English, gender and God

Mister Pamboli responds to me:

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The OED pretty clearly says, The simplest form of the (orig. demonstr.) base hi-, ... was cogn. with OFris. hi, he (fem. hiu, neut. hit). In other words, all the dictionary has to say about the gender of root forms of the pronoun is that it was cognate with a masculine form of Old Frisian.

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Here's what my OED says:"In English, the typical form in all ages has been he, from which emphasis probably produced heo, hye, hee, and tonelessness ha, a, which last long prevailed in representations of familiar speech, as in the dramatists, and is still a prevalent dialect form. In OE, the base he supplied all parts of the third personal pronoun, singular and plural; it was thus inflected:"[insert table of singular masculine, feminine, and neuter and plural forms for the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive here]I don't know about you, but that last statement seems to be pretty direct: "he" is the root and all the third-person pronouns are derived from it.

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I think the problem may be that this claim is not true.

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You mean the American Studies professor I had who railed at me about "his-story" didn't really exist?You seem to be confusing a claim by people who want to carry out a social/political agenda with the work of actual linguists in the field of etymology. You will note that I am not saying that any serious linguist is claiming that "history" is actually a contraction of "his" and "story." I am saying that there are people who do make that claim and expect us to bow down to their wonderful opinions about how to solve the problem.As an example of a similar problem, take the history of the phrase "rule of thumb." There are actual professors who claim that the origin of this phrase is that common law once held that a man could beat his wife with a stick provided that the stick was no bigger than his thumb.Again, this simply isn't true. Despite what Claire Bride Cozzi wrote in the July 1986 issue of Ms. magazine, it simply isn't true. But the story is so widespread that the Canadian Medical Association Journal wrote an article that claimed it was MDs have key role in bringing ugly secret of wife abuse out of closet:"The expression 'rule of thumb' comes from an 1824 American law that permitted a husband to 'chastise his wife with a whip or rattan no wider than his thumb.'"Well, no...there never was any such law. No matter how much a person may want there to have been, it simply isn't true and it isn't up for debate.

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The clear implication here is that there is a distinction between the language and the usage. I cannot see how this distinction can be reliably or made, or by what authority one could make it.

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Because there is a difference between structure and use. The grammar and syntax of a language will tell you how to form a sentence. It cannot tell you what to actually say.For example, it is incorrect to say:This sentence no verb.And yet, there is a meaning to the utterance. While the structure of the language forbids me from making such a sentence...indeed, it technically isn't a sentence since there is no verb...I actually use the language in such a way that violates the rules and achieve meaning by saying it.That's what slang is: Violation of the rules to achieve communication. For the longest time, "bad" didn't mean "good." Well, now it does in certain contexts. The word "bad" was not commonly understood to have a positive connotation, but usage has changed that.

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All have an equal claim, and etymology doesn't help to resolve it because it is usage, not etymology that counts.

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Didn't I say that? I'm sure I did."The problem is that people don't use it in a gender-neutral fashion."And then I said it again here:"Take, for example, the word 'orientate.' It's being used. And much as I detest the word (the word you're looking for is 'orient'...it's already a verb...there's no need to make it a verb yet again by tacking on the '-ate' suffix), the fact remains that it is being used and thus exists and has a meaning."And again:"The language doesn't force you to think in a certain way. However, you will force the language to conform to the way you think."So it would seem that I am claiming the point that it is usage that counts.And simple observation of usage indicates that "he" is both masculine and neuter. There is a shift occurring such that "he" is losing its neuter meanings, but it hasn't succeeded yet and the majority of speakers still use it both in masculine and neuter ways.

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In contemporary English, the pronouns he and she sound egregious when used as gender-neutral terms.

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So why do people use them that way?

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My grandmother's usage of she for all cats and he for all dogs sounds distinctly wrong to contemporary ears: he has just given birth or she is a lovely tomcat don't work, but were phrases she and her generation used naturally and comfortably.

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You just contradicted yourself.You just said that usage is what counts. Well, if usage is what counts and all of the speakers involved with your grandmother and her peer group understood exactly what was being said, who are you to tell them that their usage is "egregious"?You don't get to call somebody else's usage "egregious." If everybody else seems to understand it, then you're the one with the problem. You may eventually convince everybody else that it ought to be different but until that shift actually happens, you are the one that is out of step.For now, the word "black" does not mean "white." It simply doesn't. You could try to convince people that it does but until they go along with you and start using "black" where they once would use the word "white," the language simply doesn't follow that precedent.And currently, "he" still has a neuter meaning. It's changing. Languages evolve, after all, but we aren't there yet and to call a common usage "egregious" is to substitute your lexicon for everybody else's.

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Nor was this purely a dialect - the usage can be found in Jane Austen, for example.

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So Austen was "egregious" in her use of language? Are you really trying to say that?

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The claim that he can be used of God without implication of gender just doesn't wash.

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Says who? You? Why should we believe you?Besides, I don't know of anybody who seriously uses "he" with "god" without indicating that god is male. Or, more accurately, those that have an active belief in god or those that are talking about the specific active beliefs of those who believe in god do not use "he" in the neuter when referring to god. The opinion of the Christian religion is that god is male. I am having a hard time coming up with a religion that truly thinks that god has no sex.See, "he" in the neuter is not used to indicate a specific person. Instead, it is used to indicate an abstract person. When referring to the concept of the president in general, "he" is used in the neuter because no specific president is being mentioned. But when talking about, say, Clinton or Bush, one would use "he" in the masculine because Clinton and Bush are specifically male.

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you have to look at the people on either side of the message: The sender and the receiver. It is quite possible that the receiver heard something that the sender didn't mean. And that is not the fault of the language.

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And this is the answer to your question about why one side rather than the other modifies its language - the sender typically modifies their terms in order to clarify their meaning.

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No, it really depends upon the specific instance. If the receiver is simply refusing to accept a common definition, it is not a requirement of the sender to change terms to coddle him.Take, for instance, all the times we have to educate creationists on what a "theory" is in science. The fact that they have screwed up and insist that a "theory" means "guess" does not necessitate any obligation on our part to rephrase things or to stop using "theory" to mean "analysis of a set of facts for their relationship to one another." The receiver has made an error and it is the receiver's responsibility to fix it.The sender might be gracious enough to try and come up with an alternate way of saying things, but words have meanings for a reason.

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This is what we do when speaking to children and foreigners - a phenomenon known as motherspeak.

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And when you are not dealing with a child or a foreigner but rather someone who simply doesn't like the common meaning of the word? What then?Indeed, etiquette demands that we try to accomodate others, but it's a two-way street. If I let you know that I consider a certain term to be offensive, then you would be gracious to rephrase yourself when in my presence. But, I don't get to accuse you of being a lout for daring to use the word in the first place when the common usage of the word doesn't have that connotation.Once again: Why the immediate assumption that the person using "he" in the neuter was deliberately being sexist? The comment that brought this up wasn't asking for clarification. It was accusing.

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Where there is disagreement, the onus is ever on the sender to disambiguate terms.

