Gendered pronouns

[jack]

In my recent post about a story of someone going to a job interview, I chose to use female pronouns for both the applicant and the boss, even though I think the original story I heard used "he".

FWIW, I don't remember where I heard the story, but it was presented as a parable, not a factual account, and the extent of the checking I did was to look on snopes, who didn't cite an original incident, so I assumed it was basically generic. At least one friend reckoned they DID have a citation for the original incident, in which case I should have used whichever gender was appropriate. But I was treating it as a generic "story about something that might have happened".

In fact, I don't know for sure the version I heard used "he". It might have used "they", or even named a specific person as the interviewer or the candidate. And I unfortunately probably wouldn't have remembered the difference.

But I make an effort to make generic stories using female characters if I can, because if I don't I end up using "he" all the time.

I hesitated a bit this time, because I wasn't sure if I'd accidentally send some _other_ message (would people think women less likely to be "one of the boys" at a job interview? more likely to be picky about some obscure point of etiquette?). But I always hesitate in case the connotations are wrong (eg. using a non-white-male as a villain or incompetent in a story), but decided that if I didn't do it every time I wasn't sure, I'd just be promoting "he" as the default, which is what I wanted to avoid.

And fortunately, the story seemed to come across exactly the same.

Using mixed or neutral gender pronouns is a small improvement, and something I feel bad that I decided to do, rather than something I always did automatically. But I know I don't notice when other people make small stylistic choices like that, so for once I thought I'd point it out.

Comments

[naath]

If I drop an anvil on your head the maybe I was going "oh shit oh shit oh shit I'm going to drop this anvil" or maybe I was going "hahaha a ptc24! I shall kill him with this anvil!" but *either way* you are now going "OMG MY HEAD HURTS SO MUCH"; and I think some shouting about how much your head hurts is entirely reasonable.

I also think it is reasonable to respond to someone accidentally hurting me by saying "please try not to hurt me or other people again"; even when it was all entirely accidental. Also I think that since with verbally inflicted pain the excuse is often a genuine "I had no idea that would hurt you" it is more important to say "that hurt, please don't" because otherwise how would the hurter learn not to cause further hurt?

Also there is an argument for negligence. How many times do I say "please, that really hurts, don't do it" before you either stop doing it or admit that you are intentionally hurting me? And yes, sometimes it hurts to be told "you are hurting me"; but I am reasonably happy to inflict this pain as part of a process that leads to no-one hurting people.

[ptc24]

Expressions of pain and polite requests for changes to behaviour are of course entirely reasonable; furthermore in some cases impolite more-than-requests for changes could be considered fair, or at any rate people might fairly be expected to ignore the impoliteness. This of course implies that some impoliteness should be ignored.

Now expressions of blame - for example, anger directed at the person causally responsible for the offense, perhaps involving hurtful words themselves - are interesting. My first instinct is to get on my high horse and say this is entirely unjustifiable. However... well, I linked to an Adam Smith quote elsewhere in this discussion. The idea of moral luck, of blameworthiness that can be dropped on you from a great height, is one that I really dislike. But I find that the position up on my high horse is uncomfortable for various reasons, so it's something I'm trying to make sense of.

[naath]

I find the idea that I could express the extreme pain of (for example) having an anvil dropped on my head POLITELY is... well, I think it's a bit beyond me frankly. When I'm in pain I am not at my most polite!

Also it seems that sometimes it is simply impossible to tell someone "that thing you said hurt me" in a way that is both sufficiently polite that they themselves are not hurt and ALSO sufficiently clear that they understand that they hurt me.

Inflicting pain in response for pain might be a learning tool in some cases; although I'm not sure it is the BEST teaching tool at hand.

[ptc24]

Well if you'd had an anvil dropped on your head, then expressing anything at all, politely or impolitely, might be difficult; furthermore you'll see that my point about politeness wasn't about expressions of pain. I brought politeness up, because, well, in your non-anvil examples, you had people being very polite about things. Out of the four things you had the hurt person saying, three of them had the word "please" in them, and the other was fairly plain and factual. It is of course hard to argue against such polite and dignified responses, which is why I didn't.