Re: My answer about using preferred pronouns

[reimerd]

(Please use this issue for comments on My answer about using preferred pronouns.)

---

Hi Jon - I recall connecting one of your previous posts with the letters of C.S. Lewis, and it's happened again. So, FWIW, and apropos of this in particular: "That can be awkward and ambiguous, of course, but the fault lies in our language failing to keep pace with cultural changes." — here's Lewis to Sister Penelope, writing on 10 January 1952:

I don’t quite feel we shd. gain anything by the doctrine that Adam was a hermaphrodite. As for the (rudimentary) presence in each sex of organs proper to the other, does that not occur in other mammals as well as in humans? … If so there wd. be no more ground for making men (I mean, humans) hermaphroditic than any other mammal. (By the way, what an inconvenience it is in English to have the same word for Homo and Vir). No doubt these organs have spiritual significance: there ought spiritually to be a man in every woman and a woman in every man. And how horrid the ones who haven’t got it are: I can’t bear a ‘man’s man’ or a ‘woman’s woman’.

~ Collected Letters, Volume III, pp. 157-8. It seems Lewis was feeling the same "fault in our language" as you were describing in your post. ("FWIW", as noted above!)

[jericson]

What a great find! Looking up the Latin words, I agree with him that having two words would help in cases like this.

I hadn't heard of the idea that Adam was a hermaphrodite until I read a commentary by Robert Alter. He's fairly dismissive of the idea.

[reimerd]

Alter's instinct was sound, I reckon. And, just in case any one else stumbles on this little thread, here are some usage notes on Latin homo and vir (might have helped to include that in my original comment - sorry!).