I don't view myself as a radical feminist. I rarely even think of myself as a feminist. But I guess I must be. I certainly have strong views about women in IT (we need more) and about the male attitudes towards us (they need to think more).
It's astounding, sometimes, how even the most women-friendly men can write women-unfriendly stuff without thinking about it. Consider the following two snippets:
So I'm wondering if anyone with die - eval experience would like to step up and share his views on how those two paradigms compare, in a form of an engaging talk.
and
This may not please your manager, as he may also believe that what you want is the lowest price, and so on.
Why does someone have to be male to give a talk at a Perl Mongers meeting on die and eval? Why is a manager automatically considered to be male?
When I object to this kind of writing I get responses which tell me that of course the author didn't mean to exclude the possibility of women in those roles. That "he/she" or "they" are ugly work-arounds. And the fact is that I agree. I don't believe the author intended anything, I agree that working around language is a pest.
But even so, it bothers me. Because there is a (usually unintential) message there all the same, and it does say "Women don't speak at user group meetings" or "Women aren't managers". And even if I try not to listen I'm innudated with these messages every day. These messages (commercials, TV shows, billboards, books...) say it's the woman's job to clean the house, do the washing, iron the clothes, look after the kids. On the other hand, it's the man's role to work late at the office, play golf with friends, participate in sports, be intelligent, know how to fix computers...
There are enough messages out there discouraging women from being involved in IT at all. It's not a field where gender doesn't matter. Gender matters a lot. Which is why many women experience a lot of unwanted attention whenever they turn up to user groups or install-fests. But the whole thing would be just that much easier for us if people thought about how they wrote and tried a little harder to avoid being gender exclusionary.
Re:Are there any better options though?
jarich on 2006-06-20T08:32:32
I think it's easy to place less significance on the use of the word "he" when it matches your own gender, the majority of people in that position and your personal experiences.
Consider the following sentence. Apparently it (or something like it) used to appear in standard medical textbooks, and is now used as an example in lingustics courses as to how our language has changed:
Before prescribing any medications, doctors should always ask their patient whether he may be pregnant.I personally don't find alternating between he and she jarring unless the subject's gender appears to change. So talking about Alice and Bob is fine, but talking about some nameless person and switching back and forth regarding their gender isn't.
Choosing the gender of the author is an option, but it means that the vast majority of texts about technical matters will always refer to males. Which is discouraging, and is the thing I'd like to avoid. I'd much prefer attempting to balance out the gender references, or even favour females more. In my experience men are perfectly happy to accept examples using female pronouns when it comes to male dominated fields. On the other hand, examples using male pronouns in female dominated fields has often appeared to make men feel uneasy for some reason.
I don't have a good alternative. As far as I know there isn't one. I usually reconstruct my sentences to avoid needing to specify a gender, and use "they" and "their" if necessary. In your example I would write: And if their manager doesn't like it, then that manager can go shove it". Actually I wouldn't write that, not because it sounds clumsy (which it does), but because I'd try to never be that rude!
;) Mind you, if I knew enough about the situation to be that rude, then I'd probably know the manager's gender and would feel fine using it. Thanks for your thoughts.
about your doctor example
slanning on 2006-06-20T12:51:46
About your example of a doctor in old times asking his (presumably) patient whether he was pregnant. How does it feel being so closed-minded? Yes, you're closed-minded. It's jarring if you're not used to men being pregnant, isn't it? We make little assumptions all the time. People like to communicate in concrete terms. I'd politely suggest getting over it. Are you really so frail that you need our grammatical protection?
Re:about your doctor example
jeffa on 2006-06-20T19:50:57
Here! I've got an idea: Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb - which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans' - but that he can have the *right* to have babies.
I usually alternate between male and female forms. That is, after each male (pro)noun, there comes a female (unless I'm referring back to previous person).
I also have to say that I see female forms quite often in Perl books (though it's a sign that there's stille a lot of gender mainstreaming to do, as I'm surprised and delighted every time I see it). So there is some awareness.
Oh, and the situation is even worse in German, where we have to jump through a lot of hoops to write gender-neutral text. E.g.: 'Lehrer' (teacher) vs 'Lehrerin' (female teacher). Solutions are the much-hated "binnen-I" ("inside-I") as in "LehrerIn" or gerundiums (is this an english word?) as in "Lehrende" ('people who are teaching').
Re:alternate
slanning on 2006-06-20T12:07:18
gerundiums (is this an english word?)It's gerund in English. You can't use one to get around a pronoun's gender, though, or at least I think it'd be very awkward.
Re:alternate
domm on 2006-06-20T19:02:59
Funny!
There where gerundiums and gerunds in Latin, but German ditched the gerunds. It seems that English ditches gerundiums.
Anyway, discerning between gerundiums and gerunds was a constant source of pain for me (and others) in our latin classes...
"He" is not gender neutral.
To put my pedant hat on, I must point out that dictionarys do in fact indicate a gender neutral definition for "he". My Concise Oxford, for example, says "a person
I wouldn't deny for a moment that such meanings are considered dated now. It's pretty hard to overlook the obvious male bias in the word. As both you and Adam point out, the English language lacks a comfortable alternative. Perhaps you'd like to coin one?
There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation with regard to women in the tech workplace. As long as there are few women in the environment, the young (often emotionally immature) males entering the profession will not have the one-on-one experiences they need to help them develop their interpersonal skills. If young males only hear contrary viewpoints from a lone woman in the workplace, they may dismiss it as only a single person's view.
