"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."
Unless he's referring to a specific female it would be incorrect. It's very annoying whenever "she" is used as a general pronoun.
First world problems. He saves ink.
This 100% Reminds me of elevatorgate.
The solution is to be the first act of change. Write your own book with a proper gender neutral term, or write articles using it. Maybe it'll catch on and become mainstream one day.
You forgot the quotation marks around "proper".
You're right - I know what they're trying to say, and I was being unnecessarily facetious in the last post.............I just feel like the " 'he' is universal and 'mankind' includes 'womankind' " argument should have died off somewhere around 1978...........it's like calling a whale a 'fish' - OK, it has fins and swims in the ocean, but understandings have evolved!
False equivalency, biology is an objective science with true evolution whereas "progress" in language in wholly arbitrary. We've been using "he" as a universal for many centuries, I vote to keep.
^ Only about one century.
Using 'they' for one gender-neutral person has been used for about one millenia. See the link I posted earlier.
"One millenia" is a total nonsense. One would have to be followed by millennium, the singular form. In any case, it has not been used for anything like a thousand years (one millenium) and is grammatically wrong. "They" is plural. The common expression in this country is "pig ignorant".
I think best would be to promote the use of NEW gender-neutral pronouns, but that's a bit unrealistic given the results of such efforts in the past. Thus, using "they/their" seems the least bad to me. It does usually sound awkward to me in written form -- and often in spoken form too -- but this seems a small price to pay for the benefit of not reinforcing existing gender biases and contributing to children learning implicitly that HE is primary and SHE is secondary, which I find it difficult to believe does not happen to some extent when using HE to mean unknown or irrelevant gender is pervasive.
I've often used "one" to get around the issue, but it sounds overly stilted, and the message is often lost (or troll-responded-to online) if it sounds too "academic".
If anybody interested in the topic has not read Douglas Hofstadter's brilliant satire on the subject, I recommend A Person Paper on Purity in Language.
The solution is simple for books written about chess but it might make books come across dry and maddening and monotonous, which is perhaps why pronouns were probably constructed.
"It is White to move. What should White do?"
"Black is under a lot if pressure. Is there a way for Black to force a draw?"
Problem solved. Unfortunately, some knucklehead is going to probably play the race card, lol.
Perhaps publishers should give the option of a "he" book or a "she" book.
The "he" book would use the "he" pronoun and likewise for the "she" book.
This way the author doesn't have to give a grovelling PC disclaimer in the introduction.
The "he" books could have naked women in and the "she" books could give advice on makeup etc. That way everyone is happy !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_the_Khazars
The book comes in two different editions, one "Male" and one "Female", which differ in only a critical passage in a single paragraph.
not the same thing but...
In go, when writing about a game between two abstract opponents, one is generally referred to as "he" and one as "she". Different authors disagree on whether black is "he" and white is "she" or vice versa. (At least this is how it seems to work on translation into English. Pronouns work differently in Chinese and Japanese (not sure about Korean), and I don't know how they do it.)
In chess, people often use "he" even when referring to specific female players, perhaps because the habit is so strong.
So a bit of custodial work - separating out a few points for discussion:
(1) "Boats are 'she', chess players are 'he', so there are examples of linguistic misandry as well as misogyny!"
True but rather beside the point. I think we can agree that there aren't chromosomes, genitals, or personal gender identities in boats (except Moya in Farscape....she is definitely a she), and calling them all women might be a tad gender non-inclusive, but it doesn't implicitly exclude male boats because there AREN'T male boats to exclude. I think it's pretty easy to figure out that there's a significant difference between large floating hunks of raw material and human chess players........(but I'll call boats 'zir' if it makes you feel better)
(2) "Men get screwed over by divorce lawyers, so women can suffer through being screwed by chess books!"
Wow, holllllllllllllllllllllllllld on a sec; we just jumped a VERY high fence logic-wise. First, I think it is the obligation of every feminist worth her/his salt to advocate the rights of MEN as well as the rights of WOMEN - if we simply 'play the record backwards' and create a global matriarchy, we've 'solved' one problem by creating 88 million others (there's a pretty nasty book from the 70s called 'the scum manifesto' that basically says we should harvest sperm, exterminate men, and live in a lesbian paradise...........Alison Hart is not that kind of feminist). I absolutely agree that divorce mediators shouldn't blindly sign the kids over to the mother with every other weekend for Dad...it's simply NOT ok. Jamie is right that family law practices are changing, but certainly not fast enough. Law is actually something I've studied and worked in paraprofessionally, so I could even go into some technical details of what I think needs to change about that system, but that discussion is dissertation-length :)
The takeaway here is that minimizing sexisms of all stripes is the central mission of feminism, so I think we can give Dad more visiting time (or even custody) and make chess books sound like they were written in the twenty-first century at the same time..........but, again, I feel like this argument is off in another universe somewhere
(3) "Grammatically speaking, 'he' is correct for the 'general person'. It's in this grammar book right here!"
