposed to be illustrative of legal jargon, but rather of firey political treatise, a form of prose which, I think you'll agree, is killed rather quickly by the dreaded 'he or she'. (Note to the mod squad: the politics in this particular treatise are intentionally neutral and almost nonsensical so as to avoid political discussion. Please don't hurt me.)


Anyway, the suggestion is a good and almost-necessary one, but not the variant "hir", I think.

I kind of like 'hir', it looks so Scandinavian.

[SheykAbdullah]

Russians have "ono", but i've never met this word used in the context you mentioned. so i think it's not exactly neutral gender, you're talking about.
Anyway, the suggestion is a good and almost-necessary one, but not the variant "hir", I think.
somebody will create smth to use it in his work and it will be accepted maybe.. that somebody may be even you. or me. but not yet;))

Technically, you are right. In a grammatcial sense in Russian 'ono' is a neutral gender, and you are right about its uses. The pronoun of the neutral gender (normally in an Indo-European language its definite article) would not be used to refer to a person of unknown sex. The neutral gender (and it is not in any way related to actual or 'natural' gender) is simply a grammatical convention splitting words into various groups. For example, Old English had three genders, like all early Indo-European languages and some mdoern ones, but the grammatical gender had no relation to natural gender, for example, 'wife' in Old English was a neuter gender noun, so when refering to a 'wife' in the third person the article used would be 'it.' Ultimately this lack of correlation between natural and grammatical gender is what led to the total break-down of grammitcal gender in the English language in the later Old English period, but that is another story. It is interesting to note that modern German has a similiar dissonance between natural and grammatical gender, but their gender system is here to stay.

In fact there are many languages whose grammatical genders do not follow even natural gender catagories. Swahili, for example, has fifteen genders, and certain aborignal languages have three, one of which is a catagory for 'women, fire, and dangerous things' (the source of the title of a popular book on linguistics).

What people are refering to here is not a neutral gender, but rather a neutral, animate third person pronoun without a natural gender distinction. The difference is a minor but important. For example, Persian has no gender, much like English, but its third person pronoun is 'ou,' having no natural gender distinction.

Incidently, I am not one hundred percent on this because I am packing to move, do not have my books available to me on the subject, and am not an expert in English historical linguistics, but I do not believe that 'hir' was not Scandinavian, but instead was the old english pronoun for the neutral gender, however as an interesting side note, 'they' and 'them' are of Scandinavian origin, the native English third person plurals were something entirely different, but unfortunately I am not aware of what they were without my books.

[SleepyWitch]

Ultimately this lack of correlation between natural and grammatical gender is what led to the total break-down of grammitcal gender in the English language in the later Old English period, but that is another story. It is interesting to note that modern German has a similiar dissonance between natural and grammatical gender, but their gender system is here to stay.

.... 'women, fire, and dangerous things' (the source of the title of a popular book on linguistics).

Have you come across any explanations why grammatical gender vanished in English but is still there in German? If this break-down happened in the later Old English period then it can't have been due to the Norman Conquest and the loss of English as a written language, can it?

Heehee, if you want a good laugh, read Mark Twain's "The Aweful German Language" (http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html) :lol: It's soooo true!

would that be the book by George Lakoff? Can you recommend it?

[SheykAbdullah]

Have you come across any explanations why grammatical gender vanished in English but is still there in German? If this break-down happened in the later Old English period then it can't have been due to the Norman Conquest and the loss of English as a written language, can it?

Well, there are a multitude of reasons why German maintained a gender system and English didn't, part of the reason is that German maintained an inflexional system where English lost it. Some of this may be due to the German use of printing before English, a need to maintain an artificially unified German language so that the various independant baronys and fiefdoms could maintain a lingua franca, and other reasons that cause a language to become ossified in one particular state of development over another.

