He/She

So, I lied when I said that this blog would mostly be me asking myself questions and what-not. I'm going to rant a little.

Something that bugs me a lot is the new fad of trying to create sexual equality in grammar. Don't get me wrong. Equality is great. But not at the expense of bad writing or more inequality. What I'm referring to specifically is using he/she when the gender of the person you're writing about is unspecified. It used to be the rule that he was used in such cases. But now, people are abashed and aghast at the thought of doing this because it's unfair in some way and just supports the prejudices against women in this country. So we started trying to use she more. Mixing it up a little. Now, there are two things that end up happening when we try to "mix it up": 1) people end up using the he (or she), or he/she writing that is just tedious to read and distracts from what you're talking about, or 2) they end up using "she" all the time where "he" would have been used in different times, simply inverting the grammatical rule.

It's the last that I mainly have a problem with. When I'm reading something and the writer uses the "she", I find it distracting. But what annoys me more than that is that here you're trying to promote sexual equality, but what you're doing is firing the gun the other way. That is, now the sexism is aimed at men rather than women. It's a losing battle. You can't just take turns and switch between "he" and "she" either, because it would be way to confusing to read.

My solution to the problem? Make a new word if you care that much. There should be a new word made to encompass all genders in such a case where the gender is unspecified so that we don't have to worry about "he" or "she". We're using a generic word instead. And not "it", because that implies a particular gender as well, or at least eliminates male and female. You could use "glarbin" or "wa" or "ba". "A person can get a lot done if wa really cares enough to try." "Parents may not feel like feeding their child, especially if glarbin has been bad that day." "The natural instinct of a human is to take what ba wants." You get the general idea.