Can "he" and "man" refer to all genders?

Question

All men must die, but death can vary in its significance. The ancient Chinese writer Sima Qian said, "Though death befalls all men alike, it may be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather." To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather.

...

If we have shortcomings, we are not afraid to have them pointed out and criticized, because we serve the people. Anyone, no matter who, may point out our shortcomings. If he is right, we will correct them. If what he proposes will benefit the people, we will act upon it.

They're in a speech Serve the People, it's translated in English by Columbia University.

In original language, "all men alike" should be "all people whoever they are";
and

If he is right

If what he proposes

They both refer to a person who pointed out the CPC's shortcomings no matter which the gender is.

Answer 1

You are opening a "can of worms!" This is a topic that can cause strong emotions.

It is also not a matter of grammar, but a matter of style.

English doesn't have a pronoun that singular, non-neuter and can apply to both men and women. Different authors have dealt with this in different ways.

In the past, the most common way was to use "he" for a singular person of unknown gender. This is less common now, but you should be aware that older texts will use "he". Your example uses "he" in this way. You will also see "man" or "men" used to mean "people in general".

Currently the most common way is to use "they" for a singular person of unknown gender. This is the recommended pronoun to use. You can usually avoid "man" by saying "mankind" or "people" or "everybody". This is called gender-neutral writing. New texts should usually aim to be gender-neutral when possible and appropriate.

You sometimes see "he/she" in an attempt to be inclusive (but this can exclude some non-binary people) and is generally more clumsy than "they".

So. "He" and "Man" have been used to mean a person of unknown gender, but you should avoid this style in new writing.

Answer 2

Leaving aside current views on gender identity, historically, "man" has been used as an umbrella term for both genders - and it still is, unless someone objects to it. "Mankind" refers to all human beings (although the term "womankind" has been coined from this to denote only women). When Neil Armstrong said "one giant leap for mankind" he was referring to all humanity, not just males. The term "man-made" refers to anything which has been engineered by a human being, and not by nature.

When referring to specific individuals, however, we always use the correct pronouns, but there has been a historic preference to default to the male gender pronouns when writing certain kinds of documents, such as instructions, that would apply to both genders. For example:

If the user receives an error, he should report it.

Some would avoid this by using the gender-neutral "they"; however, another reason such writing uses a specific pronoun in instructions is to firmly place responsibility with individuals, and using "they" can sound more passive as if the instructions apply to someone else. The alternative is to write:

If the user receives an error, he or she should report it.

The idea behind defaulting to one gender is that it saves time and space, and makes the document more readable. It is quite common for a document or article to state from the beginning that they will use the male gender, but that it applies to both. For example, a popular parenting book refers to the baby as "he" throughout but notes that all advice applies to both baby boys and girls.

In any kind of writing, if you use an individual as an example and suggest that this example applies to a wider range of people, you would use the gender terms appropriate to that individual, and although you are not actually using those terms to address other people of different genders, what you are saying does by extension apply to them.

So the answer to your question is yes - the terms "man", and the associated pronouns can in certain contexts refer to all humankind.

Answer 3

Rather than "can these words refer to all genders" I'd propose to think of it as "are there texts in which these words refer to all genders", to which the answer is an emphatic "yes". It was long the norm to do so and is certainly the case with this passage, which was translated from (a possibly gender-neutral!) Chinese into an academic level of English, probably early to mid 20th-century, when the concept of a gender-neutral "he" and "man" was very strong.

Now, if the question is "Can I use these words to refer to all genders?" the growing consensus in the English-speaking world ranges from "You probably shouldn't" to "Oh hell no". In today's usage there is very strong awareness that "man" and "he" and "him" have left many people who do not personally identify with those words to feel entirely excluded (indeed, to be treated as excluded, which is to say, excluded) from vast bodies of poetry, literature and law. And frankly, I think it's pretty certain that when the authors of mid-20th-century engineering texts wrote "he will need to invest in a good sliderule", very few ever expected a woman to need a sliderule. Likewise I wonder whether many anglophone students of Mao's speeches (I will not presume of Mao or the translator) were envisaging women dying for the people or for the fascist oppressor.

What do do about this is an ongoing discussion. Replacing "man" with "people" is obvious, though it lacks the monosyllabic punch that the speaker may wish for. If I were at liberty to recast that passage, I think I'd go for the opening line "We all must die!". Inclusiveness needn't be gentle.

