Article ID: 23
-tl;dr: ``他'' uses the ``人'' (person) radical, and should cover all -people, because not all people are male.
-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.
-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.)
-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.
-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.
-Individuals who are not comfortable with any gendered pronoun (such -as me until this -commit) 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 ``Better respect for non-binary -people, in defense of human rights'' 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.
-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.
-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''.
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