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Subject:Re: The myth of sexist language From:Sally Derrick <sally -at- DEV -dot- TIVOLI -dot- COM> Date:Sun, 13 Aug 1995 12:03:52 -0500
Stacey Kahn writes:
> 1. What's clear here? When I read "...his personal file" my initial reaction
> is to wonder whose file it is that I can open-- and why I'd want to, and
> whether I'd get caught.
This is probably the 4th or 5th time I've seen a statement like this,
and this time I just have to ask. Are you serious? You read a step
or procedure that has "he", "his", or "him" in it and you SERIOUSLY
think you can't perform that step because you are the wrong gender?!?!
IMHO, that's just asking for some guy to come pat you on the head
(hopefully) and say, "It's okay, honey. You can do that too."
I admit that after reading an entire book of "he", "his", and
"him" I want to find the author and point out that he (must have been)
forgot about half the population. However, the pronouns used in a
book in no way interfers with my understanding of the material or in
my believe that the material applies to me as well as to Joe Tentpeg
over there. I don't beleive that is a huge mental leap on my part.
> "To open your personal file, select File, Open."
This is the style I prefer. I try very hard in my writing to avoid
the he/she thing. I try to stick with "you" or "your", but
occassionally have to use plurals.
I think the best thing that we (the writers) can do is to be aware of _all_
our readers and try to speak to all of them as we write. Ensure that
the newbies we train learn this concept. Eventually attrition will
take care of those writers hung up on writing to a single gender.
Some day maybe some new words will come around to help us out,
but that's not going to happen quickly.
Can we move off this topic soon? There must be others we can beat on
for a while and get no where. I know!! How about "that" vs. "which?"
To be honest, reading something that uses that and which
interchangably distracts me _much_ worse than pronouns.
Please send all flames direct. No need to use up the group's
bandwidth. :-)
Sally Derrick
Tivoli Systems Inc.
sally -at- tivoli -dot- com
