by Nirmaldasan

Blessed are the plural pronouns: for theirs is a kingdom beyond gender. The singular nouns, in the first and second persons, are also blessed: for they are free of the sexist and grammatical heresy 'the masculine includes the feminine'. But the singular pronouns in the third person, alas! have to dwell in the house of alternatives if they should escape the wrath of the feminists.

He/she, his/her and him/her are the gender alternatives for the third person singular pronoun in the subjective, possessive and objective cases respectively. The lack of a common pronoun form for both the genders in the singular has forced non-sexist writers to adopt or adapt these clumsy alternatives. Sexists, however, continue to swear by 'masculine includes the feminine' heresy. Some feminists in their writings counter this with a 'feminine includes the masculine' heresy. In the subjective case, 'she' does include 'he'. But this does not hold in the possessive and objective cases.

But why should English be sexist? Wouldn't common pronoun forms solve the problem? In 'Good English', G.H. Vallins points out that a correspondent of The Times (in the 1930s) had suggested hesh, hier and hiers; and another correspondent had come up with heshe, himmer and hisser to solve the gender crisis. But these common forms failed to pass into the language.
G.H. Vallins notes: "But the introduction of a synthetic formation into the living language is almost as rare an event as the collision of two stars in the universe; so hesh and hiers and hissers are likely to remain dead linguistic curiosities."

But English need not be sexist — even without the gender alternatives. 'A writer must mind his language'. 'A writer must mind her language'. 'A writer must mind his/her language'. Singular nouns beget singular pronouns. So the singular noun is the real culprit. Wherever possible, go for the plural noun. And plural nouns will beget plural pronouns. Writers must mind their language.

This article first appeared in the Journalism Online newsletter