Additioanlly, though I am not one hundred percent sure on this, I believe an academy for German grammar was established fairly early on. English has never had an Academy for controlling its grammar, and therefore (despite what English teachers may preach) English has no 'official' grammar. Of course, it has grammaratical particulars that are better in certain situations. It has a rather democratically accepted 'right' way of being spoken, but there is no book that contains 'the rules' for English, as it were, thus English has been allowed more free room to grow and lose certain items out than German, French, Spanish, Arabic or even Sanskrit, the last whose rules were codified several thousands of years ago and has since resulted in no change of the language despite its near-contemporary use for generating Vedic commentary. The closest thing English has ever had to an academt is important only to the British, and that is the king. Often in English history (and the current pronounciation of the 't' in 'often' by some may be related to the royal influence of one of the early twentieth century monarchs), the royal family has been the most efficient arbiter of the language. Of course, the king's opinion of how English should be spoken matters little to Americans (often said to speak a 'President's English,' though the president's opinion of language carries much less currency with us, which is probably for the best as Andrew Jackson once said 'I don't trust a man who knows only one way to spell a word; our only president to have had no formal education.), who are, ironically enough, traditionally more pedagogical in English grammar instruction than their English counterparts and rely on dictionaries to fix pronunciation and spelling but nothing else. All of this is why English appears as a hap-hazard, disorganized language until the nineteenth century and the English dictionary movement. Before then isolated scholars, mathematicians, and any one who felt like it created competing schools of English linguistic thought, mostly based on the inflexional characteristics of Latin which as the mother of Romance languages relies heavily one things like mood (which is also present in German as the sunbjunctive) but it totally absent in English as it is spoken now, which made a Latin interpretation of English grammar messy, useless, overly complicated and regressive (even today you can find a thousand different opinions of the word 'shall' almost none of which take into accounts its true origins as the future tense of the defective 'should' and mark it as an obsolete subjunctive mood verb).

The loss of gender in the English language predates the Conquest. In the writings of the Venerable Beade there is some confusion of gender references, particularly with words whose natural and grammatical gender was dissimiliar, such as 'wife' which he sometimes used 'it' to refer to the word and sometimes used 'her.' In fact, if anything the Conquest should have maintained a gender system as it was present in the French at the time as it reamins today.

In any case, gender and inflexions in general were already in decay by the time of the Norman invasion and only became less and less relevant as time went on, however an inflexional tradition still remains in English today, which is how we got such ridiculous grammar rules about 'who' and 'whom', 'will' and 'shall', nominal forms after linking verbs, etc etc.

As far as the loss of English as a written language, English was never lost as a written language. The use of French as an official language of the court, and therefore court supported arts, at the time of the Conquest was brief and lasted only as long as the courtiers in England actually spoke French actively in preference to English, however poetry and ballads still continued to be produced in English through out the period of a French dominated court, but they were not given official patronage by the king and were relegated to the enjoyment of the minor Saxon lords and their serfs who were totally unimportant as far as the whole society in general went.

If you are referring to the use of runic symbols as a means of writing English, the runes never produced a literature or true literary tradition. They were the central aspects of pagan mystery cults practiced by the Germans, and with Ogham, the Celts, and their use was strictly limited to burail totems and magic spells.

[Redzeppelin]

cuppajoe's question is of course one of the big topics that English teachers have to deal with in teaching writing. I suppose the question points to the issue of audience: to whom is the writing directed? In other words, in informal writing, you (oops - 2nd person reference!) can use any pronoun you like. In formal writing (like college papers and such) you really can't use "they" because that word is inaccurate if you are talking about one person and any sentence using it becomes a grammatic "lie." Yes - the "he or she/him or her" (and e.e. cummings-ish "s/he" - which I tend to use in referring to posters here) is ugly and awkward - but what is one to do?

I have noticed in reading contemporary books a number of trends. One is for a writer to flip back and forth between the genders within a chapter or from chapter to chapter (often with a disclaimer in the beginning to explain this usage). Other writers (usually female because they can get away with this I think, in our PC culture more easily than men can) will simply stick to the gender they are - i.e. male writers use "he" and female use "she." And, some take the opposite tack - male writers use "she" (to appear PC or whatever) and female use "he" (though I don't recall having seen that usage very often).

I think at this point, the second option is fine. 50 years ago, a woman writer - by convention - would have had to use "he" - but since the convention has changed, she can use "she" - so why the fuss anymore? Does it really indicate non-PC writing to use "he" when discussing an implied individual?

[Jolly McJollyso]

As far as I'm concerned, I use the traditional "he" neutrally. If the reader wishes to associate that particular use of "he" with a male, that's his doing.

