Brian MarickSometime in the '80s, I adopted the habit of using "she" as the generic pronoun. "Consider someone learning that the thing she pointed at..."
I dropped out of the habit, largely because Dawn said she found it distracting and mildly annoying. (1/4)
Nowadays, "they" is popular, and I tend to use it, though it's not a habit. But I'm coming to think it's counter-effective. We're supposed to see “they" as some sort of abstract superclass, encompassing all people. But I think people, when reading, are governed by habit: "they" is visualized as the appropriate gender. (2/4)
That is, when people read "Consider someone learning that the thing they pointed at...", they instinctively envision the "they" as "she" or "he", depending on how what is being learned is gendered. (Consider whether it's a floral arrangement or a nuclear weapon core.)
"The marines stood back while she carefully disassembled the nuclear core" disrupts expectations in a way that "The marines stood back while they carefully disassembled the nuclear core" doesn't. (3/4)
I think I'll revert to my older style. (4/4)
I should note that Dawn favors the "power on through" response to discrimination, and who am I to dispute her success at that strategy?
(When she became a large animal (cow) veterinarian, very few were women. This caused some problems, like clients insisting on a male doctor. She worked through that, though not in my "lives inside his head" style of assuming that the right framing makes a difference. Instead, she had to insist she'd be the one to save the cow's life – and then did exactly that)
richardwild@marick I'd say that's a fault in the reader. When you're referring to someone whose identity is unknown—and therefore their gender is unknown—they is the pronoun to use. It's not a matter of wokeness, it's simply the correct word.
@marick If you don't believe me, ask Dawn.
@richardjwild What am I supposed to ask Dawn? Whether reading "they" as "he" is the fault of the reader? Whether "they" is "simply the correct word"? Whether it's OK for me to use "she" as a reminder to the reader of her fault?
dimsumthinking@marick I started using they in my books twenty years ago as a generic first person. Now it’s time to mean something specific so I don’t- I’ve mostly dropped pronouns in my books but do have a character who explicitly and appropriately uses they
@dimsumthinking I wish we'd just adopted one of the various proposals for a neutral pronoun, but no: in the US we don't do "new." I know I know I know that "they" as a singular has been part of English since forever, but it's hard enough writing about two or more people so the antecedents are clear without adding another source of ambiguity.
@dimsumthinking In today's "If Books Could Kill" podcast episode, one of the hosts remarked on how there's no way that removing lead from paint or gasoline would fly today: "the woke libs are trying to take the flavor out of *your* paint."
@marick yeah I argued that we have a singular and plural you which doesn’t often cause confusion but I lost that argument
John Mitchell@dimsumthinking @marick singular and plural you works for me.
But then again I tactically use: y'all, all y'all (and very surgically: "youse"). 🙂
@johnm @dimsumthinking I think it's fairly rare for a "you" to have more than one possible antecedent, so the writer doesn't have to strain to recognize ambiguity. (I'm bad at recognizing such ambiguity – also to keeping my tenses straight – so I'm perhaps oversensitive.)