When I was a child it was common to be ticked off for using the word she
She is the cat’s mother. Use her proper name
This mystifies me still
But perhaps some atavistic objection to the pronoun partly explains why, before the 1970s wave of feminism, most people were happy that, linguistically speaking, the male embraced the female
The pronoun which I should like to see banned is they
Not in a simple everyday sense: “Where are the children?” “They are in the garden”
It is the they who are not us which upsets me. They who do things which people like us would not dream of doing. They who are they just because they look like, share a skin colour or a nationality with, someone who has done something we deplore
The they who have only one identity
Who perforce share all the qualities or characteristics which we assign to their community
She is the cat’s mother. Use her proper name
This mystifies me still
But perhaps some atavistic objection to the pronoun partly explains why, before the 1970s wave of feminism, most people were happy that, linguistically speaking, the male embraced the female
The pronoun which I should like to see banned is they
Not in a simple everyday sense: “Where are the children?” “They are in the garden”
It is the they who are not us which upsets me. They who do things which people like us would not dream of doing. They who are they just because they look like, share a skin colour or a nationality with, someone who has done something we deplore
The they who have only one identity
Who perforce share all the qualities or characteristics which we assign to their community
