Timeline for Gender neutral reflexive pronoun — equivalent to "himself" and "herself"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
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| Jul 24, 2011 at 21:16 | comment | added | Charles Goodwin | I have ticked the 'himself or herself' answer as this is a workaround. You may want to be talking about somebody specific where the gender is unknown. "The perpetrator let himself or herself in via the backdoor." This answer does not work in this situation. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 20:00 | comment | added | Daniel | @Neil: There is such a thing as strictness, though, and that was my point. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 19:56 | comment | added | Daniel | @Neil: I edited the strictness out of the answer. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 19:56 | history | edited | Daniel | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 21, 2011 at 19:34 | comment | added | karan.dodia | "[...]as there is no such thing in English as a singular gender neutral reflexive pronoun"... yet. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 19:16 | comment | added | Martin S. Stoller | +1 as the only logical alternative would be "itself" - and that probably won't fly in general usage :) | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 18:57 | comment | added | Neil Coffey | I disagree with the notion of there being such a thing as "strict" correctness-- it's just arbitrary opinion at the end of the day (practically no language has a 1-1 correspondence between its pronouns and the precise types/combinations of people they refer to-- you can probably invent spurious reasons for saying that any use of any pronoun is "incorrect" if you go down that road). But, I agree with your pragmatic solution to allay potential whingers. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 18:34 | history | edited | Daniel | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 21, 2011 at 18:29 | history | answered | Daniel | CC BY-SA 3.0 |