Transgendered word forms
From the CHI 2006 submission guidelines (PDF):
Be careful with the use of gender-specific pronouns (he, she) and other gender-specific words (chairman, manpower, man-months). Use inclusive language (e.g., she or he, they, chair, staff, staff-hours, person-years) that is gender-neutral. If necessary, you may be able to use “he” and “she” in alternating sentences, so that the two genders occur equally often.
Sigh. Not that I don’t believe in gender equality, but alternating genders across sentences is supremely stupid, unless your goal is to ruin otherwise perfectly good sentence and paragraph flow (and comprehensibility). You’d think an organization trying to improve human interaction would have better sense. Or maybe some people purposely want to disrupt readability so they can draw attention to themselves: “Hey, look at us, we aren’t sexist! Aren’t we great?”
I have a better idea: Okay, English doesn’t have neutered word forms, but we can make some up. Better yet, let’s make up some transgendered words.
- he/she: ’e
- him/her: herm (which could double as an abbreviation for “hermaphrodite”)
- his/hers: herms
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Greg Egan wrote a book called Diaspora in which the main characters were galactic entities and therefore genderless. He made up the pronouns ‘ve’ and ‘vim’ to refer to them. It was so annoying that I couldn’t even get through one chapter.
— Billy @ January 23, 2006, 5:26 pm (PT)
It’s possible that _Diaspora_ was just a really bad book.
This is unrelated, but you know what is delicious? Cheese!
— Karen @ February 23, 2006, 9:13 am (PT)
yeah, alternating is dumb. which is why i resisted. but if used consistently through a paper, then they could aid comprehension. so in an economic model, you often have different types of players. if you are consistent in assigning different types different genders, then it is a reasonable thing
— Ben @ September 18, 2009, 10:35 am (PT)