

Gender-neutral communication: how to do it - vladiim
http://theconversation.com/gender-neutral-communication-how-to-do-it-38383

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belovedeagle
I agree with all of the things that the article explicitly names as
inappropriate use of language, such as featurism and differential naming
(although I think that the quick examples given for diminutivisation,
"waitress" and "actress", are among the _least_ objectionable instances).

That leaves me all the more puzzled and bothered that the list of replacements
at the bottom is immediately concerned with eliminating personal pronouns, and
remains concerned with that through most of the examples, rather than actually
dealing with the above-mentioned undesired features. Not all use of the
pronoun "he" highlight masculinity—the author himself recognizes that
grammatical gender is no longer used in English. Of course, in some instances,
it does; I quickly determined that the author was likely male before using
"himself" in the previous sentence. The difference, which the author doesn't
bother to point out, is that when talking about a particular person, it is no
longer acceptable in English to use masculine pronouns when the referent's
gender is unknown, and I think that's a good thing. I also think that a great
many writers have adopted that convention, which explains in part why most of
the examples are dealing with the other use of the personal pronoun not to
refer to a specific person but to an arbitrary person. In these cases there's
no reason to see "he" as gendered; it's simply a generic pronoun.

