The default male

[Insertfunnyname]

I’m getting fed up with “he” being the default pronoun for every animal/bird/bug/Teddy/toy

My friend was showing his young child our hens (who all lay eggs and are obviously female) and was pointing each one to his child as “look at him!” “Oh he is pecking the grass” etc.

It’s not just men who do it unfortunately it’s every woman I know too. “I love your Teddy what’s he called” or “look at the slug he is leaving a trail” or “wow that bird in the book is collecting sticks for his nest”

I just had an argument with my husband as he is also programmed to do this. We have 3 sons and he defaults everything to male when talking to them. He says “what’s the harm. I’m male so that’s my default” he even argued that our friend ‘misgendering’ the hens didn’t matter as the hens don’t speak English.

I can’t articulate how horrible it is to have my sex constantly “othered” and I don’t want my children to grow up with male as the default. I try and use she/her as the default about toys/cuddly animals/t-Rex figurines etc and usually people overhearing are surprised. If I say “look at the snail don’t stand on her” then friends will say “oh that’s interesting how do you know it’s female?” Whereas nobody EVER says that when people use “he”

My husband says women are welcome to default to she and men can default to he but frustratingly ALL the women I hear talking to their children use he(!!) even women talking to daughters.

I can’t seem to make my husband understand the problem with this. He truly sees it as a non issue and says I’m sending the feminist cause backwards by caring about such a ridiculous thing that makes no difference. Ie save my breath for the big problems.

Does anyone else relate? Any words of wisdom to make my husband understand why I’d rather not bring my sons up as the next generation of “he/him-ers” I think he’d get it more if we had daughters which we don’t.

As an aside please join me in using she/her for everything to try and combat it!

[TeenMinusTests]

Taswana Hunger Games and Noughts & Crosses series.

[NeedNewKnees]

You’re right to call him out on it - he’s being an arse about it. Language matters.

[ArabellaScott]

@GrrrlPwr

I realized this when my DD was little. So we just changed EVERYTHING to female. That is the default in our house!
When other people are puzzled or question it we just say- half the planet is female. Can't really argue with that

Same here. My DD as she learned to speak used 'she' as default, fairly logically perhaps. So I followed suit. It was an interesting thought experiment to see how most times male is the presumed default. And how surprised people often are when DD names a toy/animal/inanimate object as female.

[YetAnotherSpartacus]

It is absolutely a feminist issue. I teach at a university and the number of students who use the default male either for authors or for humans in general (but carefully note their pronouns in their sig files ) is staggering. Even if an author has her name clearly in the title of an article and I have referred to her by a conventionally female name in my lectures, as well as used the pronoun 'she' many students refer to her as 'he'.

[ArabellaScott]

Hm. It would be interesting to study the correlation of pronoun usage and tendency to cleave to the 'default male'.

[YetAnotherSpartacus]

Tell. me. about. it.

[ObviousNameChage]

In my maternal language nouns are gendered so I subconsciously use what I learned as a child and translate it to he or she. DD thought I was some kind of animal whisperer when She was little as I seemed to know whether it was a boy or a girl.

[grey12]

I have a Dr Seuss book that talks about birds laying eggs and then the boy goes up the hill and there are lots of "uncles and cousins" laying eggs

But the default (when we don't know the sex, there are males and females) in most languages is male. That's a fact of the language. However when we talk about chickens then definitely they are NOT male

[ErrolTheDragon]

There's an awful lot of little kids books with anthropomorphised animals where the only female characters are the Mummy. Or some sort of launderer or cook maybe. I remember being annoyed reading one to DD when after the 'little boy' protagonists had returned late from an adventure, the mummy hedgehog (or maybe mouse) fed her son hot soup and helped him into 'neatly ironed pyjamas'.... that detail rankled. Ffs a cutsie gender stereotyped relic of past times where females only exist for reproduction, cooking and cleaning?

[ArabellaScott]

That's a fact of the language

I would say it's a choice made by the speakers.

'Mankind breastfeeds his young' and 'mankind carries babies in his womb' isn't an accurate use of the language, it's cognitive dissonance screaming at the default male.

Noting that a local council has just run a campaign to clear up after your dog. Four adverts. Two aimed at non-specific 'owners'. The other two - aimed at 'mummy'. So, in some roles we do have a default female. The ones who pick up the shit, naturally.

