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-rw-r--r--article/chinese-pronouns.html30
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2 files changed, 96 insertions, 11 deletions
diff --git a/article/chinese-pronouns.html b/article/chinese-pronouns.html
index 3a73148..ecbd087 100644
--- a/article/chinese-pronouns.html
+++ b/article/chinese-pronouns.html
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
 		<p>Article ID: 23</p>
 <p>tl;dr: ``他'' uses the ``人'' (person) radical, and should cover all
 people, because not all people are male.</p>
-<p>In contemporary English, the traditional plaural pronoun ``they'' is
+<p>In contemporary English, the traditional plural pronoun ``they'' is
 often used as a gender-inclusive singular pronoun, alongside the
 feminine singular ``she'' and the masculine singular ``he''. However, there
 is no equivalent in Chinese. ``他'' is considered a masculine pronouns in
@@ -22,9 +22,9 @@ pronoun.</p>
 <p>Prior to the May Fourth Movement and the broader New Culture
 Movement, ``他'' was a generic pronoun for all entities, including people
 of any gender, and inanimate objects. In the movements’ efforts to
-``modernize'' the Chinese language and culture, a seperate feminine
+``modernize'' the Chinese language and culture, a separate feminine
 pronoun ``她'' was created by the poet and linguist 刘半农, becoming an
-established linguistic norm after the Chinese Civil War. (A seperate
+established linguistic norm after the Chinese Civil War. (A separate
 ``它'' was created for inanimate objects; however this has little
 relevance to the arguments in this article.)</p>
 <p>A distinct feminine pronoun ``她'' along with ``他'' being a masculine
@@ -35,8 +35,8 @@ marginalization of the feminine from the concept of personhood.</p>
 <p>When referring to a placeholder of unknown gender in contemporary
 English, singular they pronouns are often used, such as in ``someone left
 their laptop here''. Such colloquial conversations are generally
-aproblematic as all normative third-person pronouns in Mandarin sound
-the same: tā. However, in written contexts, many use ``他/她'' ressembling
+unproblematic as all normative third-person pronouns in Mandarin sound
+the same: tā. However, in written contexts, many use ``他/她'' resembling
 ``he/she''. Aside from how this reinforces gender binary and alienates
 women (see the next two paragraphs), it is visually unappealing (as
 half-width slashes look particularly distinct from full-width CJK
@@ -50,12 +50,12 @@ this article into a detailed discussion of non-binary gender, please
 read Leah Rowe’s article ``<a
 href="https://vimuser.org/pronouns.html">Better respect for non-binary
 people, in defense of human rights</a>'' if this concept seems
-unfamiliar.) The status quo of ``她'' being solely a femine pronoun and
+unfamiliar.) The status quo of ``她'' being solely a feminine pronoun and
 ``他'' being solely a masculine pronoun reinforces gender binary and
 leaves no gender-neutral/inclusive pronoun for non-binary people who
 would prefer such pronouns.</p>
 <p>The more fundamental issue with ``他'' as a masculine pronoun lies in
-its characater composition and etymology. ``他'' is a compound character
+its character composition and etymology. ``他'' is a compound character
 consisting of a ``人'' (person) radical and ``也'', while ``她'' consists of a
 ``女'' (female) radical and ``也''. Limiting ``他'' as a male pronoun assumes
 the male gender as dominant in ``people'', and marginalizes other genders,
@@ -65,10 +65,18 @@ subset of what used to be covered by ``他''. I believe that a character’s
 composition should not be deceptive to its meaning, and therefore, the
 ``他'' with the ``人'' radical should describe any person, not just any male
 person.</p>
-<p>Those who prefer a unique masculine pronoun may choose to use one
-with a ``男'' (male) radical instead. While ``男也'' has not been given a
-unicode code-point yet, I find this solution to be much more ideal than
-stereotypical generalizationis with ``他''.</p>
+<p>While I believe that ``他'' should be truly gender inclusive, its current
+masculine standing does make it similar to
+<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_languages_with_gendered_third-person_pronouns#Generic_he">Generic he</a>
+to some extent. I dislike generic he as it reflects bias towards men, but
+an inclusive ``他'' does carry these risks. Therefore I propose  that
+those who prefer a unique masculine pronoun may choose to use one
+with a ``男'' (male) radical instead. While ``男也'' (read that as one character) has not been given a
+Unicode code-point yet, I find this solution to be much more ideal than
+stereotypical generalizations with ``他''.</p>
+<p>
+Please give me some of your thoughts.