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Incorrect. Sometimes the receiver needs to get over himself.As Freud pointed out...sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

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Much though I think a loss to the language - I cannot, on this beautiful May morning, describe myself as "feeling gay" to my colleagues without them drawing conclusions I would not wish them to draw.

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Then you need to get some better colleagues. Either that or a backbone. Is your sexuality really a topic of conversation between you and your colleagues? And if it is, is there any real doubt as to what it is? And even then, other than the possibility that someone whom you don't typically find to be a suitable sexual partner might ask you out on a date and thus you'll have to politely decline the offer, what harm could come from it?Even today, people know that "gay" has a meaning of "happiness and joy."

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NB - the Oxford does record a written form which could get round this problem for texts. S/he is defined as written representation of ‘he or she’, used as nom. sing. third person pron. to include both genders.

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Indeed...it is still considered non-standard and is not commonly used, primarily because it is a written form and has no way to distinguish it in spoken language.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Mister Pamboli responds to me:

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I really don't grok the point you are trying to make about forms in Old English being "all over the place" - what exactly is it you are trying to say about Old English pronouns?

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In current English, there is only one standard form that has multiple meanings: "he" and its derivatives as both masculine and neuter for the various cases. All the other third-person pronouns are specific and don't get used in other ways: "She" is always singular feminine. "It" is always singular neuter. "They" is always plural for single-sex, mixed-sex, or neuter.Old English, on the other hand, had many single words with multiple meanings: "Heo" is singular feminine nominative and plural nominative and plural accusative. "Him" is singular masculine dative and singular neuter dative and plural dative. "Hiere" is singular feminine dative and singular feminine gentive.That is what I'm talking about. Old English had much more fluidity in which words meant what. In modern English, the only word that has multiple grammatical meaning is "he" for both masculine and neuter. Currently, "they" is becoming more commonly used as singular in cases where "it" would be considered inappropriate given the assumption that "he" is also inappropriate.

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The problem lies, as with any discussion of inflections, in trying to tease out the underlying regular forms from the tangle of written versions.

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Given that spelling was a bit of a new thing, it will always be a difficult thing. Spelling was something you could reasonably make up as you went along and nobody minded all that much.

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That the Oxford lists the rare alternatives is testament to its thoroughness, but not very helpful in drawing conclusions as to the regular forms of Old English pronouns.

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I know, but the primary listings for singular masculine, singular neuter, and plural for the dative are all "him." For the genitive, the plurals ("hiera," "hira," and "heora") are much closer to the feminine singulars ("hiere" and "hire"/"hyre"), though not identical, than to the masculine ("his"/"hys"). And since for the nominative and accustaive, the plurals are sometimes identical to the feminine singulars, this appears to be a linguistic pattern and it is actually the fact that the dative uses the masculine that appears to be out of place.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

crashfrog responds to me:

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I think Mr. P's point (and mine as well) is, where do these rules come from? How are they inferred? How is it possible to make arguments from the authority of those rules if thery're only inferred from usage?

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We all as the entire community of speakers make them up.And that means that if there is a sizeable number of people who use "he" in the neuter, then "he" has a definition that includes being the neuter, third-person, singular pronoun.No matter how many people dislike it.The fact of the matter is that the word is still out there being used as third-person, singular, neuter.

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It's not like there's a standards body dictating usage to people (except within the arenas of highly technical writing). The OED only records usage shifts that have already arisen in the language (they're descriptionist, not perscriptionist).

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I know.That's my point.Every dictionary I can find seems to include the neuter definition. Therefore, there is still a sizeable community of speakers who still use the word that way.So for someone else to come along and say the language is "sexist" because of this is trying to impose his personal opinion upon everybody else and he simply doesn't have that authority. For someone to tell someone else that when he said X, he really meant Y, even though the context made it clear that X was meant and even though a majority of speakers would understand that X was meant, then the problem is not with the speaker but with the person complaining.As soon as enough speakers find "he" in the neuter to be unacceptable, then the definition will fade. We can see it happening right now, but we haven't hit that point yet.

Mister Pamboli responds to me:

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Do you speak a strongly inflected language natively?

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A couple, actually.

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Inflections are not quite the same word (even when spelled the same) and not quite different - they are, just as they are called, inflections.

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Ah, but inflections come from a root. In this case, according to my OED, all of the third-person pronouns, including the masculine, come from the same root.

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So in OE, two inflections, both heo are not quite the same - the difference is subtle, being not a difference lexically, but an inflection.

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So why the complaint over "he" in the masculine and "he" in the neuter if you're not going to complain about "heo" in the feminine singular and "heo" in the plural?You can't have it both ways.

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This rather begs the question, but also nicely sums up the problem. The dative perhaps does not use the masculine but shares, or converges to, or is largely but not wholly indistinguishable from, the same transcribed form.

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Or you could be right at this point, as i think you are, and the root form of pronouns in old English is masculine, and not neuter as I beleive you claimed at one point.

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Or, I could be just misspeaking.All the third-person pronouns are inflected from the same root. It so happens that in many instances in Old English, certain cases shared the same inflection. The dative masculine and the dative plural were the same. The nominative feminine and the nominative plural were the same.If you're going to say that they were "slightly different inflections," then why the complaint that "he" in the masculine and "he" in the neuter is somehow sexist when, for Old English, they weren't?You don't get to have it both ways.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Mister Pamboli responds to me:

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From where do you get the inference that the root he was neuter?

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From the quote I gave you. Roots are not inflections.

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Well of course if you tell me that you have a source which made the claim then I will take you at your word. I would have preferred a written reference, but I'll accept your point.

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But I'm not talking about any etymologist taking this claim seriously. I'm talking about users of the language taking it seriously. And since usage trumps everything, if people think that "history" is a concatenation of "his" and "story," then they'll rail against it as sexist.The point I am trying to make is that people are ascribing political/social agendas to other people simply through the use of a single word...which doesn't actually have the meaning they claim it has.Yeah, usage trumps everything, but reality trumps usage. The word doesn't mean that no matter how many people think it does.

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However, the origin of the history/herstory move is pretty clearly a fanciful pun rather than a false etymology, as the OED confirms.

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Again, I'm not talking about etymologists. I'm talking about individuals claiming to have an insight into the social attitudes of others simply on the basis of a single word.

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This kind of thing is very common - a plague all etymologists have to learn to live with. The same is true of place-name studies - fanciful derivations are constantly trotted out as historical and authoritative.

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And what do you suppose should be the appropriate response to someone who insists the fancy is reality? Defer to him since "usage is more important"? Or point out that a mistake has been made?

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All you are really saying here is that the rules enable you to form an utterance which conforms to certain rules.

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Precisely. For someone to say that the rules are being broken, we need to actually take a look at those rules. And if we find out that the rules aren't being broken, then the person who claimed that they are has some 'splainin' to do, wouldn't you agree?

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Not quite - slang is typically more concerned with vocabulary and phraseology than grammar and syntax. Your are perhaps thinking of pidgins or creoles?

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I'm more thinking that I don't want this discussion to get so formal in linguistics that you and I are the only ones who understand what we're talking about.I admit I'm being sloppy in my terminology. If you want to elevate the formality of this discussion, I'll be happy to, but I was trying to use terms for which most everyone would understand the gist of my point.

