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by dragonwriter
3566 days ago
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> Besides, grammatically, "he" is a gender neutral pronoun when referring to a person of unspecified gender (as in other languages). No, grammatically, "he" always has masculine gender [0]; its historically-accepted (though increasingly-less-so) semantics include use in reference to a person of unspecified (socially-ascribed) gender (classically, use of personal programs in English maps best to socially-ascribed gender, which has not taken gender identity much into account -- recently, there's been a move to align socially-ascribed gender with gender identity, but pronoun use basically follows the former which just happens to have a growing norm of also aligning with the latter.) > "They" is plural "They" is grammatically plural and gender-neutral, but has a very long history of accepted use with semantics of referring to an individual of unspecified (socially-ascribed) gender. This acceptance was somewhat reduced by the Victorian fad of Latin-inspired prescriptivism in English, but this reductions is among those of that fads effects that have been fading over recent decades. [0] Note that grammatic gender is a distinct concept from either socially ascribed gender of a person, gender identity of a person, or biological sex of a person. |
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