Subject: re : 6 . 1070 , disc : sex / lang , re : 1023

in the ongoing discussion of the " epicene he " , i think that perhaps we are making some headway on certain issues , but all kinds of new loose ends keep unraveling . what seems clearly established is that the 18th century grammarians of english did not invent this usage , since ( a ) it had existed in english for centuries , and ( b ) it seems to be a linguistic universal or something close to it , not a peculiarity of english however , i do not see why anyone should call me " misandrist " ( or " mysandrist " ) . if it is because my name could easily be taken to be a woman 's name ( although i happen to be a man ) , that would really be too bad . if it is because of my acceptance of the common view that almost all or perhaps all societies are in some important sense male-dominated , then that too would be inaccurate . i also believe that for several centuries of us and brazilian and so on history white people held black slaves and not vice versa , but that does not mean i hate white people . the whole issue of the sense in which it is true that men have dominated human societies is certainly in some respects a subtle one , and one could certainly argue that this dominance has done us little if any good , but i do not see how one can deny that it is a fact . however , for the purposes at hand , this is not germane . what is relevant is ( a ) the linguistic fact that languages that make any kind of gender or sex distinction in pronouns or verb forms or anything else , as a rule use the male or masculine forms as unmarked forms for persons of either or unknown gender in some constructions ( which may differ from language to language in detail ) , and ( b ) the anthropological fact that all or nearly all human societies make social distinctions based on sex which go beyond reproduction , breast-feeding , and the like , and ( c ) the further anthropological fact that the male roles / activities are routinely perceived as somehow superior , dominant , better , normative , whatever ( regardless of whether they really are , which is a completely different issue ) . so what it all boils down to , again , is that i maintain that it makes no sense whatever to discuss the origin of the epicene he phenomenon in the context of the story of english prescriptive grammar , but only in the context of the way in which perceptions of sex roles have informed the structure of language ( as of any other institution ) . alexis manaster ramer
