[Rhina P. Espaillat]

That passage from Wilbur expresses very well what I love about light verse: its insistence that verbal wit is legitimate, including mimetic "tricks" like this chipmunk.
It also doesn't take itself so seriously that the fun goes out of the play. And, of course, in a poem like Wilbur's, the only thing "light" about it is the touch.

Roger, I love your "Old"! Says it all, alas; and you respect the form without bending the thought or the syntax out of shape. The other ovillejo, the one that ends with "I gave my love a rose," is also successful, with a rueful, unexpected darkness to it.

[robert mezey]

Terese, what you have to say is interesting,
but you really should find a way to avoid
such monstrosities as his/her, s/he, her/him-
self etc. Of all the achievements of feminism,
from the sublime to the ridiculous, these awful
contortions of the MOTHER tongue may be the
most ridiculous---certainly, the dumbest and
least useful. And this wrongheadedness has
now made ubiquitous the illiterate stupidity
of using a plural pronoun for "everybody" or
"a person". Since you're writing about a
women, you can reasonably use the feminine
pronoun all the way through, even where you're
using it generally. The argument about "he,
him, his" etc. is really silly. When it's
used generally, it has the masculine form but
it is not masculine. It's like the Latin
word "homo" which can be translated as "man"
but is often used to mean any human being of
whatever sex. If a Roman wanted to specify
a male person, he (or she, as the case may be)
would use "vir" (from which comes our word
"virile"). If it really bothers you to write
something like "a poet should use his language
with tender loving care," you could avoid it
by writing "poets should use their language &c"
But it's pointless to avoid. I know men who
never fail to use those barbarous PC locutions
and who never fail to treat women as shit.

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

Robert--

Illiterate stupidity? Excuse me?

English is an evolving language, and you're either forgetting or ignoring that one of the forces at play is the politeness factor. I'm certain there was a great deal of bitching and moaning when the plural (and formal) "you" began to supplant the singular (and informal) "thou," but it did, and now no one uses "thou" in modern parlance.

In modern parlance, the feminine form of "poet"--"poetess"--has fallen out of favor because it's generally pointless to differentiate sex for any profession save acting, and that only because of the roles. "Poet" is now the catchall category, but it has an implication of being male, especially when twinned with a male pronoun.

There are all sorts of solutions, some more attractive than others, but all equally appropriate for informal writing. The writer picks a fashion to suit their personal tastes and goes with it. Myself, I like using the neuter plural pronoun in place of the gendered singular pronouns for the third person, avoiding "it" as this would be rude, following the same logic as "you" replacing "thou."

I notice you don't capitalize your first or last name. Is this illiterate stupidity on your part, or just a personal choice?

As personal choices go, I find it a pretentious affectation, but I usually don't bother to comment on it.

So you find he/she ugly. Deal.

Kevin

[Tim Murphy]

Kevin, Professor Mezey capitalizes his name. Why Alex decapped it is beyond me. I must say I too find the neutering of pronouns barbaric, and I'm considerably junior to Robert Mezey.

[Carol Taylor]

I agree one hundred percent with Dr. Mezey. I use the genderless pronoun he in every case in which the gender is not established as female or is not pertinent. Plural pronouns do not apply to singular subjects. The use of the plural pronoun in a singular context because the speaker thinks it politically correct is laughable. Surely a cagy speaker who is afraid of offending can find a grammatically acceptable workaround. If he can't bring himself to use the genderless he, he might change the number of his subject or else use the pronoun "one" to telegraph his sensitivity to issues of feminism.

Similarly, I do not believe the word poet implies masculinity any more than the words writer or doctor or teacher or president or bus driver do. On the contrary, I feel it is insulting to distinguish gender where gender is not an issue, as though women poets were a separate life form. On the other hand, when gender is an issue, address it. There's nothing second-class about the female sex, and I don't need to be patronized by some closet chauvinist calling me "they," as though I might go into a swooning episode if he didn't show proper deference to my feelings.

