You (stressed /jü/; unstressed [jə]) is the second-person personal pronoun in Modern English. Ye was the original nominative form; the oblique/objective form is you (functioning originally as both accusative and dative), and the possessive is your or yours.

The form used in the fourth edition of D&D is the accusative.

Well, in many gamers' minds just mentioning DnD will have you accused of a great many things, and possibly strung up. Oh, no. Now I just did it myself. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

But seriously.

The first time I noticed this was in 3rd ed of just that game.

I put it down to overdone PCness, related to what happened in many video games at the time: being dead scared of having accusations of sexism thrown at them the developers went too far the other way and made female character hard as coffin nails compared to their male counterparts.

We notice "she" more because male as default is...well, default. I know I do it, even though you would think I would assume myself, eg female, but no. I don't think using female pronouns is overly PC. If they felt like they had to write, "by the way, GIRLS can do this too! You know those GIRL SHADOWRUNNERS?" OK, that would be. But honestly, as a player it's nice to have a game which tacitly acknowledges your existence. I know this is going to be shot down by people saying there aren't enough women RPGers for it to be important, but too bad, it's true. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I didn't say I agreed in the, rather warped, logic, I said it was a trend I particularly noticed at the time. Then again: in the case of video games, these were mostly Japanese and it could be just the deep seated desire for japanese geeks to be beaten up by a girl... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

When that's said, I agree 100% that you notice the "she" more because "he" has a long tradition of being considdered the default.

Yet another blow against the man-o-centric maleocracy! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

(Bonus (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) if you name the reference. I'll send your GM a voucher!)

Traditional Inclusive Generic Pronoun

This is a well formed argument to combat the idiotic use of using “he/she� found in a book by Peter Kreeft.


After I had read this little argument/statement I realized how stupid I was to try and use both or either one, so now I always use "he" and should a debate occur I bring this argument up and leave it at that. Understand it wasn't until the 1990s that we started substituting proper grammar for political correctness. We have chosen someone's feelings over a proper education; the irony is in order to salvage the feelings of one group we have crushed the feelings of another. Extremist never seem to realize that.

I think it's a little harsh to label the substitution of "she" for "he" as a generic as "angry, politically-intrusive [or] in-your-face." If "he" is grammatically acceptable, why *not* "she?" Just because we've never done it that way. Oh yes, of course. How terrible for a language to evolve to reflect social norms.

I mean, yes, if someone's insisting that you use "she" exclusively, then that's a little grammar-fascist. But so is insisting on "he," really...they're both equally non-neutral.

Darn PC movement.

I think we can guess at the demographics of Shadowrunners by looking at the modern day demographics of criminals and mercenaries. I don't have the numbers, but I would be very surprised if both weren't at least 75% male.

In short, most pronouns should be male, because most 'runners are.

That said, if there were a text referencing a career whose demographic is largely female, then certainly, the pronouns should be too.

Edit: It looks like this thread was a lot less politicized than I first thought. Sorry 'bout that. I am stepping off my soapbox now, no sudden movements...

Yes, but the point isn't to give teh w1n to the majority, it's to be as grammatically gender-neutral as possible.

Of course, anyone who thinks this is the front line in the battle for gender equality has a distorted sense of proportion. I think it's just that some people would really like a gender-neutral pronoun appropriate for use on humans. (and no animal testing.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/twirl.gif) )

The people in the 90s that were "angry, politically-intrusive [or] in-your-face" women. They were the ones that complained if a man opened the door for a woman, commented on how nice she looked, offered to lift something that "appeared" to be heavy, etc. The "angry" women were the ones who pushed for the political correctness and dumped education.



I'll quote the first and last sentence of his statement to show you partially why we use the pronoun "he" instead of "she."

"The use of the traditional inclusive generic pronoun "he" is a decision of language, not of gender justice."

and

"I believe in the equal intelligence and value of women, but no in the intelligence or value of "political correctness," linguistic ugliness, grammatical inaccuracy, conceptual confusion, or dehumanizing pronouns."


The word "man" is general neutral depending on the context it is used in; such as man-kind, humanity.

Honestly if you want to argue the topic I would seriously consider sending him an email for he could help you more than I, and I am willing to bet he would respond. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

You are correct. This is actually a battle over the proper use of grammer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/notworthy.gif)

I thought this was going to be about hijacking a delivery to a shoe store.

Ambassador Moivin, you killed my lawyer.

The fact that most women aren't dorn with penises (though some are) is a matter of gender justice demonstrating that evolution is highly mano-centric and should be phased out in favor of a program of eugenics directed towards breeding a physically gender-neutral species. Pronouns are just a symptom of this evolutionary bias.

Traditionally, and not just in english, but most european languages, the masculine pronoun has been the default for uses of indeterminate, or mixed genders (By which I mean, in the plural, a group of 100 people, even 99 female and 1 male, takes a masculine pronoun), though, that case doesn't arise in english and german, which only have one plural third-person pronoun.

The thinly veiled misogyny of this thread is starting to grate. What kind of person cares if a rulebook uses the word "he" or "she" to describe the actions of a sample character?

