I hear you! I prefer the singular "they, them, their" - though it would give my English teachers heart attacks. I try to use the proper gender when I am sure of the gender of the person to whom I am speaking/writing.
I'm not really into zie, hir, and the like.
The answer is we all need to stop speaking English and pick a language that doesn't require a subject to make sense, like Japanese or Spanish.
264 games in your first 13 days? Impressive.
So what's your alternative?
So what's your alternative?
Seems trying too hard to be PC, but, for example, chapters alternating between male and female pronouns.
So what's your alternative?
Seems trying too hard to be PC, but, for example, chapters alternating between male and female pronouns.
lol...
Suppose we actually do that - then should the first chapter use male or female pronouns? What if there is an odd number of chapters?
Yes, Jamie - crazy communist pan-Euro language is DEFINITELY the answer!! :D
¡Estoy lista (mas o menos) a hablar español! - La idioma es tan hermosa a hablar, a oir, a pensar en...yo sé mi español no es perfecto pero me encantaría a tenga la oportunidad a hablar en lo mucho mas a menudo.
The alternative is pretty simple, Macer - just do what Jamie suggested and use "they, them, their".....you could also be very general and say "Black should not do X, White should respond with Y". OR why not just switch to 'she'? If we're OK with being mono gender for 100 years at a time, we'll let all chess players be girls until the year 2114 =P
"They" is grammatically incorrect and sounds awkward in written English.
Alison, there are many Spanish-speakers on the boards! My Spansih is very poor - I joke and call it Spanglish. You are correct, it is a beautiful language.
First world problems. He saves ink.
"He" tends to be used universally just in general. Well, it probably had patriarchical roots, to make a reasonable guess, but regardless of its origin, all it means is "he or she," really. The "he" is just referring to an example person, perhaps a male, but this example is of either a male or female, so it doesn't matter. "He" serves as a perfectly good example -- it doesn't fail to refer to the kind of example person that has all the essential characteristics needed (generally, just the fact that they are a person) for the purpose of the example.
"She" works perfectly well too, and some writers, both male and female, use that for their "example person." It's just not a gender statement -- it may seem like one, but words have alternative uses. "She" in some contexts can refer to a female; in others it can refer to a person whose gender you don't know.
"They" can be used as well, which I use sometimes, but just as "he" can seem awkward because you don't know the gender, "they" can seem awkward because it can seem like you're talking about more than one person. There is no easy solution.
There is a lot of genuine sexism out there -- it makes more sense to be concerned about that.
"They" is grammatically incorrect and sounds awkward in written English.
The "singular they" has always been part of the colloquial language, but it becoming more wisespead these days as a way of avoiding the pitfalls Alison describes.
Of course, some people will rebut that they are using the "generic he"!
First world problems. He saves ink.
Who saves ink? ;^)
First world problems. He saves ink.
Who saves ink? ;^)
Using "he" saves ink.
Anyway, OP, you can choose to assume that the use of "he" means people secretly don't want women playing chess... but it makes more sense to interpret the words the way people actually mean them, so that you can get their true message.
There ARE a ton of issues that are way more pressing for feminism as a whole than language patterns in chess - I wholeheartedly agree, and I would never bring up chess books as an eminent call to action for a women's lib organization. I've been involved in desperado condom distribution, I've shielded ladies at abortion clinics, I've stood in G-D knows how many pickett lines, I've read G-D knows how many books and articles, and I could tell you WAY more than you ever wanted to know about female genital cutting practices in north Africa - I am the lavendar menace!! .....but those things don't have much to do with chess. When I take off my feminist slogan t-shirt, put on my bunny slippers, and start working through deep tactical lines of the Nimzo Indian, I'm not trying to be political, I'm just trying to read a book, and it doesn't seem like very much effort for the author to throw a nod my way every once in a while.
First world problems. He saves ink.
Who saves ink? ;^)
Using "he" saves ink.
How does he save ink? Laser printer?
There ARE a ton of issues that are way more pressing for feminism as a whole than language patterns in chess - I wholeheartedly agree, and I would never bring up chess books as an eminent call to action for a women's lib organization. I've been involved in desperado condom distribution, I've shielded ladies at abortion clinics, I've stood in G-D knows how many pickett lines, I've read G-D knows how many books and articles, and I could tell you WAY more than you ever wanted to know about female genital cutting practices in north Africa - I am the lavendar menace!! .....but those things don't have much to do with chess. When I take off my feminist slogan t-shirt, put on my bunny slippers, and start working through deep tactical lines of the Nimzo Indian, I'm not trying to be political, I'm just trying to read a book, and it doesn't seem like very much effort for the author to throw a nod my way every once in a while.
OMG! What a lovely screenname that would be!
I started playing chess when I was five........after I saw the classic game Carpet v. Djinn in Disney's Aladdin, I begged my dad to teach me, got hooked, and the rest is history. I've always been proud to call myself a chess player, and, like most five-year-olds, I didn't think too deeply about what it meant to be a female one........in chess, a bishop in the hands of a six year old girl is of equal strength to a bishop in anyone else's – it was incredibly empowering!
Fastforward twenty-two years, and I've only just begun to study chess seriously, but I take real pleasure in watching both my library and my skill level grow little by little....it's a beautiful (if frustrating) experience. Still, one irksome detail continues to disturb me – the nearly ubiquitous use of MALE pronouns to refer to chess players in general.
Take John Watson's second volume of 'Mastering the Chess Openings' – over 300 pages of theory, and the words 'she, her, hers, and herself' do not seem to appear ONE SINGLE TIME while their male counterparts appear many hundreds if not thousands of times. This is not a book that came out in 1920 which might elicit an eyeroll and a free pass for 'a different time', it was first printed in 2007! I'm definitely not singling out poor Dr. Watson here, virtually every chess book I've ever bought, every chess lecture I've sat in on, every article I've read, and every video I've looked at on Chess.com does the same thing: “White to move, what should HE do?”
It could be said that no particular harm is done by the universal 'he' in chess – it's not like people are deliberately disrespecting Judit Polgar when they look at a hypothetical position and say “He should put his knight on c5”. But I think this view fails to consider the sheer totality of male pronoun usage in chess – even world class female players such as the Polgar sisters and Alexandra Kosteniuk use the universal he....you might say that English is a second language for them, but many time U.S. women's champion Irina Krush uses it too! This is not some random curiosity that has no known origin – this is a full blown, systemic decision throughout the global chess community that there is no need to bother updating patriarchal language in our game, and, when you consider the scale of this 'oversight', it's simply appalling.
I might be accused of trying to enforce arbitrary political correctness here, but I truly do not believe this to be the case – I learned to play chess before I learned to read........this game is IN me – it goes as deep into my past as it does for 'any Russian schoolboy' – and when I read “HE HIM HIS” in every chess book and hear “HE HIM HIS” in every chess lecture, I get the sense that I've been written out of the story along with every other female chess player when I couldn't tell you what kind of person I'd be if I'd never learned to play chess.
Pronouns matter - they matter because women play, women study, and women should not be assumed out of existence by the use of a universal 'he'.
----- A <3