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!

[JesusMaryAndJosephAndTheWeeDon]

@ShadowInVain

The commentary from the Imperial War Museum is interesting, Errol. I suppose historically, sailors were very superstitious, so the goddess idea would fit for ships, and ships obviously pre-dated other types of vehicle so might have set a precedent.

Anecdotally, women I know who have named their cars tend to give them a male persona (and to treat them with exasperated affection). Our cars have only ever been 'it' though.

Interesting, while my first car had a male name my next two had female names as did the one I shared with my mum. I haven't named the last few, but the current one is male.

My Mum's cars have all been female.

[Stroopwaffle5000]

My DS (7) has a lot of toy dinosaurs and they are a mixture of male and female according to him. I think this intitially came from the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park all being female.

[powershowerforanhour]

I do rather enjoy, any time I hear somebody exclaim over the size of a bird of prey, great white shark or crocodile- you know, those big predators that adorn boys' T shirts but not girls'- remarking casually- "Yes it's huge, likely a female I suppose".

[Kotatsu]

It's so totally ingrained, in your language, from the moment you're taught to speak, so some (surprisingly large) effort now to try and re-train yourself will make all the difference.

I try, but fail myself (I've said 'he' for my chickens before too, despite obviously knowing they're female). The one that made me cross was some book the kids had about a duck, which was clearly a drake (colouring), then at the end of it he laid an egg. I was unreasonably annoyed at that. A bit of accuracy wouldn't hurt.

All we can do is try to be a bit more equal (and accurate) in our speech, then hopefully by the time our children are parents they'll be a bit more equal still.

[Recessed]

Yes I noticed this after having my own DC too. I'm guilty of it myself. I have girls so it particularly grated that they would see male as the default. I made a big effort to say she/her as the default - it was hard at first but it works! I was mostly a SAHM so they spent the vast majority of their time with
me so it had an impact. Now at 5 & 3 they're just as likely to say "her" as "him". I still change the wording in picture books all the time as books are particularly bad for this.

[RedDeerRunning]

This wound me up so much when my kids were small and every animal in picture books was male.

Where these boys all came from, one can only guess...

[PickUpAPepper]

I have to admit I do this a lot and my dd has started pulling me up on it .

Has anyone else noticed that the use of “mankind” and even “man” to mean all of humanity seem to be making a comeback? I have definitely heard it a lot recently and commented on it at home. I’ll look out for specific examples to report back in!

[Felix125]

Just to balance things slightly - a lot of inanimate objects were often called 'she' - Cruise liners are spoken about as though they are female "She's a fantastic ship". Same with flash cars and aircraft etc

Never really understood why that was adopted.

[AsTreesWalking]

I got very annoyed with the children's film Antz which completely ignored the fact that the majority of ants are females. And that awful BT advert with a Bee 'family' Arrgh. My DCs were in no doubt about these egregious errors!

[psed]

The one that gets my goat is waiting for “the green man” to cross the road. It’s a green person or the green signal to me. Females cross the road too!

[Felix125]

@psed

The one that gets my goat is waiting for “the green man” to cross the road. It’s a green person or the green signal to me. Females cross the road too!

I think that came from the 'Green Cross Code Man' - which was David Prowse. I think the name has just stuck from there.

[MorrisZapp]

The less expensive bakery in York sells gingerbread persons.

[Keke94LND]

I went for drinks last night with my friend and her little puppy who is a female, I was holding her outside whilst we waited for a taxi and she was getting a lot of attention, two guys who were probably around my age (I'm 27) came up and started stroking her, and were saying oh he's so cute he's so cute! And I very politely just said oh she's a she, they looked at each other and laughed and then said 'oooo is she, maybe she should be in the kitchen too then hahahahaha' 😐 .. I just turned my back to them so they could no longer stroke her.

[Keke94LND]

@Felix125

Just to balance things slightly - a lot of inanimate objects were often called 'she' - Cruise liners are spoken about as though they are female "She's a fantastic ship". Same with flash cars and aircraft etc

Never really understood why that was adopted.