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Yes I thought so. But you confused me with The language uses a single word for both masculine and neuter objects. That doesn't mean the language in and of itself has any confusion over the two. That can come only from usage. It suggested that there was some distinction between language and usage - as if there was some platonic, usage-independent langauge.

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And to a degree, there is. It's what you would expect from a computer who had complete mastery of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary but without any idea of nuance, subtlety, word play, and all the other linguistic things that go on inside an actual speaker of the language.Let me see if I can give an example of the difference I'm talking about. In the movie, Evita, there's a new song, "You must love me." While the singing lessons for Madonna paid off, I think she didn't do well on this song. Why? She was emphasising the wrong words. The way she was saying "you must love me," it sounded like a demand when it should have been a revelation. She was hitting "must" when it should have been "you" and "love." Now, the way the song was written, it didn't quite help her...the timing of the notes for a mechanical performance tends to hit "must." But with a bit of interpretaton, stretching the notes in a way not formally written in the music, you can hit the "you" and "love."Now, the language in the sense of grammar, syntax, and lexicon doesn't tell you that. If you were going to make a demand, you'd use the same words in the same order as if you were going to make a revelation. The way to tell the part is through accent, and that's usage.Another example: Suppose I ask you if Jane is still here at the office. You respond with, "Well, the light in her office is still on." Huh? I didn't ask you about the state of the lights in her office. I asked you if she were still here. Nothing in the mechanics of the language can possibly tell you that the reason your response makes sense is because of all the unstated assumptions: Jane is not in the habit of leaving the light in her office on if she isn't here and while I do not know exactly where she is at this present moment, the fact that the light is on in her office is suggestive that she is somewhere around here, though it may just be someone is using her office."That's what I'm talking about the difference between the language and the usage. Language is a tool for communication, but it is the person who uses the tool that has the final control.

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And simple observation of usage indicates that "he" is both masculine and neuter. There is a shift occurring such that "he" is losing its neuter meanings, but it hasn't succeeded yet and the majority of speakers still use it both in masculine and neuter ways.

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Simple observation?

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Yes. Go out on the streets and listen to people talk. That is a much better gauge of how people use the language than formalized correspondance or national media outlets.

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In some contexts perhaps the dual use remains, but this shift has surely been pretty much completed in many and widespread socio-linguistic contexts. In others, sure enough, it has hardly started.

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Didn't I just say that?

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I said they sound egregious: that is to say, from the listener's standpoint.

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Ah, but schraf's comment wasn't that it "seemed" sexist "to her." It was that the language was "inherently" sexist.Well, no, it isn't. It isn't like the person to whom she was responding was using "he" in some sort of novel or even archaic context. "He" is still neuter in this day and age. Schraf wasn't talking about her attitude but about the language, itself.

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Besides, I don't know of anybody who seriously uses "he" with "god" without indicating that god is male.

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Says you, apparently!

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I think I get to be the final arbiter of whether or not I know of anybody who seriously uses "he" with "god" without indicating that god is male. After all, I am the only one who knows whether or not I know any particular person.

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Or, rather, you are saying that God's gender is not implied but directly affirmed, which not only makes schraf's point for her, but puts a cherry on top and calls it trifle.

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No, it makes the point that she does not wish to acknowledge the reality of the other person.If person X and person Y are talking about "god" and person X is of the opinion that god is male, then where does Y get off in complaining about it? Weren't we talking about "god"? And isn't god male? If Y wishes to debate that, it isn't because of an inherent sexism on the part of X simply through the use of "he" for "god."I'm reminded of a teaching assistant who was a little too zealous in her pursuit of sexist language and marked a friend down for using "he"...to refer to Albert Einstein.Well...what other pronoun would you suggest? "It"? "He or she"? I seem to recall that Mr. Einstein was a male and thus, "he" would be the appropriate pronoun to use.Now, that doesn't mean there isn't any sexism to be found in why god is considered male. But the simple use of the word "he" to refer to god is insufficient to make such a claim. It smacks of a personal agenda as if the accuser were capable of reading the minds of others for their social/political attitudes toward women...and all on the basis of a single use of a single word.

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The opinion of the Christian religion is that god is male.

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Really? The Christian Religion defined how?

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The New Testament. Do you have a better authority on Christianity? Hell, there are three great divisions I can think of off the top of my head, so going off of the claims of any one of them doesn't seem to be the best way. Better to go over their heads and look at what all three agree upon.

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And only male?

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I admit that it has been a while since I have read the New Testament from cover to cover, but I seem to recall that god is exclusively referred to in the masculine through words such as "father."Perhaps I am forgetting a reference?

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In September of 1999, speaking in Saint Peter's Square, the Pope referred to God the mother and said that God had both male and female nature. So referring to God as she would work quite as well as referring to God as he, in so far as one referred to God's gender.

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Ah...what does the Pope know? .Actually, my opinion about JPII's sudden inclusion of feminine imagery is that it's a political submission. Enough Catholics are tired of the patriarchal attitude of the Catholic Church and he's doing what he can. Women still won't be allowed to be ordained, but I predict that will eventually fall, too. It has to start somewhere, though. If we can start showing that holiness can include women, eventually we will concede that women can be instruments of dissemination of holiness.

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I am having a hard time coming up with a religion that truly thinks that god has no sex.

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Don't have a hard time - it's not difficult. Check out Sikhism. The Guru Granth Sahib says How can anyone describe God? When God is neither male nor female.

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Thank you for the reminder. I knew they were out there, but I kept on landing on Hinduism which isn't so much that the gods are neither male nor female but rather that the gods have male and female aspects...the gods are male and female.Between that and the concept of "Sophia," I was having a hard time placing a specific one.That said...do you really think that the person to whom schraf was responding was a Sikh?

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See, "he" in the neuter is not used to indicate a specific person. Instead, it is used to indicate an abstract person.

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Why should I believe you?

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Because if you go out and listen to how people actually use the language, you will find that they use the word that way.

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When referring to the concept of the president in general, "he" is used in the neuter because no specific president is being mentioned. But when talking about, say, Clinton or Bush, one would use "he" in the masculine because Clinton and Bush are specifically male.

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You're not from the United Kingdom, are you?

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Not natively, no. Though I do recall when an MP chastised me for referring to the Prime Minister as "Thatcher" rather than "Mrs. Thatcher."

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You see, your argument is somewhat crippled by using as an example a post that has never been held by a woman. Try applying it to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and see how it works. It doesn't!

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Sure it does. "The Chair is in control and all members must accede to his demands."

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I remember the spate of activity as civil servants - my father was one - changed their protocols which had until that point always referred to the Prime Minister as male. They certainly didn't think the term covered the female by virtue of referring to an abstract person.

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You're confusing language and usage again.Didn't we agree that usage is key? And indeed, the usage of your father and the other civil servants is indicative, but they are not the only ones who speak the language.

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No, it really depends upon the specific instance. If the receiver is simply refusing to accept a common definition, it is not a requirement of the sender to change terms to coddle him.

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The difference here is that you are prescribing how you think the sender ought to behave rather than describing how senders are typically constrained to behave by real world circumstances.