Carol

[Roger Slater]

With sincere repect to Professor Mezey, it's not as simple as he makes out. In the 17th and 18th Century, many fine writers and educated people used "they" as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun.

And the word "man," though people often said it included women, was quite often used in contexts that show otherwise. In fact, the generic use of "he" and "man" was sufficiently murky in 1850 that the British Parliament saw the need to pass a law saying "words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females." Why would such a law have been necessary in 1850 if the question was as clear as Professor Mezey now claims?

And Edmund Burke, a rather grammatic fellow, didn't think the word "man" included the word "woman" when he wrote of the French Revolution "Such a deplorable havoc is made in the minds of men (both sexes) in France. . . ." It seems rather clear that he did not feel that simply saying "men" would make it clear to people that women were also intended in his meaning.

In those occasions when the author did not take pains to show that "man" includes "women," we often find that confusion resulted. In 1879, women doctors were excluded from a prestigious medical society because the by-laws on membership used the pronoun "he", which was deemed to exclude women. If "man" includes both genders, why did the medical society feel that its use excluded women?

I've read lots of this kind of thing before, but right now I'm relying on http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cjacobso/gender.html. The article also points out some other interesting oddities regarding gender speech, such as the medical research report entitled "Development of the Uterus in Rats, Guinea Pigs, and Men," which is good for a chuckle. And the article provides the following sentence, which I presume most people would find a bit odd: "A doctor is a busy person; he must be able to balance a million obligations at once. Dr. Jones is no exception, with a clinic to run, medical students to supervise, and a husband with polio."

Professor Mezey's version of gender in language corresponds to the unexamined orthodoxy of the grammarians who held sway when Professor Mezey was learning grammar, but it overlooks much of the history of usage in English and it also overlooks the fact that millions of people these days, unlike Professor Mezey, no longer hear the gender inclusiveness of "man" even assuming that most people used to hear it...and that is somewhat in doubt.

I'd further add that a usage can be offensive even if it is accepted usage and blessed by grammarians. From curse words to racial epithets, there are words that are "validated" by usage but that people can nonetheless object to and ask people not to use. In the case of gender, however, we're not just dealing with modern PC sensibilities but a centuries' long history that actually validates the singular neutral use of "they" and rejects the notion that "man" includes "woman."

[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited July 15, 2002).]

[nyctom]

Well I can see there is going to be no agreement on this one either, though isn't it interesting that the use of "genderless" he vs inclusive she or he tends to break along generational lines?

I suppose we can choke this one up to the same impulse that denigrates "free verse" as a category to be worthless shit. Or any variation from prosodic tradition as mere sloppiness or lack of control.

And people wonder why Expansive New Formalist Poetry, or whatever the label du jour may be, is often considered conservative if not downright reactionary.


Generation gap or chasm?

[Jim Hayes]

Roger, without making too long-winded a response, the British Parliament did not pass a law as you indicate because the use of ‘he’ and ‘man’ was murky, but was rather a qualification the legal draftsmen felt was necessary to a law under parliamentary discussion.

In my understanding of legal ‘English’ the over-riding requirement is that the meaning should be absolutely clear even at the expense of grammatical niceties.
So I wouldn’t be inclined to use the convolutions of a legal document to make a case for the development or useage of grammar generally.

Edmund Burke, an Irish parliamentarian, was being no more than thorough in the circumstances of the French revolution when he felt that his use of ‘men’ might be taken to exclude the gentler sex from the havoc he was referring to. I doubt he found any other occasion to make such meaning clear.

[Carol Taylor]

Tom, you're mixing issues here and drawing unfounded conclusions, lumping us old fogies into a toothless caste. I'm hazarding a guess that Roger is closer to our age than to yours, and I believe Professor Mezey has written a lot of free verse.

Carol

[ChrisW]

Jane Austen uses the singular 'they' in her novels' narration (not merely in the speech of uneducated characters).
Perhaps one could insist that JA didn't know how to speak proper English, but at least this shows that the singular 'they' is not a 20th century feminist neologism.
See the following link:

http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html#X1b