If the cause for gender neutral language and against gender specific language is enough to appropriately move you to use, in writing and in speech, the failed solutions of she, he or she, s/he, or alternation, then instead of using those solutions, you ought to put more effort into being appropriately moved to be completely gender neutral.
Gender, contrary to popular belief, is not binary. There are many people who do not fit into the gender norms; there are also people who do fit into the gender norms, but choose to identify differently which is altogether their choice and we ought to respect that. As such, the 'he or she' fix to gender specific language is actually no fix at all. If you want to avoid gender specific language, you CANNOT exclusively use he, she, he or she, s/he, or alternate. This lousy attempt at a solution is leaving out many other groups of people, which is just as unfair as leaving out either of the mainstream norms. Again, we ought to put our effort into either making 'they' appropriate as a singular pronoun, or making up a new, aesthetically pleasing, singular gender neutral pronoun.
In addition to the somewhat problematic singular 'they,' people have attempted to come up with various alternative pronouns which are gender neutral. Perhaps the best known of these is the 'ze/zhe, zir/hir' system. Unfortunately, in modern culture, people tend to use these pronouns only for those who do not fit into the gender binary, not to refer to a person of unknown gender (as in, 'the cloaked individual adjusted zir hood'). Furthermore, many find these pronouns rather awkward to use, as the letter 'z' is uncommon. The pronouns are also rather annoyingly close to pre-existing gender-specific pronouns - 'ze' is basically 'he', 'hir' is almost indistinguishable from 'her.' As such, I think it would be easier for people to adjust to singular, gender-neutral pronouns based off 'they' and 'their' - perhaps 'vey' and 'veir,' as the 'v' sound is not terribly dissimilar to the 'th' sound. This way, one would be more likely to associate the new pronouns with the gender-neutral term 'they' than with the single-gender 'he' or 'she.'
ReplyDeleteP.S. I also posted this on my blog if you'd rather read it there.