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Well, that's a question of etiquette.My vision of etiquette is that you don't haul off and accuse someone of sexism for the use of a single word that is commonly understood to mean something that isn't sexist and by context is more indicative of a specific circumstance in the speaker completely unrelated to a social/political attitude toward women.Person X may not ascribe maleness to god, but if person Y does, it is inappropriate for X to accuse Y of sexism for referring to god as "he," especially when context makes it clear that X does.

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I was trying to describe the situation where the sender who wishes to be understood must modify their language in order to be understood.

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But what pronoun would you suggest one use to refer to Mr. Einstein? "She"? "It"? "They"?So if person X truly thinks god is male, what pronoun would you suggest be used?And is it really up to person X to change the way he speaks or is it up to person Y to change his attitude?

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The onus is on the sender, not because of any rule that says they should, but because that is how human language works.

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Even when it is clearly not so?What pronoun would you suggest one use to refer to Mr. Einstein? "We"? "You"?

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Why the immediate assumption that the person using "he" in the neuter was deliberately being sexist? The comment that brought this up wasn't asking for clarification. It was accusing.

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I re-read shcraf's post and cannot find anything that would support this.

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Hmmm...you mean schraf didn't say the following (Message 83 in Can we be 100% sure there is/isn't a God?: I don't know about you, but that seems pretty definitive and final: "The sexism in our language is so ingrained."

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She did not say anything about someone being deliberately sexist - but that sexism is ingrained.

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How can a trait be ingrained and yet not manifest?"Oh, when I said your blond hair was 'genetic,' I didn't mean you actually had blond hair."Are you honestly saying that the above comment by schrafinator isn't an indication that Paul in Message 59 of that thread was being sexist?Then tell me, what was the point of quoting Paul's comment, "Her? " It would seem to be that schrafinator was making a specific comment about Paul's insistence that god is male...which, I might add, was in response to your post where you referred to god using "her."

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This is actually almost entirely opposite to deliberate sexism - she was objecting, if I read her correctly, to inisudous, subconscious sexism permeating our discourse about God.

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But what pronoun would you suggest one use in referring to Mr. Einstein?

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Then you need to get some better colleagues. Either that or a backbone.

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Ooooo, hark at the catty tongue on her! Aren't we the forceful manly one?

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Or secure in my sexuality.... ------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

schrafinator writes:

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There has been some research which rather strongly shows that people use the masculine pronoun as male to the exclusion of females, rather than as a truly gender-neurtral meaning:

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I don't deny that.What I asked you was whether it was the language that did it or the people using the language that did it.Are you saying the language forces you to think about males when using "he"?So how do you manage to keep the distinctions of "theory" meaning "educated guess" and "theory" meaning "analysis of a set of facts"?For the umpteenth time. You said that the language was sexist. Not the person using the language but the actual language, itself, as if somehow the language forced a definitive meaning.So even though it may be true that many if not most people skew male when seeing "he" as a generic term, does that mean everybody does? That it is sufficient to say that the language is sexist and forces everyone to do so?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

schrafinator responds to me:

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Have you had a chance to think about my points against your claim that our language isn't sexist?

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Yes. And I responded to them.To add to my comments, the problem with Hofstaeder is that he is completely ignoring linguistic history. "White" has never had dual definitions. Thus, his example suffers from the logical fallacy of False Analogy (which is kinda sad for someone who wrote about logic...but, nobody's perfect.) He is comparing a term for which there is a long history of dual meanings to a term for which there is absolutely no history of dual meanings. So why is anybody surprised that the jury-rigged term seems to jarring?

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Specifically, I'd like you to address my "guy" usage example.

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It's still in the other thread, and I'll cut n paste it here if you like.

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I already did. Did you miss it? Message 107

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It's not strange or uncommon to address a all-female group and say, "Hi guys." Of course, one can do the same to a mixed group or a group of all-males. But if one were to describe someone as a "guy", it is immediately understood that the person't gender is male.

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Yes...and? Your point? You do realize that you're talking about two different words, right? You do understand that "guys" is not the same word as "guy" and that nobody uses "guys" when they really mean "guy," yes? The word "guys" has a definition of a group of people of either a single, male sex or a group of people of indeterminate sex. The word "guy," on the other hand, is much more strongly attached to the masculine, though even then it can be used for women since there is the rhyming comment, "Hi, guy!"Therefore, since everybody who speaks the language understands the word can mean both solely-masculine and non-solely-masculine, the term isn't sexist. It isn't like a woman who, upon greeting her girlfriends, shouts out, "Hey, you guys!" suddenly thinks she's addressing a group of men or that the group is shocked to hear themselves being addressed as if they were men. Everybody understands that "guys" means "group of people" without necessarily saying anything about the sex of the people in the group.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Mister Pamboli responds to me:

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You still have not given a clear reason why you think the root he- was neuter and not masculine.

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The OED quote I gave you. Roots are not inflections. The quote I gave you did not say that the root is masculine. The inflections are masculine, feminine, singular, plural, etc. But roots are not.

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What is it in the quote you gave that leads you to hold that the root is neuter.

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Because roots are not inflections. The inflections have gender, not the roots.

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I read the etymology in the OED as confirming that the root was masculine. For the life of me, I cannot see how you get from the quote to your claim.

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And for the life of me, I cannot see how you get that the root was masculine from the quote I gave you.If the masculine is an inflection of the root, how is the root, then, masculine?

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And since usage trumps everything, if people think that "history" is a concatenation of "his" and "story," then they'll rail against it as sexist ...
Yeah, usage trumps everything, but reality trumps usage. The word doesn't mean that no matter how many people think it does.

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Usage is reality.

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No, it isn't.Are you seriously trying to say that if enough people say that 2 + 2 = 5, then that somehow has some actual effect?Oh, yes, I wholeheartedly agree that if people behave as if 2 + 2 = 5, then that will influence a whole host of other behaviours, but that doesn't make it any more real.

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If the term herstory became comomn and contrasted with history, and these terms in usage were distinct, then despite its etymology history would change its current meaning.

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Agreed. But more importantly, a third term will get generated to handle the concept previously defined in the word "history."After all, if I'm talking about the development of, say, the bacteria in a petri dish, neither "history" as "past of males" nor "herstory" makes any sense.And in reality, it will be a creation of a definition, not a recognition of one. That is, "history" will have acquired a definition of being only related to males rather than some sort of recognition that it has always been that way.

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It's etymology would remain unchanged, and its historical usage would remain unchanged, but words at any point in time mean what the community of speakers use them to mean at that point in time.

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We're back to my original question:Why is it that only the people who are complaining get to be taken seriously when it comes to questions of "sexism" in the language? Why is it that if person X claims that Y was engaging in "sexism" in the language, it is automatically accepted as real?Is it impossible to conceive that X was wrong?

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And what do you suppose should be the appropriate response to someone who insists the fancy is reality? Defer to him since "usage is more important"? Or point out that a mistake has been made?

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It would depend if I felt there were value in their usage.

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What value is there in accusing someone of sexism?

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I find many uses of herstory by my friends a highly suitable term for succintly conveying what otherwise would take a paragraph every time they wished to make the point.

