"An Honest Letter of Admonishment to Writers Digest's Staff."

"A Gender Specific No Contest Debate."

To whom it may concern:

I was a member of WD for a short while until I realized the obvious, and though it had been staring me in the face from the very beginning, I had not seen it—yet.

Funny, how it happened. I was reading one of their books, and suddenly—I would stop and ask myself, what happened? I wasn’t sure. I kept on reading, and I would stop again and again and think about what I was reading. I picked up another one of their published books, and the same thing kept on occurring over and over again. With all the stops, it was infuriating to lose the thread of what I was reading, to say the least. Why was this happening to me? Had I lost my concentration? Did I have any personal problems that interfered with my thoughts? It could be anything. I wasn’t sure, but I persevered.

By pure chance I picked other books, not published by WD, and it stopped happening just like that—finger clap. I asked myself, why was this occurring with some books and not with others? I didn’t have the slightest idea. I was beginning to have serious doubts about my mental equilibrium—that is until I put one and one together and got me an eleven in the bargain.

Eureka! Suddenly, it dawned on me. I had figured it out, at last. It was all a simple ‘case of mistaken identity.’ The common accepted pronouns were being switched invariably—on purpose, I may add. That is: He for she, his for hers, and him for her. It was convoluted to say the least. I asked myself then, why, would ‘anyone’ do that? After all, if WD wanted to make a case out of the masculine pronoun used as a rule, and they wanted to be fair to both sexes, then they should have used: ‘one,’ ‘they,’ ‘everybody,’ or whatever. But no. Instead, they used ‘she.’

Well, I thought, if we men, are to be considered chauvinist ‘pigs’ because literature has always been written using the male pronoun when referring to an unknown, third person entity, then we should consider WD to be a sexist, feminist organization that doesn’t care about its readers, besides all the confusion they have created with their outrageously silly use of pronouns. Even Agatha Christie, a woman and a great writer I have always admired, would be crying murder about now.

After all, ‘Mankind’ will always be mankind, not ‘womankind.’ (The latter sounds goofy, doesn’t it?) Man was created in the image of God, not woman. Don’t argue with me. It is written in ‘The Book.’ There is a son of God, not a daughter, right?

I may add, that my wife, daughter, mother-in-law, females in my family and friends of that persuasion, all agree with me. But enough of rhetoric, I will end this short rebuke by injecting here some words uttered by the renowned professor, William Strunk, Jr., author of the indispensable, “The Elements of Style.”

“The use of he as a pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the beginnings of the English language. He has lost all suggestion of maleness in these circumstances. The word was unquestionably biased to begin with ( the dominant male), but after hundreds of years it has become seemingly indispensable. It has no pejorative connotation; it is never incorrect. . . . No one need fear to use he if common sense supports it. The furor recently raised about he would be more impressive if there was a handy substitute for the word. Unfortunately, there isn’t—or, at least no one has come up in one yet. If you think she is a handy substitute for he, try it and see what happens. Alternatively, put all controversial nouns in the plural and avoid the choice of sex altogether, and you may find your prose sounding general and diffuse as a result.”

The former quotation by a man who really knew the essence of his bread and butter, is in itself very clarifying and enlightening to boot.

Moreover, and to add a few logs to the fire—what if all of a sudden, everyone started to refer to cars, ships, earth and the like, as ‘He’ instead of ‘She’ , it would be pretty foolish, wouldn’t it? Consider the next few sentences:

1.- ‘His’ name was Christine. ‘His’ curves were dauntingly scary. ‘His’ frightening bumper spelled trouble a mile away.”

2.- ‘The mother-ship took them all into ‘his’ hold. ‘He’ was a very large and modern vessel.”

3.- ‘Behold the fruits of mother Earth. ‘He’ is the giver of things. ‘He’ shall feed you and preserve you.

OR IF WE WERE TO SWITCH THE ROLES:

4.- Ask God for a miracle. ‘She’s all knowing, and ‘she’ might yet concede your wishes.

5.- To boldly go, where no ‘woman’ has gone before.

6.- We may consider the invention of radio, television and the light bulb among ‘women’s greatest achievements.

SOUNDS PLAIN SILLY, DOESN’T IT?
I rest my case. Period.

Ken Pauls Milano
Science Fiction Author