Tough Choices

He Said, She Said: Pronouns can make you crazy

By Minda Zetlin

I am a rabid, teeth-gnashing feminist. I've been known to growl at people who assume because I'm married to a man named Pfleging, my last name is Pfleging, too. There was a time when I would actually push in front of men to open doors for them and never let them pick up the tab. I tell you all this so you'll know where I'm coming from when I consider gender in language.

As A. A. Milne pointed out, one of the great deficiencies of English is its lack of a gender-neutral pronoun. He favored "heesh," noting: "I could write, 'If John or Mary comes, heesh will want to play tennis,' which would save a lot of trouble." Over the years, various writers have proposed various alternatives ranging from "one" to "hizer" to "h'orsh'it" (from "he, she or it"). Not surprisingly, none of these ever caught on.

So we're still stuck today with the question of gender in language, and it can be one of the tougher choices writers face. It may sound trivial to some. After all, "he" is just a word. But we writers know how powerful words can be. We swim in them, use them in our daily work. Some of us think in words. If words are the material from which thoughts are made, how can anyone say they aren't important?

When faced with the need for a pronoun of unknown gender, some writers switch off, using "he" one time and "she" the next. Others point out that "they" has historically been used as a singular pronoun and suggest reviving it. Unfortunately, if you actually use "they" to refer to a single person, most readers won't guess you're trying to revive a former practice—they'll just think you're too dumb to know better.

My own solution is to sidestep the issue when I can by changing my unknown person to unknown persons so that I can use "they" without being ungrammatical. Or I recast the sentence altogether so a pronoun isn't needed at all. Nine times out of ten, one of these solutions works. The tenth time, I give in and use "he or she."

But some writers I respect and admire—female ones at that—use a generic "he," at least some of the time. I was a bit surprised to discover this recently—I had thought the generic "he" disappeared from common usage long ago. Apparently, I was wrong. "The pronouns 'he' and 'his' have been used since time immemorial to refer to people in general," noted Patricia O'Connor in her popular book, Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English (Putnam, 1996).

Right, I thought, when I read this, because throughout most of time immemorial, "people in general" were assumed to be male. Doctors were male. Leaders were male. Our Constitution, which began with "We, the people," provided voting rights only to male people up until 1920.

A letter to The New York Times Magazine years ago perfectly debunked the notion that "he" could be a man or a woman by proposing a sentence that went something like this: "As the average American prepares for work in the morning, tying his tie or pulling on his pantyhose, he may wonder what the day has in store."

That makes the generic "he" sound silly, but I believe it's dangerous, too. Girls who see that a president or an accountant is always referred to as "he" may get the idea that those jobs are not for them.

The funny thing is, I suspect most writers agree with me that the generic "he" is a bad idea. When I asked a group of them recently what they do when faced with the need for a pronoun for an unknown person, none admitted to favoring "he"—even though one or two who, I happen to know, do use it once in a while.

What's going on here? It appears that many writers' first instinct is to use "he," and if they aren't paying attention, they may do it by accident, or "default," as one put it. "I think of 'he' as the invisible pronoun," says an editor who tells me she doesn't use the generic "he" in her own writing, but doesn't change it in other people's. Feminism is so ingrained with me, it took me a while to grasp this—far from being invisible, the generic "he" sets my teeth on edge every time I encounter it. But I guess I'm an exception.

"I don't use the generic 'he,' but I have to catch myself," another writer explained. "It's been the norm for so long, it comes naturally."

He assumed that I, too, had trained myself out of its use, and had a hard time believing my assurances that using "he" when I meant "he or she" would no more come naturally to me than traveling back in time to ancient China and asking to have my feet bound.

So what did I learn from all this? That the world has changed both more and less than I thought it had. More, because no one thought using "he" instead of "he or she" is the right thing to do. And less, because even so, when they aren't thinking, many writers still do just that.

What do you think? Is the generic "he" no big deal? What tough choices do you face in your own writing career? Please write me at minda@mindazetlin.com. Responses, anecdotes and suggestions for future topics are all welcome.