[zanna]

There is also the context to consider. We usually say "he" for unknown people . . . "He just cut me off!" even though it could have been a female driver. But then there is the debate about countries, ships, etc. Countries are almost always "she," except for Germany, which is "he," and ships are almost always "she"s. So, sometimes we assign genders to things that don't have them, like the ships and countries. That still doesn't fix the problem with people, tho.

Here is another wrench to throw in: what if the person is of, say, male gender, but feels like a female? I have a friend, Richard/Rachel, who complicates the matter even more. Do I say him, because's he's physically a male, or say she, because she feels psycologically female? It is just not cool. Sorry for the can of worms, but something to think about.

I think the hir concept is interesting. A pronunciation tip: maybe think of it like pen and pin. We say her almost with a "u" sometimes; hur. But hir would be between "ee" and "i." Not quite "deer," but close.

Anyhoo, weigh in, peoples. What do y'all think?

[Redzeppelin]

Here is another wrench to throw in: what if the person is of, say, male gender, but feels like a female? I have a friend, Richard/Rachel, who complicates the matter even more. Do I say him, because's he's physically a male, or say she, because she feels psycologically female? It is just not cool. Sorry for the can of worms, but something to think about.

Well, I personally don't think we're required to operate on the principle of what people "feel" like. Are we obligated to address people by that which they internally "feel"? I don't think so. Your friend's "gender confusion" doesn't obligate you to accomodate the dissonance between who is appears to be and "feels" he is.


I think the hir concept is interesting. A pronunciation tip: maybe think of it like pen and pin. We say her almost with a "u" sometimes; hur. But hir would be between "ee" and "i." Not quite "deer," but close.

Anyhoo, weigh in, peoples. What do y'all think?

I already dislike the de-gendering of our language. I liked "waiter" and "waitress," "steward" and "stewardess," "actor and actress." Since when did calling things by gender imply an inequality? I still think that writers should be able to write as they wish - why do I have to use any specific pronoun at all? If I wrote and used the feminine "she" consistently, who'd have a problem with that? Probably no one, and I'd be deemed some "sensitive" modern politically correct (or whatever) male writer; but if I decide to use "he" I'm a chauvanist? Nah - the switchover has occurred. Writers, both male and female are not required to use the masculine pronoun anymore - so why do we need to blend them together?

[#57]

Try: "It.":banana:

[brainstrain]

Theres always the tasteful "shman" as a poor girl in my World History class has been dubbed...

"It" works too, but it is rather impersonal. We should invent one...how bout..."Mhe"? I like it =P

[zanna]

Well said, Redzeppelin! I personally don't find it offensive at all to just stick with "he," and think it should be the prefrence of the writer. It shouldn't matter to anyone else; if the reader is going to be offended, then they probably shouldn't read it. Personally not a fan of everything PC, either, although I think it has its good points. I also like the titles that differenciate, but there are some I don't know of. Is there are feminine word for "doctor?" That might be handy to have. :)

[SheykAbdullah]

There is also the context to consider. We usually say "he" for unknown people . . . "He just cut me off!" even though it could have been a female driver. But then there is the debate about countries, ships, etc. Countries are almost always "she," except for Germany, which is "he," and ships are almost always "she"s. So, sometimes we assign genders to things that don't have them, like the ships and countries. That still doesn't fix the problem with people, tho.

The assignment of gender to countries and ships is directly related to what grammatcial gender they possesed before English lost gender in the language.

A neutral third person pronoun (not the same as gender) exists in English as in almost every other language in the impersonal 'one' ('on' in French, 'se' in Spanish, etc), which is used more often in other languages than English.

[certiorari]

I usually use they, one, them, our... etc. On one of my notes for Economics class we were reading an excerpt of "The Wealth of Nations," I wrote to the side "Why did people just use him, his, he, and man?" It's just kind of not right that women are excluded in older documents.

As for german, it gets confusing with all those der, die, das, dem, den, denen... etc. Though, just to add to what Thorwench said on the first page (I didn't realize until my reply was posted that there was more than one page), Mädchen is basically "it" but meaning young girls, and it's really not that fair that girls are called "it's".

[Niamh]

it's acceptable to use 'they' and 'one' instead of (s)he etc over here. You dont get marked downn for it. I always use they as it's less complicated.

[SheykAbdullah]

I usually use they, one, them, our... etc. On one of my notes for Economics class we were reading an excerpt of "The Wealth of Nations," I wrote to the side "Why did people just use him, his, he, and man?" It's just kind of not right that women are excluded in older documents.

