Of course, among a close circle of friends, there’s always been this comfort which has ensured that I don’t really need to be politically correct and watch my mouth, especially because fun is made of oneself as much as it is made of the others, sans prejudice.
However, in a professional context or in formal social interactions, watching what I say has been a process that has improved with time to a point where I personally feel that I can be convinvingly pretend-suave for a reasonable amount of time.
So much so that I can now say, thanks to enough water having flown under the bridge (5+ years) that a girl I once dated gave me a couple of additional brownie points because of my gender related political correctness while trading incessant SMSes one evening.
Now, with an ever increasing number of exams, reports, assignments and such to turn in, references have to be made to the customer. Since one can’t keep saying “the customer” in every subsequent sentence, an appropriate pronoun has to be chosen.
I have never really thought about the gender of the pronoun to be used in this case until now, but I see myself increasingly gravitating towards saying “she”, “her” and so on.
Ideally, I should be saying “him/her”, “he/she” and so on, but while writing it out, it takes a long time to do so and it is quite a butt pain.
I figured that even if I mention the feminine pronoun and use it constantly, men will not take offence the way women would if I were to use the masculine pronoun.
This is another of those instances where one bends to the will of the female populace in general just to escape potential pain that can be caused in the event that feminists take up cudgels against you in the name of political correctness.
Its not that they’re wrong. I just feel that they’re be barking up the wrong tree insofar as asserting their rights are concerned.
As an aside, I have a strong belief that God is a woman. Men are relatively simple and uncomplicated and couldn’t have come up with something so complex and messed up, like this planet, for instance.
We men only think about food, music, books, movies, war, peace and sex. Some of the items on the list are thought of as a means of getting some others on that list. So there.
Time to hit the books to write a couple of reports now.
Embrace me now, Sweet Mother Death.
Dude, really. Wtf ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c
@Monkee – bheja are fried, basically.
@Varun – thanks. You’re helping lots.
Ah, the charged subject gendered pronouns. May I respectfully submit that perhaps you are simply approaching this the wrong way by falling into the all too common (and, frankly, tired) realm of arm-chair-men-are-from-mars-women-are-from-venus pseudo-sociology.
Perhaps it would be better to divorce the whole question from gender altogether and consider it instead from any number of other points of view.
The aesthetic, for instance. I doubt one could argue that “she” is the most attractive gendered pronoun on the page. Where as all the others are unbalanced on one end or the other, here we have an elegant, neoclassical symmetry: that stately H flanked by the undulating curves of the S and E. A thing of beauty to be sure. The feminine is a clear winner.
But wait—consider the ecological: the full set of feminine pronouns contains 20 letters (5 H’s, 6 E’s, 4 R’s 3 S’s, 1 L, and 1 F); the masculine comes in at a comparatively lean 18 (5 H’s, 4 I’s, 3 S’s, 2 M’s, 2 E’s, 1 L, and 1 F). In this warming world, it is no small thing to consider both the volume of paper this two-letter economy might save and the nutritional energy that is expended (and therefore consumed) in the typing. The masculine, it seems, noses ahead.
The point, I’d argue, is that as long as we use this argument merely as a jumping off point for jabs at the opposite sex, we miss the opportunity for true intellectual exploration the dilemma posits.
Of course, one could never expect a man to take enough time out of his rigorous television and flatulence schedule to give consideration any view more nuanced than the “silly misguided feminists” cliché.
Your anonymous commentor has some full on analysis
)
d00d, you write well, no doubt. just out of sheer curiosity, are you martian?
Men ARE from Mars, remember?
ah, yes of course.