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And that's fine.But if I use the term "history" for the same thing and you know that I'm talking about the same thing, what is the value in accusing me and/or the language of "sexism"? I fully understand the point being made that the history of women is often neglected and wishing to point out the role women have had in history, but to insist that somebody is using "sexist language" by referring to it as "history" is simply wrong.There are wrong answers. Just because somebody is sincere in his feelings doesn't mean he's right.

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I also rather like the cognate form ourstory, although I don't expect any of these terms will enter common usage. But if a neologism meets a purpose it will survive, however much you or I may dislike the term, the purpose, the fanciful etymology or anything else to do with it.

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You've got the arrow backwards. My complaint is not with the term "herstory." It's with the people who claim that we necessarily need the term "herstory" because the word "history" is a concatenation of "his" and "story" and that anybody who uses "history" is using "sexist language."That simply isn't true. It is wrong. No matter how sincere the person who makes this claim, he is wrong.

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Precisely. For someone to say that the rules are being broken, we need to actually take a look at those rules. And if we find out that the rules aren't being broken, then the person who claimed that they are has some 'splainin' to do, wouldn't you agree?

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I fail to see the point - can you clarify? It's probably me - bit of a hangover this morning. Thanks.

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The point is that there are wrong answers. It doesn't matter how sincere a person is in his beliefs. Just because a person truly believes that 2 + 2 = 5 doesn't mean it is or can have any effect on it.

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I admit I'm being sloppy in my terminology. If you want to elevate the formality of this discussion, I'll be happy to, but I was trying to use terms for which most everyone would understand the gist of my point.

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Fair enough. However discussing the grammatical gender of root forms of pronouns is pretty technical, no?

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It doesn't have to be, though. At least, not for a friendly discussion.

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Nice example of something from Evita, but I cannot agree with you on the concept of a usage-indpendent language - at least not natural languages.

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How about this: The use of the double-negative. In English, there is a conflict between the "correct" interpretation where two negatives mean a positive and the common usage where they still make a negative. "I don't know nothing" is wrong, but most everybody has uttered that at some point.And then there are languages like Spanish that require multiple negatives. Just as the rules of the language say that gender and number have to agree, they also say that value has to agree. "Yo no s nada," not "Yo s nada."And that reminds me of the joke of a linguistic professor talking about this...how in English, a double-negative actually means a positive, but that there isn't a language where the opposite is true: A double-positive means a negative....and from the back you hear a student mutter, "Yeah, yeah...."Well, there isn't anything in the formal construction of English that would say that. But, sarcasm exists. It's all in how you use the language.

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...it makes the point that she does not wish to acknowledge the reality of the other person.
If person X and person Y are talking about "god" and person X is of the opinion that god is male, then where does Y get off in complaining about it? Weren't we talking about "god"? And isn't god male? If Y wishes to debate that, it isn't because of an inherent sexism on the part of X simply through the use of "he" for "god."

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I'm puzzled by this example as person x seems to be the only one whose opinion matters to you.

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Not at all.What I'm railing against is the apparent attitude the person X's opinion doesn't matter at all. Y was offended, Y claimed sexism, and therefore it seems to be agreed that Y was justified in being offended and X was being sexist, all through the use of a single word that makes perfect sense given the actual situation.

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In the current case you should remember that schraf was responding to a person "y" who eye-rolled my usage of she. The boot is pretty firmly on the other foot.

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You're forgetting that X truly thinks that god is male.What pronoun would you suggest we use to refer to Mr. Einstein?Again, weren't you talking about "god"? And isn't god male?That's the fundamental issue at hand. How does one justify that a person is sexist because he recognizes that god is male and uses "he" to refer to him?What pronoun would you suggest we use to refer to Mr. Einstein?Now, you might have an argument to make about the history of the particular religion that resulted in the claim that god is male, but the fact of the matter is that X is coming from the position that god is male. If you want to discuss that aspect, then discuss it...don't accuse someone of sexism for using "he" to refer to a male being. If there is sexism, it is in the claim that god is male, not that one would use "he" to refer to a male god.

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I'm reminded of a teaching assistant who was a little too zealous in her pursuit of sexist language and marked a friend down for using "he"...to refer to Albert Einstein.

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That's priceless! Is it anectodal or do you have a reference? I know a couple of people who would love to use that as an example.

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I don't have the actual paper in front of me, since it wasn't my paper, but it was my Rhetoric class at Harvey Mudd, fall semester, 1986. I remember the professor's name, but I can't recall the name of the TA. If my friend shows up to the next reunion in 2005, I'll ask him if he still has it. I doubt it, though. A common thing to do at the end of the semester was the bonfire where we'd burn everything from the classes we were taking.My direct experience with TA incompetence was a psych paper where the TA claimed that I hadn't done any analysis of the data...on the page just before the one titled, "Analys of Data," where I showed the raw data, calculated the various statistical results, and concluded if the results were significant.

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I admit that it has been a while since I have read the New Testament from cover to cover, but I seem to recall that god is exclusively referred to in the masculine through words such as "father."

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Is that the same as saying that God has an exclusively male nature? I don't think so.

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If one never sees a reference to a female nature, if one sees a constant reference to god as male, and if the story of the creation of the son of god refers to him visiting a woman and making her conceive, then what sort of nature do you think is being implied?You seem to be saying that if a person calls someone "my father," he doesn't really mean "father" but rather means "parent"...despite the fact that he always refers to that someone as "father" and never as "parent."You seem to be inserting your own opinions onto the words of others. Tell me, do you make a habit of pointing out that your father is specifically male or do you simply let the fact that you call him your "father" do the job? I don't know anybody who says, "My father who is male" as a matter of course. That seems to be included in the term "father."

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... I do recall when an MP chastised me for referring to the Prime Minister as "Thatcher" rather than "Mrs. Thatcher."

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I've heard MPs call her much worse than that! One of her own backbenchers used to call "Great She-Elephant" - an honorific used in Swaziland, iirc.

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Oh, I know, but they were sticklers for being polite in their insults. Seems to be a bit of a cultural thing. I remember once waiting for the tube with some friends. We were around some of the vending machines and one of my friends was sitting underneath one (it was one of those smaller, wall-mounted ones...not the huge floor models). A guy wearing combat boots, torn jeans, jean jacket with torn-off sleeves, stereotypical punk-thug type came up to us and very politely said, "'Scuse me, mates." When we moved a bit out of the way, he proceeded to kick the hell out of the machine to get it to give up its change.Even the criminals are polite.

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Sure it does. "The Chair is in control and all members must accede to his demands."

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Yuk! Do you know people who still talk that way?

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Yeah. Me. I talk that way. Haven't you noticed?

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You must address the chair and all that? Anyway, wouldn't this be a highly formalized example and not everyday speech?

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You were the one who brought up parliamentary procedure...I was just going with the example.

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So if person X truly thinks god is male, what pronoun would you suggest be used?

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I think they should use the pronoun they prefer. I used she for God and was eye-rolled, which eye-rolling schraf and I thought was what you might call poor etiquette.

