Am I a boy or a girl? Surely, I can always compete against girls!
In many Indo-European languages, “he,” “she,” and “it“ are used as personal pronouns.
Lately, the gaslighting and absolutely insane sex-pronoun enforcers started to promote 42, 52, 64, 78, or 252 “sexes,” which anyone with half of their wits left would know is a bad joke, targeting the weak and the fearful, in order to make them accept absurd and irrational statements, according to which “men can menstruate,” while a member of the Supreme Court doesn’t want to tell the difference between men and women.
I still vividly remember my first semester of teaching at the University of Massachusetts in 1988. Feminism was combatant and arrogant to the point that I couldn’t possibly imagine. Somehow, in one of my classes, in a discussion group, I managed to note that “it’s all clear what the difference between a man and a woman is.” All of a sudden, a little girl of about 19, jumped in front of me, accosting me,
“So, you can tell me what the difference between a man and a woman is!”
I found the challenge slightly entertaining and slightly bemused, happened to say with a gentle smirk,
“Of course.”
The little girl was laughed off the stage and stormed out of the room. The next day, I found myself in an unwelcome discussion with the dean who, at the time, still had the sense of humor to appreciate the unfortunate state of events.
The little girl, whether as a sign of submission to the dean’s approach or a genuine sign of reconsideration, backed out.
She was definitely a “she.”
After having been long retired from academic entanglements, well before the “covid” challenges (I would have refused the muzzle, the “tests,” and the lethal injections), I am now wondering how my previous colleagues can handle the 2056 “sexes,” especially as they come with personal pronouns that even the US military is now instructing its members to use (well, such a challenge and mandated lethal injections are now cutting the number of volunteers 50k a year short).
Let me propose a solution. Jonathan Swift suggested in a pamphlet (“A Modest Proposal”) in 1729, during the time of famine in Ireland that infants should be eaten and they would require no more food, but their remains would feed the starving. That slightly resembles the way some “mothers” are now handling their incumbrances that at one point, used to be called their offspring:
I am no way as drastic as that.
In my solution, the English language might settle for one sex and one sex only, when referring to human beings. It works for a truckload of other languages, it doesn’t break the bank, and it would prevent our young global leaders from turning the sexes on each other in a divide-and-rule setup.
What about the poor souls who are born out of whack? There are two or three out of a thousand of them. Why can the rest of humanity not exercise patience, understanding, and perhaps even compassion towards them, although compassion has never been marked up as a major attribute of humans? Okay, perhaps that’s why. But please, don’t kill the messenger.
Let’s settle for “he,” “him,” “his” or “she,” “her,” and “hers!” What’s been taking so long?
French has a general singular pronoun -- on (awhn) that equates to 'one' in English (e.g. one knows beauty when one sees it). I think that's much better for talking generally than the English use of 'you'.
In Spanish, the verb ending changes to show singular & plural and 1st 2nd or 3rd person, and one guesses from context. Spanish has extra pronouns for being polite to 'you', but only uses a specific pronoun for clarity.
Maybe we should just borrow the French 'on' but spell it awhn to avoid confusion with the preposition.
Which is your solution- one sex, or him/her etc.
You mention both.