You'll be pleased to know that the chap responsible for the first of your quotes, was alerted to the error of his ways by the woman at the adjoining desk even before your email response
It is also a fact though that while there have been a number of women attend meetings of the Perl Mongers group in question, only one has ever given a talk and that was a lightning talk - about PHP even
Re:Well strictly speaking ...
jarich on 2006-06-20T09:28:14
I know that's what the dictionary says. I'd like it to still be true. But it's not what people envision. If I say to you "After the accident, the driver got out of his car. He swore about the damage.", that's a fairly different sentence than "After the accident, the driver got out of her car. She swore about the damage." Most people see 'he' and envision a man.
Historically, using "he" as a gender neutral term made sense when the gender was irrelevant. This rarely applied to the upper class. If you spoke about a physician, scientist, mathematician it was (practically) always a man. If you spoke about a queen, concubine, duchess or lady it was clear she was a woman. There were clearly defined gender roles and so it was almost always obvious what you were talking about. It was only in the cases where gender wasn't of interest or importance (for example children, slaves, servants, peasants, street urchins, the lower class) that a gender neutral term was necessary.
But the world is a very different place now. You can't tell someone's gender from their job title - even if it matters. You're still safe to assume that chances are reasonable that if it's a well paying job it'll be held by a young, white man; but we're trying to balance that out. Which I think is an excellent thing.
I'm not going to coin an alternative. Too many people have tried. There's sie and hir which has some popularlity if you want that. What I really want is for people to be aware of what they write and to realise that it does make a difference in our field. Importantly, the women it is making a difference to aren't the ones who'll say something. Instead they'll just leave IT (or our communities) for less "ugly" jobs/communities. I know, because I've met them.
I'm glad the guy I quoted was pulled up by someone else as well. I used his quote because it perfectly illustrated my point, not because I bear him any bad will.
As for female speakers at PM groups, I think it's an international problem. I'm one of the three female speakers that Melbourne PM has had for the last 4 years (perhaps I've missed one, but I can't remember anyone else). We might have been lucky enough at OSDC last year to get as many as 10% female speakers, but I suspect not.
We're rare and I'm trying to fix that. Women are in IT. They are using Perl. I know this because they come on our training courses. But they're not part of our communities, they don't come to user groups. There are many reasons why not. Further the numbers of girls going into IT are declining! I want to be part of addressing both of these issues. Encouraging others to consider their language can't hurt.
Re:Well strictly speaking ...
chromatic on 2006-06-20T18:18:33
Most people see 'he' and envision a man.Reference, please.
Re:Well strictly speaking ...
tanifa on 2006-06-22T07:08:05
It is also a fact though that while there have been a number of women attend meetings of the Perl Mongers group in question, only one has ever given a talk and that was a lightning talk - about PHP even:-).
is that a challenge?Re:Well strictly speaking ...
grantm on 2006-06-22T20:54:44
is that a challenge?Would you volunteer to present if it was? If so, yes it was
:-) Re:Well strictly speaking ...
tanifa on 2006-06-22T23:24:46
I can talk apon soap. howzat?
... what exactly is the proper and established gender-neutral singular pronoun in English?
(All of the style guides to which I write suggest switching back and forth between "he" and "she" and I'm fine with that to the extent that I have no desire to give offense. However, in a language that barely supports gender anywhere but specific singular pronouns and yet lacks a neuter case, it feels weird.)
Re:But...
Damian on 2006-06-20T09:51:10
"They".... what exactly is the proper and established gender-neutral singular pronoun in English? At least, it was both proper and established long before the Latin-besotted prescriptive grammarians sunk their talons into English usage.
See Wikipedia for a summary, and this site for more detail than you could possibly desire.
Personally, I strive very hard either to cast my subjects in the plural, or to avoid the use of pronouns entirely. All the "approved" alternatives are ugly, cumbersome, or both, but using singular "they" is worse: historically and colloquially correct, but occasioning a fate worse than death...grammatical arguments with the well-educated!
;-) Damian
Re:But...
chromatic on 2006-06-20T18:15:22
I considered adding a link to the last time the subject came up, but I rolled and hoped you wouldn't read this comment. I didn't even use your name!
Re:But...
Damian on 2006-06-20T20:23:43
What makes you think I don't read everything that mentions your name? >;-)I didn't even use your name!Echel^H^H^H^H^HDamian
Re:"Guys"
frag on 2006-06-21T15:25:09
There is a bit of a backlash against this use, which can get pretty silly. Douglas "G.E.B." Hofstadter is quite strongly anti-"guy", basically since "guy", in the singular, strongly defaults to male ("I saw a guy running down the street"), so he sees using "guys" as sexist as using "he" as default, or "fireman". I think that he even views it as worse, because to him women calling themselves "guys" is inherently self-denigrating.
I don't know if anyone's really ever bothered to argue with this view, but it doesn't acknowledge that "guy" is has very specific implications about class and social behavior (kind of like "buddy") that do not have to be masculine, and it's these that are the focus when women choose to use it. It also assumes that what words mean may change people, but that people never change what words mean.
Ocassionally, when I decide to go with only she and then I get to an example where she makes all kinds of mistakes I start to feel bad - am I emphasizing with that phrasing that only females make those mistakes ??? - and then I go back to use he in such examples.
In this sense Hungarian is so much simpler where there is no gender whatsoever in the language and Hebrew is much more difficult as it has both male and femal singular and plural.
There is an indefinite pronoun that has fallen out of usage, name "one", unfortunetly it is usually misunderstood as meaning "I", but in fact means an indefinite person. The problem is that it doesn't refer back to someone identified earlier, though it is gender neutral.
I have sometimes seen in older texts the term "that one" to refer to an identified person in a gender neutral way. Sounds a bit clumsy today though
And it still doesn't work for a posessive pronoun (his/her) so that still leaves the plural "their" as the only option that I can think of.This may not please your manager, as that one may also believe that what you want is the lowest price
