If this contention is correct (and no poster has offered any evidence to the contrary), then usage manuals and dictionaries that argue in favour of singular-they by saying “it’s been used continuously for centuries” are making a statement that is misleading at best. Future generations of apologists for “they” will have to construct alternative justifications, and will owe Mr Liberman a debt for that.

Have you looked at Hofstadher’s “Person-paper” I linked above?

His counterfactual includes Armstrong’s statement: ‘”One small step for a white, a giant step for whitekind.” This noble sentiment is anything but racist; it is simply a celebration of a glorious moment in the history of White.’

“…There is great beauty to a phrase such as “All whites are created equal.” Our forebosses who framed the Declaration of Independence well understood the poetry of our language. Think how ugly it would be to say “All persons are created equal,” or “All whites and blacks are created equal.” Besides, as any schoolwhitey can tell you, such phrases are redundant. In most contexts, it is self-evident when “white” is being used in an inclusive sense, in which case it subsumes members of the darker race just as much as fairskins.

There is nothing denigrating to black people in being subsumed under the rubric “white”-no more than under the rubric “person.” After all, white is a mixture of all the colors of the rainbow, including black. Used inclusively, the word “white” has no connotations whatsoever of race. Yet many people are hung up on this point. “

Dr. BB says:

“The decision that disagreement in gender is less problematic than disagreement in number is entirely arbitrary.”

This does not appear to me to be true. When I begin a sentence with “The tenant” there is at least a fifty percent chance that the tenant in question is male, whereas there is never a possibility that an individual tenant in a group.

Contrary to Ophelia Benson, when Isaiah Berlin et al. used “Man” to refer to the collective human race it was not “the fashion”; it was the English language and still is. Consider the following:

“Oh what a piece of work is man!” (Hamlet–note the ironic coda to the famous speech: Man delights not me–no, nor Woman either: Hamlet meant Man in its universal, R&G in its specifically masculine sense. If we rob the language of the universal “Man” we rob Shakespeare of one of his best double-entendres.)

“Of Man’s first disobedience…” (Paradise Lost–considerably ironic here as the disobedience in question was 50% the work of Eve.)

“…and justify the ways of God to man” (Pope, Essay on Man)

“Thou madest Life in Man and Brute” (Tennyson, In Memoriam)

“Poet and sculptor, do the work
Nor let the modish painter shirk
What his great forefathers did,
Bring the soul of man to God,
Make him fill the cradles right” (Yeats)

One could go on. The point is that in addition to referring to a male individual, the word Man also refers to any member of the human race, and also to the race collectively; so do the masculine pronouns–in other words they refer not only to “vir” but also to “homo”. This has never even been questioned; read Hannah Arendt and there too one will find it on virtually every page.

I understand completely that this is distasteful to numbers of women. There are various elegant solutions to it; one can avoid singular abstract antecedents altogether (say “tenents who…”, for example).

I personally am quite sympathetic with attempts to vary the use of the abstract he with the abstract she, especially in anecdotes which conjure a particular if unnamed individual who could very well be a woman. However there is a danger with the anglo-saxonists usage of she: it could sound as if she is saying that the idea applies only to women. The reverse is not true of the masculine pronoun.

Finally, I wonder whether the advocates of gender-neutrality realize the degree to which they run the risk of weakening (I had almost said “neutering” our language. “Person of the Year” is insipid and offensive to anyone with taste. A civilized society will recognize the contributions of great women as often as those of great men; and if Toni Morrison, for example, should win the prize, it will be, for that year, Woman of the Year. But person is pallid. And there are things we cannot say without Man. Pope’s Essay on Man which I quoted from before cannot become “Essay on Humanity” without strain. And consider Armstrong’s “One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.” Take the titles of two books by Jung: “Modern Man in Search of A Soul” and “Man and His Symbols”. Try translating those without fatal weakening. “The Modern Person in Search of a Soul”? “The Person and Their Symbols”?

Every roomful of freshman composition students I’ve ever taught will always vote “more than one.”

For example: “Someone is arguing(!) about the use of they!”

Please do not take such a prescriptive view, and please do not claim generic “they” was somehow forced upon the English language as part of an anti-sexism movement — my 85-year-old great-grandmother from West Texas uses it, and so do I. And school didn’t teach either of us this usage.

I have always hated the use of ‘they’ to refer to a single subject. Not that I particularly enjoy having to write ‘his or her’ over and over in a paper, but ‘they’ just sounds wrong!

I have to say, however, that, lately, I have noticed much more of the use of ’she’ to refer to a single subject, regardless of any actual actual knowledge of the subject’s gender. A bit of linguistic affirmative action (i know, a very crude analogy) perhaps, but at least it’s arithmetically correct. What do you think of this newer trend?