Gender-biased language creates gender-biased characters. That's fine if you want to depict someone as a sexist. It's bad if you put the words in the mouth of someone who supposedly believes in sexual equality. It's especially dangerous if you're writing from a third-person omniscient viewpoint—readers will assume that you're the one who's biased.
Therefore, every writer's repertoire should include the ability to write gender-neutral language. A key element is to avoid such words as "man" or "mankind" to refer to our species (use "humanity", "humankind", "Homo sapiens", or even "Earthlings"), and to steer clear of other non-inclusive words.
Avoid forms of "he" as a "generic" third person singular, as in "Each writer should practice his craft." Use the plural instead, as in, "All writers should practice their craft," or the second person, as in, "If you want to be a writer, you should practice your craft."
Another useful approach is to choose specific people as examples: "Clark and Lois both want to be writers. Clark thinks he should read a lot of writing books, while Lois believes she doesn't have to read anything as long as she writes at least 300 words every day." By choosing specific people as illustrations, I don't end up in a snarl of (supposedly) generic pronouns.
While I'm talking about gender, I'll pass on a trick I like. As I write a story, I sometimes find I have no particular reason to make a character male or female. For example, my lead character might be a police officer interrogating a murder witness. The witness is just a minor character who happened to be standing on the street when the murder happened; there's no plot reason why the witness has to be a man or has to be a woman. Therefore, I'll choose whichever gender is the opposite of the other person in the scene. This makes the scene easier to write because one person can be "he" and the other "she". Here's an example:
Detective John Marlowe found the witness at the curbside: a middle-aged woman who'd been coming home from work. He asked what she'd seen and she told him of the weird green ray that shot out of the alley as the victim passed...
That's what it's like when Marlowe is male and the witness is female. Now suppose they're both male.
Detective John Marlowe found the witness at the curbside: a middle-aged man who'd been coming home from work. Marlowe asked the man what he'd seen and the man told Marlowe of the weird green ray that shot out of the alley as the victim passed...
This isn't as slick. I have to keep talking about "Marlowe" and "the man" so you can tell which is which. I'd have the same difficulties if both characters were female. Going with one of each gender avoids such small but irksome wording problems.
Once again, I want to stress this is only
when the gender of the character doesn't matter. If the
witness in the Marlowe example is going to play a
significant role in the story (beyond this brief appearance
in a
single paragraph), then you can't treat gender so casually.
Like it or not, gender has a huge effect on the
reader's perception of a character and the dynamics of that
character's interactions with other people. Even when the
context is utterly non-sexual (a witness who just happened
to see something), the character's gender will begin to
exert an influence if he or she remains "on-stage" for a
meaningful length of time.
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Copyright © 2001, James Alan Gardner