On Tue, Aug 03, 2004 at 03:21:45PM +1000, Ben Burton wrote: > > > > It's not much of a justification -- it basically amounts to "my way is > > > right" followed by a personal insult to anyone who disagrees. > > > > Hmm. I feel you may not have read the first two paragraphs of that, and > > have only responded to the last. > > The first paragraph begins by asserting the author's arrogance, and then > states that "he" is the singular indefinite pronoun in English (and that > "he" is also the masculine personal pronoun). This basically amounts to > "my way is right", with no further referencing, reasoning or historical > context. > > The second paragraph discusses the use of "she", which is a different > issue entirely. > > All this author is really doing is restating the question using longer > words. And even this is done badly; the question should not only be > whether "he" can operate in a gender-neutral context, but also whether > or not there are reasonable alternatives. Fair point, it's not in itself a justification, but rather an alternative opinion. Googling for 'he indefinite gender pronoun' produced interesting arguments to support all of using the singular masculine, the plural indefinite, and a nice list of various gender neutral pronouns that've appeared on the Internet to solve this situation. Googling for 'he indefinate gender pronoun' produced interesting arguments that grammarians aren't necessarily good spellers. >_< Maybe it'd be easiest for all Debian documentation to be written in a language with either grammatical or no gender, rather than dealing with English's cobbled-together natural gender system. ^_^ -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Paul "TBBle" Hampson, MCSE 7th year CompSci/Asian Studies student, ANU The Boss, Bubblesworth Pty Ltd (ABN: 51 095 284 361) Paul.Hampson@Anu.edu.au "No survivors? Then where do the stories come from I wonder?" -- Capt. Jack Sparrow, "Pirates of the Caribbean" This email is licensed to the recipient for non-commercial use, duplication and distribution. -----------------------------------------------------------
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