I believe ships are called she's because they are seen as a mother figure or goddess protecting the crew, something like that anyway!

[Naunet]

@Felix125

Just to balance things slightly - a lot of inanimate objects were often called 'she' - Cruise liners are spoken about as though they are female "She's a fantastic ship". Same with flash cars and aircraft etc

Never really understood why that was adopted.

Because females are objects, pretty things to look at for men. Males are real living, breathing, feeling creatures.

It doesn’t balance things out, it magnifies the issue.

[Naunet]

*Because females are objects, pretty things for men to look at AND OWN

[PaleGreenGhost]

@psed

The one that gets my goat is waiting for “the green man” to cross the road. It’s a green person or the green signal to me. Females cross the road too!

I'm so tempted to hit you up for a play date on the basis of this post! I say "green person" every time too. I feel a bit conspicuous and it certainly hasn't caught on in my locality.

I have small boys but try and use a default "she" and I mess about with the sex of book characters when I can.

Current outcome is they're definitely not sexists but they also use the wrong pronouns quite a lot. This is bound to upset someone at some point but I think raising boys who see girls as equal is more important.

[GreenWhiteViolet]

The 'man' meaning 'human' one bothers me because of an old book I read years ago. All about early man and his various achievements with tools and fire and such. Okay, I thought. It's an older book. It must be using the word man to mean both men and women. Nope! There were a few later lines about how 'his woman' gave birth or something that were really jarring. That's the purpose of the 'man breastfeeds his young' illustrative lines, I think. They seem obviously wrong in a way that using default 'man' in a way that actually excludes women doesn't.

It also bothers me when non-fiction books by men directly address the reader and assume they're male. So many casual references in various books to the reader's wife or girlfriend (and I'm sure the author wasn't thinking of lesbian couples when he wrote it!) It's a small thing, but it's a reminder that this book wasn't written with the thought that women would read it.

There's a funny song 'Cows With Guns' in which all the cows are referred to as 'he', despite producing milk. Very strange.

[CoronaPeroni]

It was a struggle for me to balance animal story books when my girls were born in the 80s. There were petitions going about ELC sexist dressing up boxes I seem to remember. I like to think things have moved on but it doesn't sound like it!
Does anyone else get the rage when Ben Shepherd refers to the machine on Tipping Point? 'Fire her up' 'She's not being kind today' etc Honestly Ben, it's 'Fire IT up' and 'IT's not being kind today'. Very simple really.

[Funnylittlefloozie]

We have beehives at work. I'm on a mini-campaign to get all the lads who work outside to stop calling bees "it" and to call them "her" instead. Lots of them haven't a clue that every bee they see collecting nectar/pollen is female. Re-education, one bee at a time...😁

[CBUK2K2]

The reason there are more male characters in books is because there are significantly more male authors (roughly 75%) and most people write what they know.

Don't like it? Stop moaning and go out and write a book and get it published.

[CBUK2K2]

@PickUpAPepper

I have to admit I do this a lot and my dd has started pulling me up on it .

Has anyone else noticed that the use of “mankind” and even “man” to mean all of humanity seem to be making a comeback? I have definitely heard it a lot recently and commented on it at home. I’ll look out for specific examples to report back in!

That's literally the definition of mankind, same as human?

[BurnerName101]

@psed

The one that gets my goat is waiting for “the green man” to cross the road. It’s a green person or the green signal to me. Females cross the road too!

The correct term, according to UK Design guidance is ‘green pedestrian symbol‘

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/851465/dft-traffic-signs-manual-chapter-6.pdf

The pedestrian crossing sequence at a signal junction is shown in Table 11‐1 and consists of two parts. The first is known as the “invitation to cross”, and is the period in which the green pedestrian symbol shows

[CBUK2K2]

@BurnerName101 that is a depressing reminder of where humanity is rapidly heading.

[AssassinatedBeauty]

@CBUK2K2 yep, people here are pointing out that the definition of mankind as synonymous with humanity is a bit shit, not that it isn't the current meaning of it. It leaves out half of humanity, after all. Consider how different it seems to use "womankind" as a synonym for humanity.