He or She Is a Sexist

One of the products of the women’s movement has been the reduction in sexist language. Fewer men now refer to adult women as “girls”--or, worse, “gals”--but “waiter’s assistant” does not yet come trippingly off the tongue as a synonym for “busboy.”

Among the problems that have resisted solution is the lack of a sex-neutral singular pronoun referring to anyone or everyone. Saying “Anyone who drives without a seat belt takes his life in his hands” is likely to raise eyebrows if not hackles.

Some would have you say, “Anyone who drives without a seat belt takes his or her life in his or her hands.” Would anyone who prefers “Anyone who drives without a seat belt takes his or her life in his or her hands” please raise his or her hand?

Half a dozen other solutions have been offered over the years, including recasting the sentence by putting it in the pluperfect subjunctive, or some such. None of these alternatives are very smooth, and it seems a shame to lose a fine grammatical construction.

Some people have suggested using the plural pronoun in these circumstances, which a lot of people seem to do anyway. That would make it--grit your teeth--”Anyone who drives without a seat belt takes their life in their hands.”

The trouble is, if “anyone” takes a plural pronoun, logic says that it ought to take a plural verb: “Anyone who drives without a seat belt take their life in their hands.” How’s that again?

Mary-Claire Van Leunen surveyed the options in 1978 in “A Handbook for Scholars” (Knopf), and concluded that the best choice was for everyone to agree that masculine singular pronouns have two meanings. They stand for everybody as well as for men alone. “We feminists might adopt the position of pitying men for being forced to share their pronouns around,” she wrote.

But if you follow that advice you will be accused of being a sexist, and who wants to have to go around explaining it all the time?

“The problem remains unsolved,” William and Mary Morris conclude in the Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage. In other words, it’s like many other problems major and minor. Human ingenuity knows no bounds, but there are always unsolved problems.