[KimikosNightmare]

Mankind breastfeeds his young' and 'mankind carries babies in his womb' isn't an accurate use of the language, it's cognitive dissonance screaming at the default male

I see these phrases were discussed in an academic paper contrasting gendered language in English and Swedish. In real life would they ever be uttered? They sound made up to prove a point.

If one were describing the activities the more natural phrase would be something like "humans (or if you prefer "human females") like other mammals (or female mammals)produce milk for their young" and "human (or if you prefer "human females") like other mammals (or female mammals) carry their babies in their wombs"

[grey12]

@BlueRaincoat1

Another book is Wow Said the Owl by Tim Hopgood about a little owl discovering colours. I remember being pleasantly surprised that the owl was 'she' without there being a ' reason' - my surprise me realise that it is still quite unusual.

I have 3 DDs and I bought the Snail and the Whale because the snail is a she. She wants to see the world and ends up saving the whale, despite being so small

[BlueRaincoat1]

We have that one too- don't know why I forgot it! Yes it's really nice that the snail is incidentally female.

[Taswama]

Thanks @TeenMinusTests . We have both those in the house already, I'm not sure if DS2 (11) is old enough yet.

[ArabellaScott]

@KimikosNightmare

Mankind breastfeeds his young' and 'mankind carries babies in his womb' isn't an accurate use of the language, it's cognitive dissonance screaming at the default male

I see these phrases were discussed in an academic paper contrasting gendered language in English and Swedish. In real life would they ever be uttered? They sound made up to prove a point.

If one were describing the activities the more natural phrase would be something like "humans (or if you prefer "human females") like other mammals (or female mammals)produce milk for their young" and "human (or if you prefer "human females") like other mammals (or female mammals) carry their babies in their wombs"

I recall these phrases used in a feminist 'thought experiment' to counter the idea that the default male could and did encompass both males and females, which was an argument that used to be made to justify the use of default male, 'mankind', etc.

The point of it was to show how jarring the application of male as default was, how absurd and how exclusionary.

[IdblowJonSnow]

Yanbu. Although I do unfortunately catch myself doing this sometimes...

I change things to she/her and if I'm talking about both sexes then I'll say females and males in that order because almost always males get the first mention - what does that teach us?

[whatmattersisthatyoulove]

I agree, I had to correct my very clever extended family for referring to the cows looking over the hedge as male. This includes oncologists, lawyers etc " Oh look at him" I was seriously, they can only be female and you still use he. Also took my year one class to the zoo, I said about the rhino " oh look, she is walking towards us" Every parent helper asked me how I knew it was female.

[Theeyeballsinthesky]

Man who has it all is always a brilliant reminder of how male is the default by writing everything with the female as default. It’s even better when ppl don’t realise he’s taking the piss 😆

twitter.com/manwhohasitall/status/1419190680879050752?s=21

[UndertheCedartree]

@KimikosNightmare - well of course it doesn't mean every single woman thinks like that but the research showed the majority of women did.

[UndertheCedartree]

@NewlyGranny - well, who knows - 'womankind' is not ever used to mean humankind? But as a woman I would find humankind more inclusive than mankind.

[KimikosNightmare]

[quote UndertheCedartree]@KimikosNightmare - well of course it doesn't mean every single woman thinks like that but the research showed the majority of women did.[/quote]
Which research?

[Lancelottie]

I once had a discussion with a child I teach and he firmly said the picture I was holding of a woman in a white coat was a nurse. Because men are doctors and women are nurses. I asked if he’d ever seen a female doctor. Yes he had. It’s ingrained very early.

My own three-year-old did this even though he had only ever had female doctors, and his uncle was (as he well knew) a nurse.

[UndertheCedartree]

@grey12 - the Snail and the Whale was a favourite here! Lovely book!

[irishfeminist]

An organic food company posted photos of a bee on their farm gathering nectar etc and referred throughout to the bee as "he"; I expected them to know better!

[UndertheCedartree]

@KimikosNightmare - as I said it was when I was at college so a long time ago! So if you really want to know you'll have to do a Google search yourself. Another poster also referred to something similar so not just me!