Sex and the Single Pronoun

By Howard Posner

The night was dirty and dark. Grimy. Thick. Impenetrable as a Supreme Court patent-law opinion. The kind of night where you think if you'd listened to your mother and practiced the bassoon more, you wouldn't be working late in some dumpy office crafting five-cent sophistry for any judge dumb enough to buy it.

My eyes were making a convincing case for shutting down and snoozing. But then there was a knock on the door, and she came in. Suddenly I had no trouble keeping my eyes open. They don't make dames like that anymore. Well, obviously, they do--since she was there in front of me--but you get my drift. She had more curves than the Internal Revenue Code, and in that dress she personified intentional infliction of emotional distress.

"Are you Posner of Posner, Posner, Posner & Posner?" she asked in a voice they'd ban on Sundays in Utah.

"That's what it says on the door, sugar." I'm actually solo, but the door painter had shown up wired and lit up like a Christmas tree, painted the name four times, and billed me for four doors. It wasn't the first time I'd seen something written more times than necessary (I read legal briefs for a living). I gave him a check on an account I'd closed two years earlier, and never heard from him again.

"You're the guy who writes that column about writing?" she asked.

"That's what it says on the door, baby."

"No it doesn't."

"Well, it should." Was that a suspicious look she gave me, or were her eyes merely adjusting to the dim light? Recovering quickly, I asked, "What can I do for you, honey?"

"You can find something for me," she purred.

"For you, sweetheart, anything. But I get two fifty an hour plus expenses."

She looked around as if she expected eavesdroppers, moved close enough to whisper, opened those amazing lips of hers, and breathed, "I want you to find a useful and reliable all-purpose substitute for gender-specific-and-therefore-sexist pronouns."

"In that case," I said, "I get three fifty an hour plus expenses. And the first 20 hours up front."

"You got a problem with useful and reliable--?"

"Damn straight I do, tootsie," I interrupted. "Been down that road. But I'll take your case, 'cause I like your face."

"It's not my face you've been staring at," she muttered, then looked around, as if sizing up the office. Not much to see: books, computer, a baseball autographed by Personny Ramirez that I was gonna give my kid, before my second ex-wife took him to live in Antarctica.

"There's no one solution," I said, "only options. You need to choose one that's not stiff, awkward, verbose, or just plain lame--and that doesn't halt the sentence to announce you're not being sexist. He or she and his or her suffer from all those problems; use them only when you're desperate."

"So how do you do it when you're writing your column?"

"Depends, sugar lips. Sometimes I alternate gender. That works if you make sure the female pronouns get the good parts: judges are she, bad writers he. That way the copy editors lay off. It's unfair, but we're living in a transitional period marked by pronominal hypersensitivity. Anyway, I don't mind giving chicks special treatment, if you know what I mean." I gave her a knowing look. She stared at me like I was writing her a traffic ticket.

"But haven't I seen 'his or her' in your column?" She was playing rough.

"I've never written it, sugar plum. An editor made that change when I forgot to make the villains guys and the heroes dames. Copy editors--they ain't like the rest of us." She nodded in agreement.

"The surest way to avoid sexist pronouns is to ditch all pronouns, so the reader ain't concerned whether you're talking about a person or a woperson.Take Business and Professions Code section 6128: 'Every attorney is guilty of a misdemeanor who ... willfully delays his client's suit with a view to his own gain.' "

"Delays?" she meowed. "Shouldn't that be extends or protracts or something?"

"Let's stay focused on pronouns, doll face. How do we get rid of 'his'?

"Option 1: Rewrite to avoid the pronoun: Every attorney is guilty of a misdemeanor who willfully delays a client's suit for personal gain. (Replace the first pronoun with an article and eliminate the second.)

"Option 2: Substitute the noun for the pronoun: ... delays a client's suit with a view to the attorney's own gain. (Works OK if you use it sparingly; too much of it sounds like bad poetry.)

"Option 3: Go plural and eliminate gender. It would be dicey in section 6128 (All attorneys who delay clients' cases for their own gain are guilty of misdemeanors), but take a sentence like A developer must demonstrate that he or she has fulfilled the conditions of the tentative map before the final map can be approved. Making it plural is fine: Developers must demonstrate that they have fulfilled the tentative maps' conditions before the final maps can be approved.

"Option 4: Passive voice. It's useless for Bus & PC § 6128, but try it with Civil Code § 3118, which reads: 'Any person who shall willfully include in his claim of lien labor, services, equipment, or materials not furnished for the property described in such claim shall thereby forfeit his lien.' "

"A real literary gem," she sighed.

"Rewritten, you get: A lien claim shall be forfeited if the claimant willfully includes in it labor, services, equipment, or materials not furnished for the property described in the claim. How's that?"

"You've got Herperson Melville looking over his shoulder," she allowed.

"Male-centric pronouns are convenient," I said, "but they're as out of fashion as virginity, so we need workarounds, at least for now. Someday we may write with the 'institutional they' we now use conversationally (watch out for that driver, because they're not looking), or with some new gender-free personal pronoun like 'e.' Why not? 'Ms.' became standard in only 15 years, even though it sounds like a soft drink."

I was waxing eloquent, but she'd slipped out the door. And she didn't leave a retainer check. Dames. Go figure.

Howard Posner practices appellate law in Los Angeles, consults with other lawyers about writing, and writes about nonlegal matters.

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