Sexist language

One of the failings of the English language is that it doesn’t deal awfully well with what these days is called “gender neutrality”, but more properly could be called “sexual indifference”, except that that sounds like something else altogether.

This wiki frequently, mockingly, speaks of the attorney in the abstract. These days, an officer of the courts is marginally more likely to be a woman than a man, but the hypothetical lawyer, for whom we have such great affection and about whom we speak at such length, is neither one thing nor the other. This creates challenges when using pronouns.

Generally, we like pronouns. We don’t think lawyers use them often enough: they are more idiomatic and easier on the ear that the lawyer’s usual stand in “such [insert noun]”. But pronouns do commit one to a gender: “he”, or “she”, “him” or “her” — no-one likes to be referred to as “it”, and he or she is an abomination before all right-thinking men. Or women.

Now it is also true that the very point of satire is to poke the ribs of sacred cows, so perhaps I should be more phlegmatic — but pick your battles, and all that.