I'm going to start by giving a nod to r_k_ting for picking up the detail about that practice being implemented fully in the 19th century; like *many* things in Anglo/American society that we claim 'has been done for centuries', it was invented by stuffy Victorians (along with the idea that storks deliver babies). As I understand it, German still uses the term 'mann' to refer to humanity as a whole (certainly this was the case until recently, if not still), and I think that practice leaked into English language scholarship due to the fact that Weber, Marx, Nietzche, Habermas, and a bunch of other German speaking philosophers basically invented the new modes of thought in the 20th century.
Anyway, the history is important and interesting, but, in many ways, immaterial. As a native English speaker, I wasn't taught the technical rules of my own language, and English - being inherently gender neutral (the boy, the girl - el niño, la niña) - forces you to think consciously about the gender of objects when you speak. In Spanish, it's hard to be bothered by the fact that women's breasts (los pechos) are technically 'masculine' because so many other things in the world are feminine, but in English nothing is masculine or feminine at the level of language until we GIVE it a gender. As for 'they' being exclusively a plural, I can tell you that it isn't. "When someone wins the award they will stand in front of the assembly" sounds perfectly natural to me, and it would never occur to me to say "Wait a sec - 'they' is a plural....how many awards are we giving out?" It could be that English grammarians are fighting for the universal 'he', but English grammarians say there's a distinct difference between 'lay' and 'lie' - something basically ZERO native speakers pay attention to (we all 'lay' and 'lie' on the beach....depending on our mood). What I'm saying is that 'he' might be technically correct according to an English grammar book, but in terms of the language as it is spoken today, 'they' is used as a gender neutral singular, and 'he' is considered to implicitly exclude women. Chess books are anomalous among English language publishing in using the word 'he' to refer to all people after the year 1980.....it's simply not the way we write anymore.
(4) "Why don't you write chess books that solve the problem?"
Maybe I will someday........right now (and you can look at my games for evidence of this), I don't think I have much to teach anyone, and the fact that I didn't start really hitting the books until my 20s means that, realistically, I will never get above ~2100 FIDE even if I pour the rest of my life into the game....the GM ship pretty much sails if you aren't tournament-competitive by the age of 12 (Yasser Seirawan continually refers to himself as a late bloomer because he started competing at 12). Still, the sentiment is absolutely right - be the change!
(5) "It's very annoying whenever "she" is used as a general pronoun"
^^ I rest my case ^^ do you see my case resting! It's right there!!!! THAT'S THE THING I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!! It would 'annoy' male players if suddenly the feminine pronoun slipped into general usage......the claim is that it's 'tradition' to use 'he' (the same claim that kept women from voting *ahem*), but it's also tradition to change with the times, admit when a tradition is wrong, and move forward with things.
To those who say this is a small thing, I agree - it IS small - it's TINY...it's so tiny that it would be extremely easy to change, and the only reason NOT to change it is to make a thesis statement, "Sexism isn't really that bad, and it isn't sexist to say 'he' when you mean 'they'...are you on your period?" and it's particularly stupid to refuse to change something simple just to prove a point.
I hope you don't mind a bit of friendly leg pulling Alison, but shouldn't you on principle be Alidaughter ?
But seriously...Shouldn't Women Grand Masters be called Grand Mistresses ?
'Grandmistress' sounds awesome..........also very kinky...........but awesome.
'Grandmistress' sounds awesome..........also very kinky...........but awesome.
You're my kind of woman 
So a bit of custodial work - separating out a few points for discussion:
(1) "Boats are 'she', chess players are 'he', so there are examples of linguistic misandry as well as misogyny!"
True but rather beside the point. I think we can agree that there aren't chromosomes, genitals, or personal gender identities in boats (except Moya in Farscape....she is definitely a she), and calling them all women might be a tad gender non-inclusive, but it doesn't implicitly exclude male boats because there AREN'T male boats to exclude. I think it's pretty easy to figure out that there's a significant difference between large floating hunks of raw material and human chess players........(but I'll call boats 'zir' if it makes you feel better)
(2) "Men get screwed over by divorce lawyers, so women can suffer through being screwed by chess books!"
Wow, holllllllllllllllllllllllllld on a sec; we just jumped a VERY high fence logic-wise. First, I think it is the obligation of every feminist worth her/his salt to advocate the rights of MEN as well as the rights of WOMEN - if we simply 'play the record backwards' and create a global matriarchy, we've 'solved' one problem by creating 88 million others (there's a pretty nasty book from the 70s called 'the scum manifesto' that basically says we should harvest sperm, exterminate men, and live in a lesbian paradise...........Alison Hart is not that kind of feminist). I absolutely agree that divorce mediators shouldn't blindly sign the kids over to the mother with every other weekend for Dad...it's simply NOT ok. Jamie is right that family law practices are changing, but certainly not fast enough. Law is actually something I've studied and worked in paraprofessionally, so I could even go into some technical details of what I think needs to change about that system, but that discussion is dissertation-length :)
The takeaway here is that minimizing sexisms of all stripes is the central mission of feminism, so I think we can give Dad more visiting time (or even custody) and make chess books sound like they were written in the twenty-first century at the same time..........but, again, I feel like this argument is off in another universe somewhere
(3) "Grammatically speaking, 'he' is correct for the 'general person'. It's in this grammar book right here!"
