Re: Write differently for women?

[Janice Gelb <janiceg -at- marvin -dot- eng -dot- sun -dot- com>]

In article 1F1A630 -at- localhost, linda -dot- sims -at- verizon -dot- net ("Lin Sims") writes:
>Just getting rid of the his and her problem may not be enough. 
>Below is part of an answer made by Cecil Adams (The Straight 
>Dope) to a question about gender-neutral pronouns. Note the last 
>two sentences in the quotation. Now, generally speaking, I'm not 
>one of the PC-nazis. But that sentence DID make me stop and 
>think. I've done this. I know I have. So now I try to keep it in mind, 
>because, as Spider Robinson says, here's to unconscious 
>prejudice--the very worst kind.
>
>| For what it's worth, you hear less and less of the old argument that
>| "he" (and "man," for that matter) somehow "includes" women. Common
>| sense suggests, and studies bear out, that when you see supposedly
>| generic masculine terms you think first of males. But let's not
>| pretend that the elimination of such problems would mean the end of
>| sexist speech. As writer Deborah Cameron points out, the sentence "The
>| man went berserk and killed his neighbor's wife" is unobjectionable on
>| its surface. But stop to think: why "his neighbor's wife" instead of
>| "one of his neighbors"?
>

With the sample sentence taken out of context, knowing 
whether to object is difficult. I would assume, seeing 
that sentence, that the fact that the woman next door 
was married to his neighbor was a direct trigger for 
the man going berserk: jealousy, perhaps. If the man 
went berserk and just killed the first person he saw, 
then yes, there is no need for any gender qualification. 

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