I start this Pet Peeve by admitting that I do not have a perfect solution to this problem, beyond going back to the way things were. Having admitted that, here goes nothing:

Once upon a time, a writer could construct a sentence like this one without fear of reproach, chastisement or flogging: “A person could lose his reputation with behavior like that.”

Now, before you hound me about the creative merit of the sentence (and I admit, there is none), let me clarify that I am using it merely to call into focus the use of “his” as a sort of generic term coupled with the reference to “a person.” Back in the old days, even before the time of 8-tracks, rotary telephones and analog television signals, one was not chided for using a gendered term such as “his” or “him” or “he” in reference to the aforementioned generic “person” in a sentence. In fact, it was the standard. No one took it personally.

After all, one had to choose a singular term to match “person,” and since “it” or “its” would have been entirely offensive to both genders, the grammatical powers that be decided in their finite wisdom to use “he” or “his” in such situations, thereby offending only about 50 percent of the population instead of the full 100 percent.

But along came the days of bra-burning, women’s lib, and beyond that, widespread gender confusion in all its glory. For a while, the grammatically obsessed among us scrambled to find a usage that would offend no one (since offending no one was also part of the new milieu). And so, for a very brief period, one saw in print constructions such as “he/she” or, worse, “s/he.” Some dispensed with the added, awkward punctuation and wrote out “he or she,” which was only marginally better. Once a sentence became longer than a typical first grader’s, the shortcomings of the and/or approach became clear, with “he or she” and then “his or her” being stuffed into the same sentence, sometimes repeatedly, all in an effort to keep the generic third-person construct needed in so much nonfiction writing.

Yeah, good luck wit’ dat. Didn’t work for long. And then, slowly, subtly—even, I dare say, sinisterly—we began reading in print variations that now look like this: “A person could lose their reputation with behavior like that” (emphasis mine).

So now, even the powers that be have conceded that it is better to imply that a person is, well, two people, rather than imply, even if only grammatically, that a person might be a different gender. All this for theoretical sentences that are not referring to actual individuals.

How has it become grammatically better to be mathematically wrong? (”A person” cannot by definition also be “they.” Last time I checked, 1 did not equal 2.) I’d rather go back to the days of “he” and “chairman” and “mankind,” than move forward into the days of “personkind” and sentences like, “Each person should have their own blog.”

The grammarians and the mathematicians should both grab the pitchforks and torches on this one! Who’s with me?