randy@umcp-cs.UUCP (09/26/83)
Lest you think that usenet discussions never affect anyone in *real* life, consider the following true story. I was working on a near-final draft of my dissertation when the generic pronoun discussion (he/she/it) was raging here. I'd always defaulted to 'he' in previous writings. In large part due to the net.women discussion, I tried something new. I went carefully through the thesis, rewriting perhaps 3/4 of the occurrences so no pronouns were necessary at all. Then, for the remainder, I alternated 'he' and 'she'. It seemed strange at first, but I'm happy with the results. Now, I recall some netter saying that use of generic 'he' was particularly inappropriate for readers who visually bring to mind the image of a "generic" person when reading, since they will naturally default to a male. If you don't believe this happens to you, try the following: when you're next jotting notes (to be later turned into a paper), and arrive at a natural use of generic 'he', like the following: "At this point the system's user has two choices. He can either ..." try using 'she' instead. If you're male, I especially recommend this. I find it far more pleasant to imagine my system's "generic" user as a female rather than a male. :-) - Randy -- Randy Trigg ...!seismo!umcp-cs!randy (Usenet) randy.umcp-cs@udel-relay (Arpanet)
rld@pyuxnn.UUCP (09/30/83)
>> "At this time the system's user has two choices. >> "He can either .... >> Try using "she" instead. ... A few years ago I seem to remember being told NOT to refer to the system's user as a "she", since it showed that you thought [perpetuated the stereotype that] computer operators [data entry clerk types] were women, or worse, "girls". >>>>> Bob Duncanson, AT&T Bell Laboratories, eagle!pyuxnn!rld <<<<<