Actually this is one of the more interesting of the vaguely shadowrun conversations. I really have no problem one way or another, though I did notice that there were alot of female hackers due to pronouns. Didn't bother me, but I did take notice.

The use of her and she in SR books pales in comparison to White Wolf products. They've been doing it for years.

As to why they do it, here is a WW livejournal question regarding this topic:



Writer response:



Source: http://community.livejournal.com/whitewolf_lj/

In cases where generic pronouns make things confusing, it is most correct to use proper nouns.

And just more interesting to help visualize it. the too pc 'him/her' 'she'/he' is just grating to look at. So what if half the pronouns are female? We make up half the population of the world and IF it causes some male to feel put on because his gender does not dominate the text, then you know how women have felt for centuries.

I usually do not mind this stuff but if someone is so bend to feel threatened by the number of pronouns because it 'feels' like it is leaning in a certain way, and he was not put out when it favored men, it is just wrong.

I don't think it's so much misogyny as knee-jerk against political correctness. We all remember how annoying it was in the 90's where everyone had to self-censor or risk crucifixion. But when someone voluntarily, for its own sake, without threat or coercion, decides to be politically correct, what cause does anyone have to complain? I could understand the frustration if people were attacking the devs for not using "she," but here they felt like using it. It doesn't hurt anyone or anything. To me, the main thrust of this thread sounds like Christians complaining about "Happy Holidays." Gawd forbid we include everyone. Gawd forbid we slightly alter our prose just to be nice.

Now, I also agree with what WhiteWolf quoted. It should be about grammar, not politics. But I feel that the thread isn't about much more than hostility based on society's basic attempt to be a little more inclusive and friendly. Though I will note that the author leaves out a viable alternative - just use "she" instead of "he." Using "he" is an arbitrary rule of grammar. It can be arbitrarily changed. It's one extra letter, but no more cumbersome or misleading or wrong than "he." I think that people who study language get sucked into grammar as an end in and of itself -- it isn't. Grammar is a means to the end of expressing oneself clearly. There is no value in adhering to rules just because they're rules. Sticking with what's worked in the past is fine, but it's not set in stone. /ramble

Ah, glad to hear you say that. I hear cryptographers have some pretty good, gender-balanced conventions in that regard.

Dibs on Eve.

I am a big fan of the use of singular they (Wikipedia link).

Such usage is not improper English, and has been used by (among others) Shakespeare, Jane Austin, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, and the King James Bible.

The incorrect belief that it is bad grammar stems from a number of self-appointed grammarians who decided about a century ago that English (a Germanic language) should follow some rules they chose from Latin/Romance languages.

I would wish to point out that the use of he or she is has gone beyond an issue of grammar and is now a question of stylistics.

I was looking through the Chicago manual of style and the MLA handbook with recomendations from the APA on use of gender. I even looked at a bit of history of gendered nouns in Old English. Unfortunately this is a matter which has no easy answer and is an oft common conversation topic over a coffee among my colleagues.

I deliberately vary it, using she in some places, he in others. I keep it consistent within sections to avoid confusion. As the quote from White Wolf above shows, it can also be a useful way to streamline examples using two participants. I also use they as a singular pronoun when appropriate because this is accepted usage and only disputed by people who want to sound clever in correcting others.

I don't see this as a big issue. It's readable either way and it's nice to include everyone. Had I been living in a society that was only just working its way out of a matriarchal culture, rather than a patriarchal one, I would undoubtedly be one of the fierce proponents of using 'he' more often.

Is there anything more that needs to be said on this?

The use of the word "their" as a gender neutral possessive is in fact correct English. In many dialects. In some dialects it is incorrect.

More importantly, while I personally use the word their naturally in speech and writing, the folks at Catalyst do not. They use he or she. So when I worked for them, they wanted he or she in there, and I wanted theirs there, and it was something of a problem.

But no, the use of gendered pronouns is not consistent throughout the English speaking world, and there isn't a right answer. It's not especially a "Politically Correct" thing (that concept was coined by Reaganites anyway and is the origin of the term "pro-life" to be used instead of "anti-abortion"). It's a linguistic drift thing. There was a time in history where words like "he" and "man" were gender neutral in the English language, and now they pretty much aren't. Since we no longer conceive of a "woman" as "a man who has a womb," the use of the word "man" no longer feels gender neutral to many English speakers.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation they say "To boldly go where no one has gone before" and they say it this way because to many modern listeners it sounds better than to say "no man." Languages change over time, you should probably learn to deal with that fact before it drives you mad.

---

Now in the specific case of what gender neutral pronouns should be used, the English speaking world has not reached consensus. In my personal Californian Dialect the answer is "they/their" for "him/his." But in other linguistic groups it is not. Personally I hope for the ascendancy of the They/Their position because it would be easier for me personally, but there are lots of other possibilities. Some traditionalists still stubbornly hold onto using him/his but honestly I can virtually guaranty you that in the future that is going to look even stranger than it already does.

-Frank