As for german, it gets confusing with all those der, die, das, dem, den, denen... etc. Though, just to add to what Thorwench said on the first page (I didn't realize until my reply was posted that there was more than one page), Mädchen is basically "it" but meaning young girls, and it's really not that fair that girls are called "it's".

Calling a girl 'it' has nothing to do with gender discrimination. It also has nothing to do with any kind of actual gender. In language gramatical gender is totally different than natural gender. In fact, the only reason we dscuss words as having 'gender' is to give a convenient term for catagorizing linguistic phenomenon from a Euro-centric viewpoint. The catalogs of language are rife with conflicts of actual gender and grammatical gender and grammatical gender can cover many more catagories than natural gender. For example, Swahili has fifteen seperate genders.

As for the use of 'man,' I throughly approve of it. In English the term need not be discriminatory as the word 'woman' comes from the word 'wyfman' in Middle English, meaning a female person. In any case, 'man' in Old English was a neuter which referred to people in general and the actual word for woman and man were totally different ('wer' and 'wyf' respectively). Man had a seperate existence denoting the entire human race for a very long time, nearly until modern English, as such it is not an improper or discriminatory term to employ in language to describe the human race.

[SummerSolstice]

Is that what they're calling it nowadays? "Grammatical Gender" and "Actual Gender"? Hogwash! It's "gender" and "sex." That's what it's always been until people got this bizarre deal going on and got all squeamish over saying the word "sex" when there is absolutely nothing about such a sense that any sane person could be squeamish over! Ugh!

[Niamh]

Is that what they're calling it nowadays? "Grammatical Gender" and "Actual Gender"? Hogwash! It's "gender" and "sex." That's what it's always been until people got this bizarre deal going on and got all squeamish over saying the word "sex" when there is absolutely nothing about such a sense that any sane person could be squeamish over! Ugh!

Hear Hear! i completely agree!

[SheykAbdullah]

Is that what they're calling it nowadays? "Grammatical Gender" and "Actual Gender"? Hogwash! It's "gender" and "sex." That's what it's always been until people got this bizarre deal going on and got all squeamish over saying the word "sex" when there is absolutely nothing about such a sense that any sane person could be squeamish over! Ugh!

I don't think you understand. It's not what they are calling it nowadays, it's what it has always been called. There is nothing involved in grammatical gender about squeamishness or pudery, I assure you. In language gender is an abstract concept with often no relation to reality, which is something most sane involved in languages (teaching or studying) people acknowledge.

In linguistics the gender of a word often has no correspondance to actual (natural) gender and the only reason we call it gender is because that is the traditional Euro-centric view of language (i.e. that Indo-European languages have three genders which can be roughly catagorized in masculine, feminine, and neuter). A noun's grammatical gender is often at dissonance with its actual gender, an example in German has been cited already, the same example holds true in Old English, and in Arabic there are many examples where things have non-natural genders, for example EVERY non-animate plural is Arabic is feminine, even if it is a boy doll, and some masculine plurals become feminine when pluralized. This DOES NOT mean that the Arabs have a tendancy for being transgendered, or that students in Arabic (an example of such a word) do.

As I said before, in some languages there can be up to fourteen genders, few of which are based on natural gender, for example; certain Australian languages have a gender for men and animate objects, women fire and dangerous things (the title of a relatively famous book on linguistics), edible fruits and vegetables, and miscellania (perhaps a note should be written to them about the political incorrectness of their grammatical catagories); there is a Caucasian language with a gender for insects, regardless of whether the insect is male or female; and as mentioned above Swahili has fourteen genders, and I would challenge you to find fifteen genders in the natural world. In short, grammatical gender has no relation to actual (natural) gender, never has, and the reason has nothing to do with squeamishness, fairness, or social commentary. Just because the Germans use a neuter for the word 'girl' does not mean they don't think girls are people, and just because I use 'men' when referring to humanity in general does not mean I discount women as being important. These are just linguistic trends, trends which, in my opinion, are better left alone, but that is another conversation.

[xtianfriborg13]

I have no problem using the masculine pronoun when being general. I don't give a hoot about political correctness when it comes to grammer.

This rule definitely applies. The masculine pronoun thingy.