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? asked in Social SciencePsychology · 3 years ago

(Sort of) Science question?

Whenever an exam question or any other fictional scenario names a person (e.g. a student did an experiment on heat ) but doesn t give their gender, I always immediately assume the person named is a guy.

I noticed this when my teacher recognised I had answered a question by saying he in the answer, even though the gender wasn t given, and he said girls do the same thing, but they say she

Anyone know anything about this? Just curious

5 Answers

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  • ?
    Lv 7
    3 years ago

    I do that too here, God only knows why, perhaps have a neutral

    Gender to visualise ?

    Very best wishes

    Mars

    Source:) studies.

  • 3 years ago

    We don't have a genderless pronoun in English. So the convention is to use "he" to mean anyone. We could say "one" does or doesn't do such and such, but that sounds a bit forced, academic. I had a book editor once substitute about half of the "he"s with "she"s in my book, and it was jarring, unnatural. She who? I don't remember a woman being mentioned earlier - who do they mean? French, famously, has a genderless pronoun which makes it much easier. Shame we don't.

  • Anonymous
    3 years ago

    Most major scientific discoveries were in fact made by males. It’s custom to use the gender most typical. It’s no different than referring to a nurse as she even if you don’t know the gender.

    .

    Feminists often use she even when it’s most likely the person was a he as a way to misrepresent women’s roles. They are attempting to get people to think the scientific discovery was probably made by a female, when odds are very strong, it wasn’t.

    .

  • 3 years ago

    Some of it is the male dominance of societies affects language usage, and some of it the we have more male scientists than female scientists.

  • 3 years ago

    When you have no information about a subject, it is natural and human to fill in the blanks, and you'll almmost always do it with your characteristics.

    Men for men, Women for women. Whites and white, blacks and black, etc.

    Your default thinking pattern is always the thing, the identity YOU know best.

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