Using the male pronoun by default is simply common practice in English, dating back at least hundreds of years. I wouldn't read into it.
This leads to a toxic atmosphere where people can't be secure in their words, social reality keeps being pulled out from under their feet.
The insecurity you observe is feeling of the erosion of privilege.
It's aggrevating, but it's a battle that may already have been lost.
Another point - educated white males are not your enemy. If you're looking for racists, sexists, etc - you need not seek them out by reading between the lines of comments here. There are people proudly spewing garbage you can speak out against (on their own forums and blogs). Why fight against your allies in this?
If you're searching for offence, you WILL BE offended, even if no offence was meant by the original poster and by doing this you're actually marginalising the real problems marginalised groups face.
What they are saying is that switching from "he" to "they" is simple and easy, and will make life better for many people. It's correct English, and has been in use since the 16th century, albeit with some push from prescriptivists.
You're right that in the face of things like rape statistics (women are far more likely to be raped by men) or domestic violence (women are far more likely to be killed by male partners) worrying about "he" vs "they" is a small thing.
I get that and if I remember to use it, I will, but when I instinctively do not use it, because well, "he" still comes more naturally to me than "they", it should not be assumed that I am sexist, bigoted etc. because I made a particular choice of words that can be reasonably interpreted as not meant to explicitly exclude people, unless they're looking for it.
> will make life better for many people
It's true that it may make them feel better, if they're looking at every use of a gendered pronoun from a "it's sexist" perspective, but I'd argue that's unproductive and not really making their life any better in a meaningful way
> It's correct English
That's good, but that doesn't mean that it's "intuitive" English for everyone and they shouldn't feel bad for it.
- rape has largely been defined so that it is physically close to impossible for a woman to rape a man.
- The official numbers for IPV are very close and there is a strong reason to believe that female on male IPV is dramatically underreported (female on female IPV apparently has levels similar to male on female). The only statistic I could find for murder was murder-suicide.
Having grown up in a society where sexism/racism/casteism is extremely blatant (in urban India), I sometimes find it hard to comprehend the utility of labelling people harshly for what might be innocuous comments. I almost feel those energies must be spent in condemning the "real" racists/sexists, many of whom are still allowed to scream whatever offensive nonsense they please (I have seen many growing up). How do people feel genuine outrage over harmless comments? Are we allowed to ever call out on hypersensitivity?
Also, as a vegan, sometimes I do feel genuinely sad when I see lots of meat being eaten and relished. I feel like giving my friends an explanation or at least attempt to convince them to cut down on the meat-eating but I also realize it can be highly offensive and have never voiced my opinion.
http://tomwoods.com/podcast/ep-726-how-and-why-progressives-...
So... maybe not the best analogy, but understood.
Cry bully trolling and aimless power tripping under the banner of 'social justice' does not provide you any magic cover. I think most people can see thorough it this point and realize your only contribution is harassment and its destructive to communities like this one.
Maybe it's my age or culture (24, brought up in regional Australia then moved to the city), but I actually find it really disjointing when people use gendered pronounce when talking generics, regardless of whether it's 'he' or 'she'.
My default, myself and everyone I interactive with just default to gender neutral pronouns - not out of any sense of 'political correctness', but it just makes for easier conversation.
"they gives me the shivers"
Grammatically, the "they" is clearly plural, as it is used with the plural verb form "give" and not the singular "gives".
Look up "subject verb agreement".
It reminds me of the time I recommended (to the Unix team at a major financial institution) that they use ssh rather than telnet, and being rebuffed with "that's the way we've always done it".
In this case, since you want to be specific, the practice of defaulting to "he" correlates with hundreds of years of treating women as chattels, with economic consequences and imbalances that persist today, and continue to be reinforced through structural, unconscious, and explicit biases, and that we'd all be better off without.
The notion that language should reflect thought is as old as Plato.
Er, no. It just means it is the unmarked/unremarkable case corresponding to males being generally worth less and discardable ("save the women"...).
It is also a quirk of some of our languages that the gender-neutral pronouns are considered derogatory when applied to people. German and English have this problem ("it", "es"), whereas French "on" seems to be okay.
So the language requires gendering when no gender is semantically intended. In German, every noun is gendered. So "person" is "she", whereas "human" is "he", "Civilisation" and "Society" are both "she", "state" is "he". "Lampshade" is "he" whereas "Lamp" is she, etc. You can try to read deep meaning into these quirks, or you can just not.
TL;DR: Not only are you reading way to much into linguistic quirks, your analysis is also at best shaky.
I also find it weird that German and Spanish inject gender into every noun, although I do get that there's little meaning behind it (from the little quizzing I've given speakers of each)
Yes, language evolves. Currently, this is almost certainly grammatically incorrect, "they" being the third person plural and (not shown here, but assumed) the speaker being singular.
"They" is being pressed into service as the non-derogatory, gender-neutral third person singular that's missing in english. So "they" has started to mean both third person plural and unspecified third person singular. The previous solution was that "he" meant both "male" and "unspecified". So previously women got their own pronoun, men didn't, now we have a harder time telling whether there's a single person or a group.
Both solutions have their quirks, both work at some level.
"As long as they give a good talk" - you're not talking about one specific person but in fact a general population of speakers.
The pronoun refers to "speaker", singular, yet indefinite, we don't necessarily know who it is.
Let's substitute "they: "problems a speaker at a conference might have, as long as they give a good talk/presentation."
Yep, works for me, but I think the "they" definitely talks about about that single (if indefinite) speaker. Yet we use the plural of the verb ("give"), so the sentence is confused, grammatically. I wonder what will give as this evolves, whether "they gives" becomes acceptable or we simple leave "they" grammatically plural even when it is semantically singular.
Language. Fun times!
"They" has been grammatically correct for single person of unspecified gender for hundreds of years. Do a little research before saying ignorant things.
I think that's what I wrote.