Sexist language

Towards more picturesque speech™ →Go uptown SEC guidance on plain EnglishIndex: Click ᐅ to expand: Plain English Drafting Metaphor Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

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. And nor is biological sex the only game in town — there was a time when we would scoff at misuse of the word “gender” to describe what was really “sex”. But it seems to the JC there is room in a robust conceptual scheme for both — “sex” is biological; “gender” psychological, for want of better words — and arguing the toss between them is, well, a little fruitless.

Generally, there is much to admire about pronouns. Lawyers don’t 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 tend to commit you to a gender: “he”, or “she”, “him” or “her” — seeing as no-one likes to be referred to as “it”, and “he or she” is an abomination before all right-thinking men. Or women. And, these days, they do not remotely capture the possible universe of gender alternatives. The JC does not propose to try. If this aggrieves you, feel free to find another site offering free, satirical observations on the law and practice of derivatives that better suits your preferences.

Now it is also true that the point of satire is to poke the ribs of sacred cows, and right now few are more sacred. Perhaps I should be more phlegmatic — but pick your battles, and all that. The JC has no desire to get into arguments with the warring factions in the gender wars. We have J.K. Rowling and her ingrate actor friends for that.