Does it have to be a guy-thing? A woman-thing?

We talked about it in class. All of us noticed. The slight change that was somehow blaringly unconventional. We were slow to discuss what each of us had already picked up on. The way our text book incorporated both man and female pronouns, openly and alternating without any apology.

My text from ENG 215- Introduction to Article Writing- is "On Writing Well," by William Zinnsser. I had forgotten that as the author of a manual on the craft of written language, he was bound to bring up the same subject. He talks about the necessity in this p.c. age of using gender neutral pronouns, even at the risk of sounding a little vague. He bares his students from using phrase that make women possession- his example: "Early settlers pushed west with their wives and children." He suggests the use of "he or she" where sentence length allows. Zinnsser is loath to permit wordiness. And there is one concession Zinnsser refuses flat out- even after admitted badgering from "feminist readers." A single noun, like the ‘author’ or ‘reader’, should never be made into ‘they’- even for gender equality’s sake. So, for his own reasons of clarity he says he will only use male pronouns in his book.

After having read chapter upon chapter of "Rhetoric and Civil Life" over the past few weeks, I can hardly give Zinnsser any grace with his choice. The authors of our textbook balance both genders as skillfully as a practiced rhetor gives equal weight to both sides of an argument. Why then, can’t all authors take the same amount of time to give each gender its due?