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Ah, but schraf didn't call it "poor etiquette." She called it "sexism." There's a difference.And yeah, you got an eyeroll. What would you do to someone who was saying that by referring to Mr. Einstein as "he," you were engaging in sexism and thus you need to be more inclusive?I'd roll my eyes.Once again, you're completely dismissing the opinions of person X because person Y has raised the bugaboo of sexism.You mean it never occurred to you that Y was wrong?What pronoun would you suggest one use to refer to Mr. Einstein?

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Schraf - who has been over this ground many times on this forum - contextualised the objection in her experience of years of this sort of thing.

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By calling it "sexism"?Pretty amazing ability to read another person's mind, don't you think? That you and possibly schraf are of the opinion that the concept of god has feminine qualities doesn't mean the person to whom you were all speaking does. And since it was his statement referring to his concept of god, and since it seems clear that his concept of god is that god is male, how is it "sexism" to refer to god as "he"?What pronoun would you suggest one use to refer to Mr. Einstein?

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And is it really up to person X to change the way he speaks or is it up to person Y to change his attitude?

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Mutual accomodation is always better.

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Even when somebody is wrong? We should coddle them lest we hurt their feelings? If someone comes along and insists that 2 + 2 = 5, we don't point out their mistake but actually try to "accomodate" them?

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I would prefer not be eye-rolled.

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Indeed. I am not defending the etiquette of Paul in his response to you. But to say that schraf is justified in calling Paul sexist simply because Paul is using a male pronoun to refer to a male being is simply wrong.What pronoun would you suggest one use to refer to Mr. Einstein?

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What pronoun would you suggest one use to refer to Mr. Einstein?

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But the matter under discussion rather rests upon whether God's gender is as clear as Albie's, does it not?

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How very dismissive of someone else's beliefs.If you have a beef with Paul for insisting that god is male, that's one thing. But since Paul does think that god is male, doesn't it make sense that Paul would use "he" to refer to god?What pronoun would you suggest one use to refer to Mr. Einstein?Just because you want to discuss the possibility that Mr. Einstein is really a bunch of people? How is it being "numeristic" to refer to Mr. Einstein as "he" rather than "they" simply because you're of the opinion that Einstein was much like the Bourbaki? Would we not expect that a person who thought Mr. Einstein was singular to refer to Mr. Einstein as "he"?

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Pamboli: She did not say anything about someone being deliberately sexist - but that sexism is ingrained.
RhRain: How can a trait be ingrained and yet not manifest?

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Do you have a blind spot for the word deliberate and it's significance in this part of the discussion?

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Not at all. The claim was that the language is somehow forcing someone to think in certain ways. That would seem to be a deliberate act, don't you think?

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Reread and concentrate on that word - you'll see my phrasing is very careful and, I think, accurate.

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If I did, we wouldn't be having this discussion, now would we?

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Let's try it with some synonyms:

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She did not say anything about someone being intentionally sexist ...
She did not say anything about someone being calculatingly sexist ...
She did not say anything about someone being consciously sexist ...

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Yes, she did.Or is there something about "the sexism in our language is so ingrained" that indicates that Paul was not actually being sexist? That somehow even if Paul didn't want to be, he is forced to be?

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Have a gay day.

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Thank you. I will.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

crashfrog responds to me:

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Aren't we overlooking the fact that while people may attempt to use a gender-neutral "he", it isn't really common for people to imagine gender-neutral people?

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No.The original claim was that the language was sexist. Not the people using it, but the language, itself. As if somehow referring to a male object with a male pronoun was some form of sexism.Paul referred to god as "he."MP then referred to god as "she."Paul rolled his eyes.schraf then claimed the language was "ingrained" in sexism because Paul rolled his eyes at MP's reference to god as "she."I am left wondering how the language got to be considered the source of the problem rather than the people.That said, if you skew male when you see "he" in the neuter, does that mean everybody does? And does that give anybody the right to accuse somebody of sexism simply through the use of a single word?

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I mean, if I say something like "some doctor took his lunch", no matter how much I may say that my use of "he" is to be regarded as without gender, you're going to think of a male doctor.

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Says who? You?I don't.Don't I count?On the final exam of a linguistics class I took, there was a question about "Pat" and "Chris." The final question then asked, "What gender did you think 'Pat' and 'Chris' were?"I answered honestly:I didn't think about it. I was too busy taking a test to obsess about the sex of non-existent people.

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No matter what you mean when you say "he", if you call god "he" people think of a male god.

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I don't.Or am I not allowed to be included in "people"?

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If you don't think that this has had ramifications for the acceptance of women as equal persons under the law you're quite mistaken, as far as I know.

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You're confusing language and usage again.But in the interest of those ramifications, don't you think accusations of sexism on the basis of a single word is going a little overboard?Especially when that word was used correctly?What pronoun would you suggest one use to refer to Mr. Einstein?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Mister Pamboli responds to me:

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I notice you gave no opinion on the meaning of dungeon in reality. This, however, was very germane to the discussion - as you calim that words have meanings in reality which are distinct from their usage. You need to clarify this reality of yours, I think.

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I think the word "dungeon" has multiple meanings and context will make it clear which one is being used.Similarly, "he" has multiple meanings and context will make it clear which one is being used.

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It strikes me as astonishing that anyone would claim that English, as she is spoke, involves abstract canonical meanings analogous to mathematics.

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Why? Mathematics is a language. While I certainly agree that linguistic languages are not nearly as formal and precise as mathematics, to act as if linguistic languages have no formal rules is just as astonishing to me.As Inigo said to Vizzini: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."That's what I'm talking about. Sometimes people think things that aren't true. And sometimes what they think about language isn't true. The thing about language is that since it is an abstraction, it is somewhat amenable to what people think.But it is important to remember that there are two people involved. Just because one person thinks something doesn't mean the other person does. And it is unfair to insist that the person who is offended actually has a beef against the other when the other wasn't doing anything wrong.

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Your still seem to miss the key point in what schraf was saying about ingrained sexism. Her entire point was that the comment was not deliberately sexist.

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If something is "ingrained," how can it fail to be deliberate? Isn't that the point behind an ingrained trait? It happens whether you want it to or not?

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She is not saying that Paul used a sexist term with clear, knowing it was sexist, and consciously using it wiht a sexist connotation. Surely it can't be clearer than that?

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I'm saying that she did. She may not have meant that, but those are the words that came across the screen and since I am incapable of reading her mind, I can only go by what was written.Paul called god he.
You called god she.
Paul rolled his eyes.
Schraf raises the bugaboo of sexism saying that it is "ingrained" in the language.If there is sexism built into the language, then one cannot help but engage in sexism by using it, yes? That's what being "ingrained" means, does it not?

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btw, what's with the Einstein example? Why do keep repeating like a mantra?

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Because you keep avoiding answering the question.It appears to me that Paul considers god to be male. Do you not agree with that assessment?Therefore, what pronoun would you suggest he use to refer to god? Not you, not your opinion of god. We're talking about Paul. What does he think of god and therefore what pronoun would you suggest he use given his understanding of god.Therefore, how is schraf's statement that the language is sexist, that it is "ingrained," justified?

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I thought my answer was reasonably precise - the situation is not analogous under the circumstances of the original discussion.

