Hi Doug and everyone (or should I say "Gals"?)

At 4:16 PM -0700 1/1/12, Doug McNutt wrote:
>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.

In fact, in English, which is what we are talking 
about here, gender = sex. we don't have female 
tables.

>Das Bot and die Shiffe make perfect sense!

Fine -- whatever they are! We're talking English.

>  Agricola is certainly feminine but US farmers might not like it.

And we're still talking English where agriculture 
has no gender because in English gender = sex.

>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"?

Goodness, Doug, you need to inspect the legs of 
your hobby horse -- they are decidedly shaky. So 
no use of the plural to indicate a singular? What 
about "you"? Is that singular or plural . . . or 
both, setting a nice precedent for using "their" 
to refer to his/her when it could be either or it 
stating the general case?

In fact, the use of "his" and "man" to mean all 
people in English refers to a period when the 
English paid women no respect at all -- they were 
simply chattels. A woman and her property 
belonged to the husband, women could not inherit, 
the lord of the manor had first rights over every 
virgin, etc., etc.

I see it as good that the remnants of this sorry 
period of English civilization are no longer 
commemorated daily in speech -- our society has 
moved on (well, mostly) and our speech is/should 
be matching this movement.

"homo" is used colloquially to refer to male 
homosexuals; it refers to all human kind when 
used in the scientific term "homo sapiens", 
which, of course, did not exist in English until 
the day it was introduced, and in special terms 
like "homicide".

>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.

It has everything to do with sex -- in English.

>Use of the masculine gender to describe all of 
>humanity is defined in ancient literature; there 
>is no reason to change it.

The fact that it's ancient provides a very good reason for revision.

>In the US of A you ladies now can vote, but 
>language is not a political question.

Yes it is. Voting ain't everything -- in fact, it is very little in itself.

>And when in doubt about guys and gals try spelling it guise.

You cant disguise your position by using dat 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?

Telephone boxes are as passe as your defence of 
male domination in language, Doug. Sorry about 
that!  :)

Cheers, geoff