Has anyone else noticed the recent trend in certain circles to eliminate the male and female versions of certain words? I am not speaking of the elimination of some relatively arcane sex-specific terms, such as executrix for a female executor, or even more prosaic but relatively unused terms such as comedienne, but of everyday terminology such as actress.

I first noticed this on imdb.com chat boards where certain individuals would correct someone who referred to an individual who portrays others while lacking a Y chromosome as an "actress". These comments would always take the form of "She is a great ACTOR (not actress)". At the time I was puzzled. Was the commenter accusing Hollywood of harboring a massive influx of cross dressers? Or perhaps some bizarre transsexual employment program?

Since then, while perusing wikipedia descriptions of World War II era films, I noticed that Wikipedia too was convinced that the word "actor" had no feminine version. Either that or Raymond Massey had a son named Anna. Having discovered this, I checked the Wikipedia standards and find they ascribe to the abomination known as "gender-neutral English". This is the horrible usage which decided that "he" is not the gender neutral third person pronoun, and which refuses to recognize that some terms come in a masculine and feminine form, such as actor and actress.  I suppose taken to its logical extreme this theory would argue we should refer to spouse rather than husband and wife. It is a theory which I always thought was absurd, but seems to be gaining currency.

My question is why people insist on this absurdity. Recognizing that an individual is male or female in no way denigrates women or elevates men. To say Anna Massey is an actress is not to say she is in any way inferior to an actor, just that she is female. In fact, it seems that the gender-neutral version is more sexist, as it says "if we knew she was an actress we would value her less, so we must hide her sex from the listener."

Nor is it really an improvement. There is a very good reason that the dramatic arts is one of the areas where we have kept sex as a defining feature. When a director needs an actress, he needs a woman. Were we to convert to the neutral "actor", he would have to advertise for "female actor", where the word "actress" would convey the same information more economically. The same with ballerina. The sex of the individual is essential in many contexts. And though academics may think it very clever to cast a female Creon in Antigone (or perhaps even Antigonos?) or male Reagan and Goneril in Queen Lear, or make Miranda and Ferdinand both male in The Tempest, most of us are not quite as interested¹. So in many cases the feminine version is quite useful.

And finally, to replace the perfectly workable "he" with "they" is just absurd. Which is more confusing, to have a single word function as the singular for both male or unknown sex, or to have the same word for singular and plural? And even if they are equally confusing, which I deny, the sudden enforced change is so jarring and contrary to the assumptions of listeners, that the sudden injection of the third person plural more often confuses the listener than enlightens. To most listeners when I say "I have a new friend, they are visiting soon", the listener will wonder who, in addition to my friend, is visiting. And if there is a plural antecedent anywhere close, it confuses even more, making it unclear whether my friend or the other plural antecedent is intended.

English is hardly alone in using the masculine as the generic, almost every language with genders which lacks a neuter uses the masculine as the neutral. Why is this a cause for concern? It has a very ancient pedigree and implies nothing about "male superiority". It simply is. Accept it and move on, why all the fuss over trivialities?²

Now, I know not just Wikipedia is infested with this abomination, that many parts of academia insist that it is preferable to use "they" rather than "he" when referring to a single individual of unknown sex³, but I can't believe it. English may be an "evolving language", but that excuse ignores the fact that it doesn't "evolve" by decree, and pressure group politics is not evolution, it is more akin to Newspeak than to any previous evolution of the language.

I, for one, refuse to buy into this theory, and if anyone disagrees, please let HIM tell me why.

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1. To be honest, I was tempted to steal a line from Women and Wallace and say "...having a woman as Holden Caufield really made everything quite clear", but I really do dislike plagiarism, so I left that one off the list.

2. For those who say I too am arguing over trivialities, I would disagree. My argument is that changes should not be made without very good cause, which is a general and important argument, while the other side is making changes which lead to confusion, yet correct only imaginary or, at worst, trivial problems. I fear that assuaging the hurt feelings of a pressure group does not justify altering the tradition of centuries and adding ambiguity which was not previously present.

3. If you examine the Wikipedia article, the alternative to the grotesque and confusing "they" are even worse elaborate circumlocutions which add bulk and awkward phrasing just to avoid the horror of using "he" to refer to a person whose sex is not known.

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POSTSCRIPT

While there is some dispute about using "gender" to refer to human sex, I personally think that the introduction of "gender" to refer to humans rather than language was actually the first step in this argument, so I personally won't use "gender" to mean "sex", unless quoting others (or perhaps by mistake, as it is such a ubiquitous usage it often gets repeated even by those who disagree with it). Gender applies to language, sex refers to biology. I know some academic disciplines have some elaborate rules, using sex when referring to biology, or to matters of procreation, and using gender for all other contexts, but I just don't agree with it. Why create such meaningless distinctions? It all seems much wasted effort without a good reason behind it. So I won't bother. Sex is the biological difference between male and female, regardless of whether we are discussing procreation or styles of hats. Simple, is it not?

Spell Check Note: Please, please, please Firefox developers, fire your spell check staff. I know they are volunteers, but still fire them! They have to have some strange ideas. Your spell check likes "comedienne" but rejects "advisor"?  And it accepts "int" and "facer"? What strange folks work for this project?

ADDENDUM

I wish I had thought to mention it, but there is one clever "gender bending" recasting I doubt we will ever see. We may eventually see a female Hamlet or Brutus or Lear, but I doubt we will ever see a daring director casting an all male reading of The Vagina Monologues. Strange how that works. Masculinity can be ignored, but femininity is essential.

UPDATE

From the Wikipedia page on gender neutral language:

Gender-neutral language proscribes chairman, on the grounds that some readers would assume women are implicitly excluded from responding to an advertisement using this word.

I have to ask, does ANYONE really believe this? Is there any individual so moronic that seeing "chairman" would think women were excluded?

This is such a bad lie that it is not even plausible. The reason "chairman" is frowned upon is not because some will think they are excluded, but because feminist doctrinaires object to anything that could even vaguely be construed as favoring men. Even when no one but feminist academics see it that way.

This has to be the most idiotic argument for change I have ever seen.