A new member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum who uses the username Miss Mae asked me this very interesting question a few days ago:
“I just would like to know your opinion about using both ‘he’ and ‘she’ as pronouns for a third-person subject. Some media outfits still use only ‘he’ when the third-person subject is unknown, and I’m still getting you-must-be-a-feminist stare whenever I decide to just use ‘she’ in some of my writings. What should I keep in mind?”
Here’s my reply to Miss Mae:The English language indeed has an inherent gender bias, particularly in the conventional use of the male pronouns “he,” “him,” and “his” when the antecedent is a noun of indefinite gender, as in “A trustworthy
lawyer is
he who respects confidences,” or an indefinite pronoun like “everyone” or “everybody,” as in “
Everyone is entitled to
his opinion.” The easy way out is, of course, to use the “he or she” form, as in “A trustworthy
lawyer is
he or she who respects confidences,” or the “his or her” form, as in “
Everyone is entitled to
his or her opinion.” This is fine if you’ll use the “he or she” form or “his or her” form only once or at most twice in a typical page of written work, but it could grate on the reader’s nerves when repeated several times.
I must tell you frankly, though, that you would be gender-biased yourself in favor of women—and deserve to get that you-must-be-a-feminist stare—if you habitually use the “she” or “her” form when referring to antecedents of indefinite gender, as in “A trustworthy
lawyer is
she who respects confidences” and “
Everyone is entitled to
her opinion.” Both forms do look and sound like you’re rubbing it in against men, so I’d suggest that you confine such usage only when you’re in the company of an all-female group like, say, the Women Lawyers League.
A much better and more politic way of dealing with gender bias is to avoid it in your writing and speech as best you can. For the same situations in the sentences taken up above, you can do the following:
1. Use “one” instead of “he” or “she”: “A trustworthy
lawyer is
one who respects confidences.” Or pluralize the antecedent noun to avoid making a gender choice: “Trustworthy
lawyers are
they who respect confidences.”
2. Pluralize the antecedent indefinite pronoun to avoid making a gender choice: “
All are entitled to
their opinion.”
One more thing: You need to be extra-sensitive to the need to avoid gender bias even in less obviously gender-skewed sentence constructions. For example, you need to cultivate the art of avoiding writing or saying, “
Everybody is enjoined to bring
his wife to the club picnic this weekend.” The gender-bias-free construction for that sentence is, of course, “
All are enjoined to bring
their spouses to the club picnic this weekend.” (2010)
TEST YOURSELF ON ANOTHER GRAMMAR MATTER: Another member of the English Forum—computer chair is his or her user name—sent me the item below from an English-proficiency test and asked me to analyze the answer choices. See if you can figure out the correct answer and explain why it’s correct and the others, wrong.
In each of the following sentences, part of the sentence or the entire sentence is underlined. Beneath each sentence you will find five ways of phrasing the underlined part. Choose the best answer. “Outsourcing jobs to a consulting firm in another country is more cost-effective than paying employees locally,
but overwhelmingly negative are its effects on customer satisfaction.”
(A) overwhelmingly negative are its effects on customer satisfaction
(B) it has overwhelmingly negative customer satisfaction effects
(C) in its customer satisfaction effects it is overwhelmingly negative
(D) there are the overwhelmingly negative effects in customer satisfaction
(E) its effects on customer satisfaction are overwhelmingly negative
I invite you to share your analysis of that sentence and your best answer by posting it on my Facebook Gateway or directly in the Forum discussion board that follows this essay.
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This essay, 696th of the series, first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the June 26, 2010 issue of The Manila Times
, © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