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It most certainly is.God is male, isn't he?Therefore, what pronoun would you suggest one use to describe god?No, not your opinion of god. Paul's. Remember, schraf's comment was that the language was sexist because Paul used "he" to refer to god.If a person truly thinks that god is male, how is it a fault of the language when said person refers to god as "he"? How is it a fault of the language when he takes issue with someone referring to god as "she"?What pronoun would you suggest one use to refer to Mr. Einstein?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

crashfrog responds to me:

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You're confusing language and usage again.

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But the point is, in what form does language exist besides usage?

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As the abstraction that it is. While spoken languages aren't nearly as formal as something like mathematics, they do have rules. Words have meanings that are indicated by context and one engages in equivocation when one tries to switch definitions in mid-sentence.We get this all the time when battling creationists of the word "theory," right? Yes, the word "theory" does mean "educated guess." But, it also means "analysis of facts," does it not? Therefore, isn't it inappropriate to treat the latter as if it were the former?

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How do you reliably determine the difference?

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Since spoken languages are much less formal, it is very difficult. Context usually makes it clear. Alas, we often don't have enough context.

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Mr. P's and my point (which he is clearly much better than defending than I) is that language cannot be distinguished from usage.

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And yet, it is. Take the following two poems:The deep red rose, I see its thorn.
I just ignore the scent that's borne.
To me, it's nothing. I deplore
Those scratches that I got before.
I just complain about the pain.
A lot I think of beauty's gain.The deep red rose I see,
It's thorn I just ignore.
The scent that's borne to me,
It's nothing I deplore.
Those scratches that I got:
Before I just complain
About the pain a lot,
I think of beauty's gain.The exact same words, but the exact opposite meaning. The only difference between the two is the emphasis and cadence. That isn't something the language can tell you. That's completely dependent upon usage.And then there's this little thing: Why is it we say "The big, red balloon" and not "the red, big balloon"? The latter is just as correct as the former. They mean the same thing, but for some reason it just doesn't sound right to say "red, big." There is nothing in the language that says that size comes before color. That's just the way we use the language.

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The usage is the language. Resources like the OED are not respoitiories of language but only descriptors.

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But those descriptors can tell us what people think those rules are. And since they use the language with regard to those rules, it helps us to understand what they're saying if we can comprehend those rules.

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But in the interest of those ramifications, don't you think accusations of sexism on the basis of a single word is going a little overboard?

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I think Schraf was responding not to that particular instance, but to it's context of a greater, inherent sexism found in male conceptions of god.

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So why drag the language into it? Again, if we want to get into a discussion about why Paul thinks god is male, that's one thing. But given that he does, what pronoun would you suggest he use to describe god?

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Anyway, I don't see anything eye-rolling-worthy about the idea of a female god, and it was that summary dismissal that Schraf was responding to, I believe.

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And pehaps Paul was responding to what he considered was a social/political re-writing of reality having more to do with trying to make oneself feel good rather than accepting what is. I can't speak for him so I won't claim that I have any actual knowledge as to what made him roll his eyes, but let's speculate:If you thought that someone was playing politics with what you thought was a deeply important subject, might you not roll your eyes?Take the "disclaimers" that have shown up on biology textbooks. When I hear about them and when I hear the justifications used for them ("equal time," "let the students decide," etc.), I will have a "roll my eyes" reaction. Someone is playing politics rather than simply dealing with the issue at hand.

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I could be wrong; I don't claim to read her mind.

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Neither do I. I can only go by what she said.And she said the language was sexist.

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But I found her comments very appropriate, because I also was slightly offended by the idea that a female aspect of god is something to be rejected outright with a roll of the eyes.

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Perhaps, but might you not understand why?If you truly thought god was male and you thought that someone was playing games in referring to god as female, might you not roll your eyes?

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What pronoun would you suggest one use to refer to Mr. Einstein?

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Albert Einstein's gender is confirmable. God's is not,

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Says who? You? The New Testament seems to be pretty clear on the subject.You're substituting your understanding of god for Paul's.

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so is it really a good idea to assume god's gender without discussion?

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Who is assuming anything? It seems to me that Paul is going off of an authoritative statement that god is male. Therefore, Paul thinks that god is male.Therefore, what pronoun would you suggest Paul use?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Mister Pamboli responds to me:

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Do you speak a strongly inflected language natively?

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A couple, actually.

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Cool. May I ask which ones?

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Spanish and French, though I admit my French has become extremely poor of late. I can read it better than speak it. I have a rudimentary comprehension of Latin (though I wouldn't dare to claim I speak it...I can follow the structure, but I have no grasp of the vocabulary or the gut feeling for why the structure works the way it does.) I also have a smattering of an essentially non-inflected language: ASL.

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all of the third-person pronouns, including the masculine, come from the same root.

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And of course I agree with you. But what makes you think that root is neuter? I have given several reasons why I think it is masculine.

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And I have given my reasons why I don't think so. I guess we're just going to have to disagree.

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then why the complaint that "he" in the masculine and "he" in the neuter is somehow sexist when, for Old English, they weren't?

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Because we're talking about modern usage.

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And in modern usage, "he" is also neuter.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Mister Pamboli responds to me:

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You appear, if I read you correctly - and I've read this a dozen times to make sure - to be saying that the language of this poem is just the words, and the punctuation is just usage. Is that right? Say it ain't so.

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Punctuation is a graphical representation of the inflection imparted upon the language by the speaker. Language existed long before writing. Yes, there are aspects of linguistics that are unique to writing, but in a language such as English, the punctuation serves to indicate vocal characteristics.Those poems still exist if I take them off the page and simply speak them. The difference between them is the inflection and cadence, not the words...and yet one gets a completely different set of meanings out of them.

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There is a reasonably well known rule in modern English for the order of adjectives: OPINION, APPEARANCE [measure, shape, condition], AGE, COLOR, ORIGIN, MATERIAL.

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Not a rule so much as a convention. By your logic, one would say "ugly, big bear." And yet, what we actually say "big, ugly bear." It could be, perhaps, because of Schoolhouse Rock! and the song, "Unpack your adjectives":"Boy! That was one big, ugly bear!"Plus, there are times when one needs to emphasize one of those traits. For example, if you are trying to point out a specific big balloon and you had apparently established that you're referring to the big balloons, you could quite reasonably be expected to say, "No, not the blue, big balloon...the red, big balloon." That isn't a guarantee...reversing those orders doesn't alter the emphasis, but the order can be shifted depending upon the situation and what it is that is trying to be said:"The big, red balloon...no, the big one...the big one...the big one...no, the red one...the red one...the red, big balloon! Here, I'll get it!"

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Are rules only rules if they affect meaning? That seems very unlikely, and is not a concept I am familiar with.

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Sorta, kinda, almost. After all, it is a "rule" that you're not supposed to use double negatives, but people do all the time. It's a "rule" that you're supposed to conjugate your verbs, but people often don't or do so "incorrectly."That is, if you were to go around saying, "We alls be hungrified!" you'll get a lot of people telling you that such isn't "good English"...possibly even the person who said it.But if you were to go around saying, "the red, big balloon," you'll find very few people who can tell you what is wrong with that phrase.