As for the pronouns my own preference is the singular gender-neutral "they" and "them". These grate against some on the grounds of strict grammar, and against others who prefer novel concoctions with X's and punctuation marks in them, believing perhaps that medicines work best if they taste bad. I often find that recasting into the plural or the first or second person yields a remarkably natural and effective result.

One avenue that I feel strongly is not profitable is to reflect on what these words or their ancestors meant at some time in the arbitrary past. I find is as fascinating as the next person to know how these words came to us over the centuries, but knowing that my Tempo is a direct descendant of a Model T doesn't help me choose the next freeway exit.

Answer 4

"Man", yes. "He", no - but "him" and "his", yes.

From a historical perspective, this is because "man" was a originally gender-neutral word meaning "person" or "human" (incidentally, "human" comes from the Latin "homo" while "man" comes from the Sanskrit "manu" - their similarity is purely coincidental. Also not to be confused with the Greek "homo" meaning "the same"), with the prefix "wer" and "wif" denoting male or female. Eventually "wif" become both "woman" (via "wifman") and "wife", while "wer" was dropped. So, "woman" meant "female person", and "man" segued from "person" to implying "male person" by principle of exclusion.

On the other hand, "he" has always been male, "she" has always been female, and (until the 15th century) Middle English had the non-gendered "hit", which later became the inanimate pronoun "it" - but could originally be used for a person of unknown gender. (Even "it" was originally used as a gender-neutral term for infants)

The weird bit is that the Objective and Possessive conjugations of "hit" were originally "him" and "his" - which by coincidence - happen to match the same conjugations for "he". To reduce confusion, these later morphed into "hit" and "hits". The reflexive form was always "hitself". (Also, the Objective form of "he" and "she" started as "hine" and "heo", and only later became "him"/"her")

Answer 5

Consider the US constitution. It uses "he" and "his" for Senators and the President, and meant men only. At the time, women weren't allowed to hold office -- they weren't allow to vote. That looks terrible now. Pretending those words meant all genders is the least embarrassing way to fix it.

That seems wrong -- the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote in 1920 was a formality, right? But a quick refresher of Susan B. Anthony reminds us it was illegal for women to vote, or serve on a jury, and a hard fight to change that. [edit2] Then this Fed 25th 2020 New York Times article about 1776 New Jersey voting laws reminds us that "he" was a deliberate choice in 1776:

Most other states’ revolutionary-era constitutions limited the vote to “freemen” or “male inhabitants.” But New Jersey’s gave the right to all “inhabitants,” as long as “they” — the document uses that gender-neutral pronoun — could credibly declare they had property worth 50 pounds.

A 1797 statute made things even plainer, explicitly referring to voters as “he or she.”

There's quite a bit of beautiful language about the rights of man which was clearly written about men only. After a refresher on Confucianism, Sima Qian probably meant only men. But it feels funny to say "he was a sexist pig, but only because everyone was a sexist pig back then. We're sure he would have written men and women if he'd known better". Easier to pretend those words always meant everyone.

Again, that can't be right. Confucius was a holy man. But a quick search turns a claim he felt women were "at best, subhuman beings" in this book abstract. Alexander Pope famously wrote "The proper study of mankind is man" in 1734. But in England married women didn't count as people until the 1870 Married Women's Property Act

In say, the 1970's, he/him were deliberately used as both, in a funny way. Many professions were all-male and used "he". Women joining them wasn't popular, so the "he" was kept -- if anyone asked, it meant women too. Over the years "they", "them" and "him or her" became more common, and "he" tended to mean men only again.

Again, that sounds wrong. The Land of the Free didn't like women working men's jobs? But rewatch Mad Men, or review the semi-decent 'pedia's History of Women in America. Click down to PostWar and women forcing their way into jobs. Note that before the 1963 Equal Pay Act, it was legal to have one salary for men, and another for women.

Answer 6

Yes, that is the grammatically correct way to state it. However, some people think gender-neutral "he"/"man" is offensive.

Answer 7

In short, yes.

"He" had been used for both sexes during the Middle English and Modern English periods.

In the second half of the 20th century, people expressed more widespread concern at the use of sexist and male-oriented language. This included criticism of the use of "man" as a generic term to include men and women and of the use of "he" to refer to any human, regardless of sex (social gender).

source: wiki

Besides that, American English speakers use “their” and “they” as singular pronouns all the time in spoken English. They use it when the gender of a person is not known. They also use it when they do not want to say the gender.

source: VOA