I'm going to start by giving a nod to r_k_ting for picking up the detail about that practice being implemented fully in the 19th century; like *many* things in Anglo/American society that we claim 'has been done for centuries', it was invented by stuffy Victorians (along with the idea that storks deliver babies). As I understand it, German still uses the term 'mann' to refer to humanity as a whole (certainly this was the case until recently, if not still), and I think that practice leaked into English language scholarship due to the fact that Weber, Marx, Nietzche, Habermas, and a bunch of other German speaking philosophers basically invented the new modes of thought in the 20th century.
Anyway, the history is important and interesting, but, in many ways, immaterial. As a native English speaker, I wasn't taught the technical rules of my own language, and English - being inherently gender neutral (the boy, the girl - el niño, la niña) - forces you to think consciously about the gender of objects when you speak. In Spanish, it's hard to be bothered by the fact that women's breasts (los pechos) are technically 'masculine' because so many other things in the world are feminine, but in English nothing is masculine or feminine at the level of language until we GIVE it a gender. As for 'they' being exclusively a plural, I can tell you that it isn't. "When someone wins the award they will stand in front of the assembly" sounds perfectly natural to me, and it would never occur to me to say "Wait a sec - 'they' is a plural....how many awards are we giving out?" It could be that English grammarians are fighting for the universal 'he', but English grammarians say there's a distinct difference between 'lay' and 'lie' - something basically ZERO native speakers pay attention to (we all 'lay' and 'lie' on the beach....depending on our mood). What I'm saying is that 'he' might be technically correct according to an English grammar book, but in terms of the language as it is spoken today, 'they' is used as a gender neutral singular, and 'he' is considered to implicitly exclude women. Chess books are anomalous among English language publishing in using the word 'he' to refer to all people after the year 1980.....it's simply not the way we write anymore.
(4) "Why don't you write chess books that solve the problem?"
Maybe I will someday........right now (and you can look at my games for evidence of this), I don't think I have much to teach anyone, and the fact that I didn't start really hitting the books until my 20s means that, realistically, I will never get above ~2100 FIDE even if I pour the rest of my life into the game....the GM ship pretty much sails if you aren't tournament-competitive by the age of 12 (Yasser Seirawan continually refers to himself as a late bloomer because he started competing at 12). Still, the sentiment is absolutely right - be the change!
(5) "It's very annoying whenever "she" is used as a general pronoun"
^^ I rest my case ^^ do you see my case resting! It's right there!!!! THAT'S THE THING I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!! It would 'annoy' male players if suddenly the feminine pronoun slipped into general usage......the claim is that it's 'tradition' to use 'he' (the same claim that kept women from voting *ahem*), but it's also tradition to change with the times, admit when a tradition is wrong, and move forward with things.
To those who say this is a small thing, I agree - it IS small - it's TINY...it's so tiny that it would be extremely easy to change, and the only reason NOT to change it is to make a thesis statement, "Sexism isn't really that bad, and it isn't sexist to say 'he' when you mean 'they'...are you on your period?" and it's particularly stupid to refuse to change something simple just to prove a point.
"German still uses the term 'mann' to refer to humanity as a whole". No, it doesn't. It uses "man" (only one letter "n") in the same way as English uses "one," eg "one" usually uses a knife and fork to eat.
The accepted way is to use the correct gender when there is a gender and the gender is know. When this is not one should alternate but be consistent (e.g. use he for one game, she for the next, etc). When I annotate my games I try to just use "white" and "black" as it both gender neutral and descriptive.
It may be a "first world problem" but it is an easy one to solve. And unlike say peace in the middle east, it is something those of us that talk about chess on here can easily have an influence on.
"It is quite easy to avoid the use of pronouns when writing if you really want to, for example "white or black keeps the advantage""
Yes but what if you are talking about what white (in the general sense) should play, for example, "white should play here, because his (her) bishop would become really active." That sort of situation could happen if you were analyzing opening theory for example. To always avoid that kind of statement would probably affect the clarity quite a bit.
When I was a child at junior school, we were taught in English classes that, where the gender of the subject was not determined, the male "he, him or his" was correct. Isn't it typical of today's politically correct attitudes to complain about this age old linguistic device?
Oh please. When I was in school, we used a Latin textbook from the 50s, with a number of sexist scenarios, such as a master being pleased with the allure of his female servant.
On the point of grammar, it sounds like you grew up in an era where you were rapped on the knuckles for splitting infinitives, which most grammarians nowadays recognise as a bogus rule. Similarly, a number of style guides no longer advocate for a generic 'he'.
"To boldly go where no man (not woman) has gone before." You're right - split infinitives have always been a no-no for me! But seriously, is it not easier and quicker to default to "he" rather than "he or she" and all the rest?