On Tue, Aug 03, 2004 at 08:02:13AM +0100, Helen Faulkner wrote: > Patty Langasek wrote: > >On Mon, Aug 02, 2004 at 04:02:58PM -0400, Nori Heikkinen wrote: > [...] > >I'm a female geek and disagree wholeheartedly. He/his has historically been > >a generic way to refer to people, and concentrating on the fact that it > >also > >implies 'male' seems to go a little overboard. To me, there really is no > >good alternative unless you change everything to plural (they, them, their) > >since grammar /does/ matter, or make these documentations ridiculously > >cumbersome - he or she, his or her, etc. > > > >I for one am not willing to sacrifice proper grammar or readability in > >official documentation for political correctness. This, to me, isn't a > >change that needs to be made as long as people see a simple, generic > >pronoun > >as just that - a simple, *generic* pronoun. > Actually, doing some reading about this one last night, I found the > material below on > http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/ellens/Gender/pap/node21.html. > It is consistent with my belief that in today's world, "man" doesn't > really mean "man and woman". Also, as Akkana said, "they" is actually > historically correct. This article would be a great example of why we should not use the term "man", but does not seem to have any direct relevance to the use of the pronoun "he". -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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