“Being lazy, I didn’t want to type all of that, so I left it as just a “he”, but feeling that this bit of lazy male psovenism might come back and kick me in the @ss.”
Chris,
Don’t beat yourself up too bad. You, like me, are simply old school:
Problems of usage arise in languages such as English, in contexts where a person of unspecified or unknown (social) gender is being referred to but commonly available pronouns (he or she) are gender-specific. In such cases a gender-specific, usually masculine, pronoun was traditionally used with a purported gender-neutral meaning; such use of “he” was also common in English until the latter half of the 20th century but is now regarded as outmoded[1] or viewed as sexist.[2] Use of singular they is another common alternative, but is not universally accepted and regarded by some to be gramatically incorrect.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
Jim
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It is grammatically correct in English to use the masculine when one doesn’t know or could be referring to either masculine or feminine. In the only other language I ever studied, French, it is the opposite.
AJ
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It is grammatically correct in English to use the masculine when one doesn’t know or could be referring to either masculine or feminine. In the only other language I ever studied, French, it is the opposite
Hi AJ
That’s because la personne (the person) is a feminine word in French (because of its -onne ending). Une personne is always feminine, even when the person you are speaking about is a man.
If anyone has any more questions on French pronouns we are in the presence of an expert 
Here is a good book on it: https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Gender-French-Revised-Fourth-eb…
Or so I’ve been told. I would be lying if I said I had read it.
Matt
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Thanks Matt, for the free advertisement.
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