+</p>
 		<div id="footer">
 			<hr />
 			<p><a href="/">Runxi Yu's Website</a></p>
diff --git a/article/chinese-pronouns.html.bak b/article/chinese-pronouns.html.bak
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a73148
--- /dev/null
+++ b/article/chinese-pronouns.html.bak
@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+	<head>
+		<title>Reclaiming "他" as a gender-inclusive pronoun</title>
+		<link rel="stylesheet" href="/style.css" />
+		<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
+		<meta charset="utf-8" />
+	</head>
+	<body>
+		<h1>Reclaiming "他" as a gender-inclusive pronoun</h1>
+		<p>Article ID: 23</p>
+<p>tl;dr: ``他'' uses the ``人'' (person) radical, and should cover all
+people, because not all people are male.</p>
+<p>In contemporary English, the traditional plaural pronoun ``they'' is
+often used as a gender-inclusive singular pronoun, alongside the
+feminine singular ``she'' and the masculine singular ``he''. However, there
+is no equivalent in Chinese. ``他'' is considered a masculine pronouns in
+contemporary Chinese, despite its ``人'' radical and its history of
+traditionally being a gender-inclusive pronoun until the 1920s. This
+article argues for the reclaiming of ``他'' as a gender-inclusive
+pronoun.</p>
+<p>Prior to the May Fourth Movement and the broader New Culture
+Movement, ``他'' was a generic pronoun for all entities, including people
+of any gender, and inanimate objects. In the movements’ efforts to
+``modernize'' the Chinese language and culture, a seperate feminine
+pronoun ``她'' was created by the poet and linguist 刘半农, becoming an
+established linguistic norm after the Chinese Civil War. (A seperate
+``它'' was created for inanimate objects; however this has little
+relevance to the arguments in this article.)</p>
+<p>A distinct feminine pronoun ``她'' along with ``他'' being a masculine
+pronoun poses three problems: (1) the annoyances caused by the lack of a
+inclusive placeholder pronoun, (2) the reinforcement of gender binary
+normatives and the lack of a neutral pronoun, and (3) the
+marginalization of the feminine from the concept of personhood.</p>
+<p>When referring to a placeholder of unknown gender in contemporary
+English, singular they pronouns are often used, such as in ``someone left
+their laptop here''. Such colloquial conversations are generally
+aproblematic as all normative third-person pronouns in Mandarin sound
+the same: tā. However, in written contexts, many use ``他/她'' ressembling
+``he/she''. Aside from how this reinforces gender binary and alienates
+women (see the next two paragraphs), it is visually unappealing (as
+half-width slashes look particularly distinct from full-width CJK
+ideographs and break typographical uniformity) and adds unnecessary
+syntactic sugar.</p>
+<p>Individuals who are not comfortable with any gendered pronoun (such
+as me until <a
+href="https://git.andrewyu.org/andrew/www.git/commit/note/pronouns.html?id=ce4cd5fd7b3fd19d8effd3e18f5c71dadfc5874e">this
+commit</a>) often prefer singular they pronouns. (I do not wish to turn
+this article into a detailed discussion of non-binary gender, please
+read Leah Rowe’s article ``<a
+href="https://vimuser.org/pronouns.html">Better respect for non-binary
+people, in defense of human rights</a>'' if this concept seems
+unfamiliar.) The status quo of ``她'' being solely a femine pronoun and
+``他'' being solely a masculine pronoun reinforces gender binary and
+leaves no gender-neutral/inclusive pronoun for non-binary people who
+would prefer such pronouns.</p>
+<p>The more fundamental issue with ``他'' as a masculine pronoun lies in
+its characater composition and etymology. ``他'' is a compound character
+consisting of a ``人'' (person) radical and ``也'', while ``她'' consists of a
+``女'' (female) radical and ``也''. Limiting ``他'' as a male pronoun assumes
+the male gender as dominant in ``people'', and marginalizes other genders,
+most prominently the female gender, as groups distinct from ``people''.
+This aligns with the development of the ``她'' pronoun as a distinct
+subset of what used to be covered by ``他''. I believe that a character’s
+composition should not be deceptive to its meaning, and therefore, the
+``他'' with the ``人'' radical should describe any person, not just any male
+person.</p>
+<p>Those who prefer a unique masculine pronoun may choose to use one
+with a ``男'' (male) radical instead. While ``男也'' has not been given a
+unicode code-point yet, I find this solution to be much more ideal than
+stereotypical generalizationis with ``他''.</p>
+		<div id="footer">
+			<hr />
+			<p><a href="/">Runxi Yu's Website</a></p>
+		</div>
+	</body>
+</html>
er Kartik K. Agaram <vc@akkartik.com> 2015-05-14 16:04:45 -0700 1376 - update github docs' href='/akkartik/mu/commit/html/034exclusive_container.cc.html?h=hlt&id=65361948ca7975553757a0e0df4ac7352413044c'>65361948 ^
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