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There is doubt in our minds, ever listening for subtleties of word order, that a good big dog is perhaps not quite the same as a big good dog - that perhaps in one case its goodness is only a secondary quality when in another it is of the essence.

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Indeed.But if you ask people why that is, most won't be able to tell you. It isn't something that's taught. It just sorta happens. And thus, we end up with social structures that could adjust it, but without adjusting the actual meaning of the utterance. That is, "the man shot the boy" means something different than "the boy shot the man" to all speakers of English. But, "the big, red balloon" means the same thing as "the red, big balloon," even though one "feels weird."------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

crashfrog responds to me:

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The exact same words, but the exact opposite meaning. The only difference between the two is the emphasis and cadence.

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Well, and punctuation and sentence structure.

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Which are merely graphical representations of the emphasis and cadence. There is no punctuation in speech and those poems still exist when spoken. Things like vocal bits are usage.

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Which are a part of language, I think?

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Usage, yes, and completely arbitrary. There is nothing about English that says that you should start sentences with capitals, that you double-space at the end of a sentence, that lists are separated with commas, etc. Heck, look at the differences in systems of punctuation. I was always taught that you put a comma before the final "and" in a list. Newspaper punctuation says no, you don't put that comma there...you can't afford to waste the space...and that rule is takin over in other areas.

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Well, if we all use it that way, in every situation, why isn't it a rule?

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Because we don't use it that way in every situation and the vast majority of people, even though they do use it that way, don't know why. It just is. It's a convention. There's nothing wrong with saying "the red, big balloon." It just doesn't "feel" right.

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Now, prove to me that this isn't a fundamental rule of the english language, since that seems to be your claim.

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Because of the following:"Joe...get the big, red balloon...not the big one...the big one...the big one...no, the red one...the red one...the red one...Joe, the red, big balloon! Here, let me do it!"As MP pointed out, there is an understood order of how adjectives come along, but it is more convention than a hard and fast rule.I say, "big, ugly bear," not "ugly, big bear" even though opinions come before descriptions. It may be because I've been trained by Schoolhouse Rock! to say it that way, but I do and it "feels wrong" to say it the other way...even though I would say, "That's an ugly, little house." It seems that "big" comes before "ugly" but "ugly" comes before "little."

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How is it you are able to tell the difference between so-called "rules" of language and rules of usage?

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By noting if meaning changes when things get shifted. By asking people, "Is there something wrong with this and if so, why is it wrong?"Most people will be able to say why "We alls is hungrified!" isn't "good English," but most won't be able to say what, if anything, is wrong with "The red, big balloon floated away." The former is a rule. The latter is a convention.

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god didn't write the new testament.

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But it was written by people "inspired by god" and records the words of the "son of god." You may debate those claims, but I think it is safe to say that Paul doesn't. Therefore, given that Paul accepts that god is male, what pronoun would you have him use?

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Let me ask you this - if I started referring to rocks as having gender, would you correct me? Or would you simply say "Well, Crashfrog seems to think that rocks have gender. I won't question that."

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I might correct you, but I won't accuse you of being sexist if you call them all "she."And I certainly won't drag the language into it.

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Wouldn't you, in fact, question the assumption that rocks could be gendered entities?

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That's a different question from whether or not you or the language is sexist for doing so.If you think that rocks have gender, it is a non sequitur for me to accuse you of sexism for referring to them all as female when my point is that they aren't sexed at all.

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I question the idea that god, if he or she or it exists, could be a gendered entity in the sense that we think of it.

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That may be.But if you're dealing with a person who thinks that god is male, is he being sexist by then referring to god as "he"?What pronoun would you suggest be used?

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God may have traits that we associate with certain genders more than others, but it's outrageous to assume that male and female have any meaning beyond biological entities.

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Says who? You?Who are you to speak for god?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Mister Pamboli responds to me:

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And it is unfair to insist that the person who is offended actually has a beef against the other when the other wasn't doing anything wrong.

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I agree. And Schraf's suggestion was not that Paul had a beef but that the language he used was inherently sexist. She was suggesting that he reacted to an ingrained sexism in the language that led him to respond in a way that he might not have done had given more thought.

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It's quite rude to accuse your interlocutor of being insincere without any evidence of such.

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Such may have been hasty, but there is no doubt whatsoever (as schraf has confirmed) that she was not accusing Paul of deliberate sexism.

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Then she shouldn't have said what she did. Because if the language forces one to be sexist, then one is being sexist when one uses the language, yes? She didn't say it was a "socially imposed" sexist ingraining that god was male. She said the language was ingrained as sexist.

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If something is "ingrained," how can it fail to be deliberate? Isn't that the point behind an ingrained trait? It happens whether you want it to or not?

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Precisely - so it's not deliberate.

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Paul chose to use the language, didn't he? Was it not a deliberate act to call god "he"? Not "he or she." "He." Are you saying Paul wasn't thinking when he used "he" knowing that it was "ingrained" with sexism?

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If there is sexism built into the language, then one cannot help but engage in sexism by using it, yes? That's what being "ingrained" means, does it not?

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If one cannot help doing it, it's not deliberate is it. That's what deliberate means, does it not?

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Yes, but are you saying that Paul wasn't thinking when he called god "he"?It's not very nice to accuse your interlocutor of being insincere without justification.

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Therefore, what pronoun would you suggest he use to refer to god? Not you, not your opinion of god. We're talking about Paul. What does he think of god and therefore what pronoun would you suggest he use given his understanding of god.

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He (I assume) should use he. But he should not roll his eyes at another saying she.

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Even if he thinks you're playing politics?Again, it is not nice to accuse your interlocutor of being insincere without justification, but if he thinks you're playing politics, isn't rolling ones eyes a natural response?I'm not saying that he's right either about god or that he should have rolled his eyes. I'm simply saying that rather than escalating the accusations of "You're not really thinking about the issue," "No! You're the one playing games!", "Jerk!", "Cretin!", etc. it would be better to stay out of such things.

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No, not your opinion of god. Paul's. Remember, schraf's comment was that the language was sexist because Paul used "he" to refer to god.

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No it wasn't. In fact, exactly the other way round. She suggested that Paul's objection was the result of the language's sexism.

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So she's accusing Paul of being insincere.That's not a better result.

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If a person truly thinks that god is male, how is it a fault of the language when said person refers to god as "he"? How is it a fault of the language when he takes issue with someone referring to god as "she"?

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At last - the point of the discussion. Took a while, didn't it?
Schraf - was implying that Paul may have been so conditioned by the traditional usage of he for God that he was surprised to see she written.

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In other words, Paul is insincere. Paul hasn't thought about it. Paul is intellectually lazy. Paul is just a mindless drone parroting somebody else's words without actually believing it or understanding it for himself.That's not a very nice thing to accuse somebody of without evidence.

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She was generously suggesting that it might not be Paul who was being sexist, but simply that he was so used to the sexually-biased term that he was astonished to see a different term used.

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Oh, instead of being a sexist jerk, he can be a sloppy thinker.Yeah...that's "generous."

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I thought it was quite nice of her - I had a much harsher line of attack planned.

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I guess I'm even nicer: I took Paul to be sincere in his beliefs.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!