Thread: HE and SHE

I found a very curious using of word "she".

When a user does not want to pull data from any table, but rather wants simply to use an arithmetic operation on a constant value, she can include the values, operations, and the from DUAL clause.

Is it because the user is a female or user is always "she" like a ship?

Nope, a user can be both male and female, therefore I think that it's just a typo, and that there should be a '/' between the s and h - 's/he'. Or '(s)he'. It is more politically correct, anyway.

In textbooks and other writings when discussing an unspecific person the person referred to can be either male or female.

Previously, cases such as "the user" would be referred to as "he" but as the world becomes more politically correct (ridiculously so, I may say) then the rise of 'she' as an example stands firmly alongside 'he'. Neither is more important than the other - it just adds variety to writing and gives cold entities like "the user" a small piece of character.

Thank you.

He denotes a male, whereas "she" denotes a female, with an exception, such as; There "she" floats! She being a ship. Another example, shes a beautiful plane.

Braumeister

Oftentimes people throw in "she" instead of "he" just to give you the benefit of feeling how sexism affects you.

These anti-sexism things are really getting on my nerves! Recently I've been translating a text about different kinds of sport and every "player" used to turn out to be "she" in the end. With the exception of entirely male sports as men's hockey (as opposed to women's hockey), but the author sometimes forget this and some male hockey players also came as "she".
But there's another trend nowadays, for example this kind of sentence:

"When a player puts on their uniform..."

I saw this not once or twice!...

I would definitely say "they" and "their" - in modern English these words are used in place of the old-fashioned "he" and "his" to refer to a person of unknown gender. You still need to use the right parts of verbs, don't use the singular forms even though you know you are talking about one person.

I think this is pretty stupid too. 98% of girls don't care. Just like, a person can walk up to a group of all girls and say "hey guys", and it will sound just fine. If people want to put she, instead of he, it doesn't really bother me. But, like i said, i only met 1 person in my life (my 8th greade science teacher) who was really a hardcore sexist and would get mad over stupid crap like that. Most people have been hearing "he" since they were little kids, and it just looks funny when "user" is refered to as anything else but "he".

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

I think this is pretty stupid too. 98% of girls don't care.

You may be right about that. But on the other hand I once read a rather brilliant article by Douglas R Hofstadter in which he replaced all references to 'man' or 'men' in neutral situations with 'white'.
i.e. instead of 'chairman' he used 'chairwhite' etc etc.

Most people found what he wrote to be seriously racist. Given, of course, that they understood it was just a joke.

I think it made the point rather well...

There was a movemeant in Holland some while ago to scrap all references to differences in sexes altogether, so a chairman (translated) would become a 'chair', a 'timmerman' (carpenter) a 'timmer'. Luckily this didn't catch on.

Hm.. looks like Russian is a pretty sexist language - you can figure out the writer's sex right away by verb endings

Some meetings are still held by the 'chair' I don't have a problem with having a gender neutral position and I can't see why anyone else would either. You had a state where a the Chairman was actually a women and being called chairman.
I think because many people have grown up reading 'he' all the time in books that when they see 'she or he/she' they get all in a tizz. But let's not forget that language & thought are tied, the things we read condition our thinging.

Kind of off track to the original post but there you go.

Originally Posted by al

Hm.. looks like Russian is a pretty sexist language - you can figure out the writer's sex right away by verb endings

There is мужчина - человек - женщина system, where человек is so called "neutral member of opposition". Of course, it is of masculine gender, but genders, after all, have (almost ) nothing to do with sexes, it's a grammatical thing. In English there's man - woman system, where "man" is so called "strong meber of opposition" which has 2 roles: 1) masculine human being 2) a human being in general. Or it was so untill recently There is no neutral member. Plus there are no grammatical genders left. So you see that the language itself imposes the particular world-picture. That's why feminists became so rampant with English grammar rules.
You may say there's "Human" word, but it rather belongs to "humans - aliens" opposition.

In Russian almost everything depends on the word's gender, so you cannot say "Учитель привёл в музей его или её учеников". It sounds rather weird or like a bad translation from modern English. If it is Учитель, then его, and if учительница, then её (а по большому счёту, учитель привёл своих учеников, или просто учеников, but that's another complicated matter).

What about man - person - woman? Although my English is really bad...

Originally Posted by Pravit

What about man - person - woman? Although my English is really bad...

But you wouldn't say:
"As distinct from animals a person has well developped brain".
"To make mistakes is a person's peculiar feature" and so on?
"A person" means a particular subject. It can be used in some sentences instead of he/she but not always.

Instead of "The user... she can enter the vaulues" you could of course say
"One... can enter the values" or "you... can enter the values" to avoid this confusing grey area.

True, in that particular grammatical construction, you have those two 'escape clauses', although they both have their disadvantages, style-wise.
But what about 'If the customer requests a refund, you must give it to ... ' him? .. her? .. them?

I'd say 'him' is used in a large proprtion of cases, but maybe less than it used to be. 'them', as far as I know, has become quite acceptable in English, even in written English, and is now very common. It's true also that 'her' is used nowadays quite often.
No comments on 'chairwhite' then? I thought that was quite clever

Originally Posted by Propp

Originally Posted by Pravit

What about man - person - woman? Although my English is really bad...

But you wouldn't say:
"As distinct from animals a person has well developped brain".
"To make mistakes is a person's peculiar feature" and so on?
"A person" means a particular subject. It can be used in some sentences instead of he/she but not always.

In those constructs I think 'human being', another genderless classification, would sound more natural than 'man', 'woman', or 'person'.

Yes, human being would be better there.
I would always say them in place of he when the person is of undercertain gender, but if I am making an example up I would either say he or she.

e.g. "If a customer came in and asked for "Take Off in Russian" I would tell him that we did not have it in stock."