At 15:28 -0500 1/1/12, Anne Cuneo wrote and I snipped:
>Thank you for explaining «guys» to me, guys ;-))

My pet peeve is the deliberate, but not grammatical, use of plural pronouns to avoid something some others might  perceive as sex discrimination.

The word "gender" in any academic description of languages has absolutely no relation to sex.

Das Bot and die Shiffe make perfect sense! Agricola is certainly feminine but US farmers might not like it.

But "his-her", their, and the like need to be avoided in singular context.  When that kind of context comes up the use of "his" to refer to all of society is appropriate and should be used. Citizens of the female sex (not gender) should accept the usage as referring to them in the same way that "homo" generally refers to the human species as a whole.  Would you declare that homicide applies only to the killing of a man? But what about homosexual?  Does that apply only to two males? Do we need a new word "ladycide"?

Please leave the English language alone.  The term gender refers to pronouns (and other nouns except in English) and sometimes verbs but it has nothing to do with sex. Use of the masculine gender to describe all of humanity is defined in ancient literature; there is no reason to change it. In the US of A you ladies now can vote, but language is not a political question..

And when in doubt about guys and gals try spelling it guise. A 50-50 distribution sounds good when seeing how many homos can fit in a telephone  booth. Where can I join such a group today?

-- 

--> From the U S of A, the only socialist country that refuses to admit it. <--