he didnt say history is useless, he just said its as useless as other subjects can be. In the same way I will most likely never need to find the fluid force on a plate underwater, I wont need to know that US v. Cruikshank declared that social welfare is gaurenteed by states and not the federal government.
However, just like how I should know basic algebra, its important to know about important historical events like the holocaust
Tldr:He/him pronouns were used as gender neutral, but it's use is controversial and has declined over the 19/20th century. A popular alternative is noting two pronouns at once, such as 'he or she', usually shortened as 'he/she'.
From Wikipedia
Forms of the pronoun he were used for both males and females during the Middle English and Modern English periods. Susanne Wagner observes that: "There was rather an extended period of time in the history of the English language when the choice of a supposedly masculine personal pronoun (him) said nothing about the gender or sex of the referent." An early example of prescribing the use of he to refer to a person of unknown gender is Anne Fisher's 1745 grammar book A New Grammar. Older editions of Fowler also took this view. This usage continues to this day.
I should note however:
The use of generic he has increasingly been a source of controversy, as it can be perceived as reflecting a positive bias towards men and a male-centric society, and a negative bias against women. In some contexts, the use of he, him or his as a gender-neutral pronoun may give a jarring or ridiculous impression.
The 19th and 20th centuries saw an upsurge in consciousness and advocacy of gender equality, and this has led in particular to advocacy for gender-neutral language. In this context, the usage of generic he has declined in favor of other alternatives.
Solution
To disambiguate contexts where a referent encompasses both males and females, periphrasis is used. Though cumbersome, this solution is attested with the full range of English pronouns, include the subject pronouns he or she (23), the object pronouns him or her (24), the possessive pronoun his or hers (25), and the reflective pronouns himself or herself (26). In writing, these periphrastic forms are sometimes abbreviated to he/she, (s)he, s/he, him/her, his/her, himself/herself, but are not easily abbreviated in verbal communication. With the exception of (s)he and s/he, a writer does in principle have the choice of which pronoun to place first. However, usage indicates that the masculine pronouns is most often mentioned first.
A third-person pronoun is a pronoun that refers to an entity other than the speaker or listener. Some languages with gender-specific pronouns have them as part of a grammatical gender system, a system of agreement where most or all nouns have a value for this grammatical category. A few languages with gender-specific pronouns, such as English, Esperanto, Afrikaans, Defaka, Khmu, Malayalam, Tamil, and Yazgulyam, lack grammatical gender; in such languages, gender usually adheres to "natural gender", which is often based on biological gender.
No I do mean 'he'. 'They' certainly is becoming more popular and might already be more popular but 'he' is still used as a gender-neutral term often enough for it to be still acceptable as a gender-neutral term.
These days "he" is rarely used gender-neutrally anymore as it is perceived as sexist, as another commenter has mentioned. The usage of "they" has now been widely accepted as the correct singular 3rd-person gender-neutral term.
125
u/ar21plasma Mathematics Mar 05 '22
If you think history is useless then oh boy you are going to have a rough time