Re:Welcome to Libera Chat
by Macha on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @12:49PM
(#27211199)
> In the 18th century, it was suggested as a gender-neutral pronoun, and was thereafter often prescribed in manuals of style and school textbooks until around the 1960s
> More recently, this use of he has become less accepted, and singular they is becoming the dominant form
But linguistic change isn't a binary process, nobody flips a switch and everyone across the world updates their habits, so it takes time.
While gender neutral he was not encouraged when I was in school, singular they was very much discouraged, with "he or she" being the taught solution for a single person of unknown gender. Of course, in today's world that also is going out of favour.
Re:Welcome to Libera Chat
by Lammy on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @08:02PM
(#27215921)
In the 18th century do you think most women went to school or ever had a job outside the home? Easy assumption to make that anyone reading a textbook was a "he" lol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_(pronoun)#Gender
(Wikipedia sources https://web.archive.org/web/20120530024829/http://www.nytime...)
Of course:
> More recently, this use of he has become less accepted, and singular they is becoming the dominant form
But linguistic change isn't a binary process, nobody flips a switch and everyone across the world updates their habits, so it takes time.
While gender neutral he was not encouraged when I was in school, singular they was very much discouraged, with "he or she" being the taught solution for a single person of unknown gender. Of course, in today's world that also is going out of favour.