Generic Phrases - Is use of the generic word "he" when referring to an unknown or hypothetical person sexist?

Is use of the generic word "he" when referring to an unknown or hypothetical person sexist?

Is it sexist to use the generic term "he" in writing, such as in phrases like "every worker has his own desk"? The singular "they" sounds okay in casual speech, but when you write like that, it looks like you're in sixth grade. Even though everyone knows what the generic male pronoun really means, it could still appear kind of sexist. And I know an alternative is to use "he or she" but that starts looking weird if you say it more than once in a paragraph. What do you think?

Public Comments

It's practically the same as this: The term 'man' in most of these have nothing to do with men as a sex. I've tried to explain this point to the community SO MANY times, but it seems to fall on deaf ears. There is a history behind the terms, such as 'taxman','manhole' and other similar terms. 'man' referred to humans, and men as a sex were known as 'were'. so really, the above would read: taxhuman or human-hole. But, they're obviously silly to rename accordingly. Now, in England - we have 'lollipop ladies'. They are women (generally) who help kids cross a busy road on the way too and from schools. There are men doing this job (usually pensioners, as with the women) - do you think they give two flying flips about the title? Nope. And to my knowledge, not one lollipop 'man' has ever complained about it. In short, those who complain about 'chairman' or such are simply not educated in english language as they would know it had nothing to do with political correctness or sexism.
Now this too...
I don't think it is sexist. The term "man" is a generic term for all humans as is it's pronouns. Though because there is a sensitivity toward it the unisex terms such as, them, they, their, etc. tend to be more popular these days.
I think people worry way too much about the gender in a sentence and less about the actual content. "s/he" is the alternative and, frankly, it looks stupid.
No it's not. It's just a generic term.
It is for grammatical convenience. I am a writer. When I am speaking about hypothetical people, I alternate random use of the masculine and feminine to balance it out. Where I can, I reword. "Every worker should have a dedicated work station."
No. They can mean one and their can mean one but them means more than one so it isn't interchangeable with him or her. I'll use his and him. C. :)!!
If you look at German and Dutch, the words 'Mensch' and 'Men' mean human (being) or 'one' (as in: one said/likes etc) in the case of Dutch. Since English lost it's gender inflections, people tend to see the use of 'he' as deliberate sexism. In Inflected languages nouns can be male or female, but this has long fallen away in English. The only one I can think of is Ships and vehicles generally. If I mean specifically a man or women, I use his/her or he/she.
It is considered sexist from a rhetorical perspective. In written speech, use "he or she," and try to avoid the use of pronouns after that.
Yeah, it's sexist. Rationalize it however you want, it still favors men. If "he" were not ALSO used to refer to men, then it wouldn't be sexist. "He" will never TRULY be a generic pronoun, as long as it is also used for men. If there were another pronoun for males INSTEAD of "he" it wouldn't bother me at all when people used "he" in the generic sense...because then it could truly be generic. As it is, it's not.
The generic 'he' is different to the male 'he'. It's easier to say than 'he or she', and it doesn't bother me.
I don't think it's sexist. It doesn't really matter at all. Anybody who gets concerned about something like that is just splitting hairs. Instead of paying lip-service to PC crap, people should be paying attention to the real issues facing women today.
No, it is not sexist. People's brains automatically process the context of a written sentence, and understand when the term "his" actually means "his or her".
In my writing I usually use gender neutral language because it's just become a habit. If I'm writing for a male audience, I will use more male pronouns. If it's for a female audience, I'll throw in more female pronouns. For gender neutrality, I will occasionally use "he or she". But you can only use it sparingly, especially if you're limited to a certain number of words and those few words have to pack a maximum impact. I generally use "one's" or "human beings" or whatever works in each case. Is the use of male pronouns for gender neutrality sexist...only from a semantics point of view. It's not an issue in which I waste too much time or energy.
If you follow the historical path that is the English language than the ultimate answer is that using the gender neutral term "he" isn't sexist. However, when English was a synthetic language and placed gender inflections on everything, than natural gender (that of male and female in regards to humans) wasn't really all that important. During the change from a synthetic to a natural language, gender became an influential issue because calling something "he or she" was no longer arbitrary and became directly related to the actual gender of the object in question. It's been a couple of hundred years (okay, thousand...but who's counting) and English speaking people no longer think in gender neutral terms. If the word "he" is used people automatically think of a male. If the term "she" is used people automatically think of a female. English is a fluid language, meaning it can and does change over time. The history of how these pronouns came to be used is too far behind us, and people do not think in gender neutral terms, so the language must adapt as well. Using "he" as a gender neutral term is sexist...not only to women, but to men as well. Any action that is attributed to the gender neutral he is going to be attributed to the male he as well. In the case of "every worker has his own desk" the fix is easy. "Workers have their own desks." I would even go so far as to say that you could keep "every worker" without the pluralization because in order for the word "every" to be necessary, there are obviously more than one worker, therefore the pluralization of "their" wouldn't be out of place, making the sentence read, "every worker has their own desk."
Actually, it has become very common practice to use she now, as well. I'd estimate you see "she" used to signify anyone about a third as often as you see "he" used right now. At some point, it could be half or all. Who knows? I think there will always now be both "he" and "she" used for this purpose. I like it, because I like to mix things up.
Don't blame sexism as much as the English language, which lacks any singular gender-neutral pronoun for humans. "S/he", the best known attempt to create one, has the shortcoming of not qualifying as an English word by customary grammatical rules. (Online dictionaries commonly return an error page on an attempt to find a definition for it.) Interestingly, I have read a couple of computer science books which always used "she" when talking about computer professionals, in spite of the fact that the great majority of computer professionals are men. Is this "reverse sexism"?
No. Reasons why: 1) It really depends on the language you are speaking of. If you were talking about Italian or Spanish then almost every word is assigned a gender. A problem arises when one attempts to talk about an ambiguous object/thing in a gender dichotomous language. Do you use he or she? In this case the speakers of the language just arbitrarily chose one in order to be able to communicate about an ambiguous object/thing. It wasn't done out of sexism. It was done to facilitate meaningful communication. 2) In English there are only three singular pronouns: he, she, it. If using 'he' is sexist then using 'she' isn't any better. Using 'it' might solve to problem but some might still see that as degrading as one could interpret it as being relegated to some sub-human category. 'They' might work but is typically used in reference to more than one person. It is perhaps better to, again, just pick one of the pronouns and use it as a basis when dealing with ambiguity or generality. 3) If I remember correctly, some languages actually use the female pronoun as the default pronoun. Is that sexist too? 4) Language didn't develop as a political movement. Rather language is a byproduct of a unique phenotype which allows humans, unlike it's ape ancestors, to speak. Language has no innate oppression built into it nor does it seek to oppress anyone. Language is at the mercy of it's users and can be used for good or evil. Even neutral language could be used for a greater evil. So language in and of itself is not sexist rather it is the user hisself that is sexist. All in all, just use whatever pronoun you wish. If nobody understands what you mean however, then try a different pronoun until your point is made. Language is for communcation purposes not necessarily political ones. As such, there should be no holds put on it's usage. However, if one tries to arbitrarily change a language on one's own then others have the right to not understand what it is meant and to ask for clarification when necessary.