Just a comment which I think deserves some attention – /u/DashingLeech explains why we refer to humans as "he" and objects as "she"

phySi0 · 2014-04-27T07:58:09+00:00

Mirror:

any reason why we call people 'he' and objects 'she'

Although your comment seems to imply this is obvious, and sexist, a little searching may find that the exact history is not known and a lot of plausible explanations are either endearing or neutral.

For example, the history of our culture is that men typically were the ones who had to leave their families for work to provide for their families, such as war, fishing, and so forth, and that these endeavours were where a large variety of such mechanisms were invented or used such as ships. There are multiple hypotheses that this creates. One is that these mechanisms were their companions, their loved ones, and their caretakers while they were away from home. Another one is that given that these were all big groups of men, referring to another person usually meant another man, so 'she' become a functionally clearer term.

These sorts of explanations also make sense given that 'she' usually referred to (a) something a man loves (e.g., his car, his boat), (b) something large an functional that men work with/on, and (c) non-household related objects. That is, people don't refer to the toaster or oven as 'she', but they do for cars, boats, airplanes, trucks, tractors, excavators, large factory machines, etc.

If it were intended to be historically sexist, you might expect it more to apply to household items that help with cooking, cleaning, or taking care of children, which is much rarer if done at all.

Edit: Other explanations come from the fact that most languages use gendered nouns. Old English had this but it disappeared around the time of Middle English. English, in that context, is the most gender-neutral. (For example, there have been efforts to make German less gendered and more like English because of the redundancy. The few exceptions (as noted in the Oxford blog link), are the rare modern exceptions. So, in fact, it isn't a historical cultural thing but rather a modern holdover, as far as English is concerns.

This too seems to fit much of the evidence as even the machines I refer to above which may be referred to as she are actually typically referred to as 'it' in most contexts: "I bought a new car. I'm picking it up tomorrow." The reference to she only typically applies when it is a personal relationship with the object, as in somebody (usually a man) that works directly with that object, and in the context of it being beautiful, having a personality, or in some sort of partnership in getting their job done.

Another hypothesis on the genderless references to people referring using 'he', given that there is no gender-neutral word for a singular human -- with one being an occasional exception -- is that early English writers and readers were mostly male, often clergy.

So I suppose there are plenty of potential reasons people can think of, with varying bits of evidence, for the tendency to call people 'he' and objects 'she'. One that seems to have no evidence is the proposition that men were thought of as humans and women were thought of as inanimate objects. In fact, this idea doesn't even seem to be proposed anywhere as a serious hypothesis. However, I can't help by infer from your wording and sarcasm that this is the hypothesis you suggest.

yourotherusername · 2014-04-27T18:18:57+00:00

At work my old printing presses are she's. My copier though is a he. Specifically called Bob Marley, because it is always jamin'

ThePigmanAgain · 2014-04-27T10:44:10+00:00

What claptrap. I can't even remember the last time i referred to an object as she, like most people i use the pronoun "it." Perhaps if the object is a ship, otherwise it's an it.

Title	Just a comment which I think deserves some attention – /u/DashingLeech explains why we refer to humans as "he" and objects as "she"
Author	phySi0
Upvotes	23
Comments	10
Date	April 27, 2014 7:56 AM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/243bxd/just_a_comment_which_i_think_deserves_some/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/just-a-comment-which-i-think-deserves-some.1001263 https://theredarchive.com/post/1001263

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