I am addicted to the genre ‘popular books’, the ones claiming to be intelligible to the lay readers while being of interest to the cognoscenti – be they about development, economics, finance, math, science, engineering, history, or even philosophy (?!). And, given my language preference, it has been English all through.
I have been a witness to a definite trend in writing in these books. I name this the dawn of “inclusive pronounism’. It is a random trend. I hope you will realize by the end of the post that a trend can indeed be random.
It all started perhaps fifteen to twenty years ago. We had scientists and science writers like Richard Dawkins, Roger Penrose, Matt Ridley, James Gleick mentioning that their use of ‘he’, ‘him’, his’ in their books is inclusive; they meant that the reference is gender-neutral and they requested the readers to read them as such – ‘he’ means him and her. The same was true with writers in the other fields. Most probably it was Penrose who asked for a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun. Unfortunately, that has not come through yet in English.
Experiments started with ‘he/she’ (and never ‘she/he’; do not know why), ‘(s)he’ (which gave rise to the problem of the complicated pairing – ‘(s)he’ with ‘her/his’ and not the other way round, ‘his/her’) and random choice. When I chose randomly, it was only a partial molting of the straitjacket. If I had used ‘she’, it was always ‘her’ subsequently, and likewise for the masculine pronoun; I could not get myself to combine ‘she’ with ‘him’.
By the way, as you read a book, it is far easier to get an image of a woman in ‘mankind’ [request comment on this claim from female readers, if any], than it is to get the image of either ‘man’ or ‘woman’ in the gender-inappropriate third person single pronoun. This is especially so if it carries some cultural baggage, like the culturally conditioned assumption of a male scientist and reading the following set of two sentences: “A scientist argued against the proposition. She listed out a possible set of reasons.”
And, as much as it may be argued that ‘mankind’, the word, has been there for a long time and has got social sanction to jump between the genders, I do not think ‘man’ will ever jump the gender fence. The fence is equally high for ‘woman’. This, in my opinion, was the source of the disclaimer the writers I mentioned above resorted to.
Coming back to my efforts to internalize my gender-neutrality in this specific context and also becoming aware of the flow of the sentence in my writings, ‘He/she’ was the first one to go out the window, and along with it, ‘him/her’. Now, I am stuck on (s)he and its conjoined twin, ‘her/his or him’. Only rarely do I take the semi-drastic step of using the feminine pronoun, but never combined with a subsequent masculine pronoun.
I want to get myself to randomlychoose, without any cognitive dissonance, between ‘he’ and ‘she’. And, that is precisely the problem – how do I know that I indeed have chosen the pronoun randomly? Do I have to wait till the end of my writing days by which time I may have a sizable sample to check whether my choice is truly random? When I can substantiate my claim that I am being random in my choice only by being non-random, like conscious 50-50 (or near about) distribution, I am positioning myself between the devil and the deep blue sea. But remember what Natalie Angier had written: ‘…it is really hard to look accidental on purpose … randomness can look suspiciously rigged.’
James Gleick and other writers I had listed earlier have gone beyond the days of disclaimers on this score, probably with the help of their editors. I am reading Gleick’s book The Information – A History, a Theory, a Flood, and I can tell you that he uses both ‘he’ and ‘she’ to indicate a generic scientist or technologist. That is a start, of a social trend. But, neither he nor the reader can be sure that any particular instance of the choice is random or non-random. Even so, I believe the science writing/popularizing profession is coming of age in this matter. I am lining up.
I am not sure whether judicial judgments at the higher levels like Supreme Courts with their tendency to preach from the pulpit, have fallen in line with this. They must start, sooner the better.
Coming to my personal situation, I have to repeatedly tell myself:
“Do not associate a particular gender to people referred to by third person singular pronouns! There is nothing wrong in referring to a nurse or an elementary school teacher as ‘he’, even if in a particular instance the ‘he’ happens to be a ‘she’. Be random, as random as possible. Even randomly chosen, you may have used the masculine pronoun a few times in succession.”
With that, I am discarding the ugly ‘(s)he’.
It is going to be ‘he’ or ‘she’, with ‘him’ or ‘her’ in any order and as non-deliberately random as possible from now on.
And, that IS “inclusive pronounism”!
Raghuram Ekambaram
8 comments:
English language requires that a new word be added to signify a person.A word say 'hse'.which is not neutral but all inclusive.not just english but all languages will have to take this seriously.
Yes DS sir, an all inclusive thrid person singular pronoun is absolutely essential in these days of implied/explied biases.
Thanks a lot.
Raghuram Ekambaram
Personally I would prefer the random use of he and she instead of 'he/she'. As you say this trend is on the rise too.
That is precisely the point, Matheikal ... one has to give into his (take particular note of this word) instincts WITHOUT worrying about whether any particular insatnce is falling afoul of the vaunted randomness ... have confidence in one's strength of convictions and it will automatically become evident. This is what I believe in.
Thanks a lot.
Raghuram Ekambaram
To my mind, Raghu, this sudden consciousness for use of 'inclusive' pronoun in English is a sign of political correctness and tokenism rather than being of any intrinsic improvement in use of the language. It is much better to let the language flow as it comes, rather than use “(s)he, his/her” etc. Having said that, in future I must consciously avoid such usage, as well. :)
Two points, Aditi:
One, my consciousness in this matter has been developing over the past twenty years or so, just as I mentioned in the post. It was not sudden. And, this indeed has been the pace in the general authorship of the kinds of books I read.
The flipping point may have been the debate on Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the very late 1970s in the US. ERA was equated to, by those who opposed it, uni-sex toilets. That is how I saw people discussing this pronoun issue. Indeed, I had argued as early as late 1980s that people should use chairman for both the sexes, the reason being the "-man' in the word had lost its gender-specificity for two reasons. The hyphen was discarded in that compund word (OED) and the 'a' was pronounced unaccented (schwa). I also wrote a letter to The Hindu saying that when they used Chairperson, I could bet my life that the chair was occupied by a man; that is, bringing in gender-specificity through the back door.
Two, we can go only so long accepting that nature will take its own course, like Chairman losing, in my opinion, it gender-specificity. There does come a time when things have to be force-fed, even it be at the risk of being called PC. I am not asking for a gender-neutral word; rather, do not hesitate to use the thrid person singular pronoun of both genders in a sub-conscious way. Allow yourself to be swayed and you will find that your swaying developes its own rhythm. This is what has happened to me.
As usual, you bring me out through your comments. My thanks to you.
Raghuram Ekambaram
Chairman has lost the chair to chairperson, but some others like 'actor'and 'poet' have stood their ground of gender-neutrality in mainstream use. :). In my school days words like actress was quite common, these days I simply do not find them any more being used.All is not lost, yet...hahahah.
I forgot to mention that a concocted gender neutral third person pronoun sounds kind of unnatural to me....like use of the word 'womyn' instead of 'woman'.
BTW, the pc comment was totally general in nature, not directed to you, Raghu. :)
Thanks Aditi, for coming back ... I sort of got the tone of your comment and that was fine with me. I only wanted to give a context to my post. This is why I mentioned when this issue started playing in my mind, the Constitutional amendment ERA in the US. That time too, this PC business reared its head but not in those words.
Shanaban Azmi, for whatever reason, was the first female actor (?) who insisted on "No actress!", in an article in one of those filmy glossies some years ago. I do not mind that. But Chairperson, only when the occupant is woman garte on my nerves. I am repeating myself, but please bear with me!
Thanks again.
Raghuram Ekambaram
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