This is one big reason I don’t like Sam Harris. It always has been (since he became someone to like or not like, that is). I went to his blog to look for his post on liberals and Islam, and in the process of looking (which I haven’t completed yet because I paused to say this) I read the first sentence of the first post.
From time to time one discovers a person so good at his job that it is almost impossible to imagine him doing anything else.
It’s just odd, and stubbornly clueless, that even now, even after a big disagreement with a lot of feminists about the way he talks about women, he does that. I think most intellectual types have learned not to do that by now, and it sticks out that Harris hasn’t. The End of Faith was like that on every damn page, and after awhile I couldn’t stand it any more.
(There’s a bit of extra humor in the fact that he did manage to say “a person” instead of “a man”…but just couldn’t manage the follow-through.)
I think I’d prefer it if he said “a man so good at his job.” At least that wouldn’t imply (no matter how accidentally) that only men are people, or that they’re the only people capable of being that good at their jobs.
Look, he nearly wrote “their/them” but caught himself just before he fell prey to “the ridiculous paranoia engendered by political correctness”. 😉
Ophelia, you really are terminally clueless aren’t you. He’s talking about ‘Dan Carlin’, a male. It is perfectly acceptable and not at all sexist to use male pronouns when you are, in fact, referring to a male person. This is beyond the fact that many people still use default male pronouns (or female pronouns!) as a matter of convenience. Not sexist.
No, using the male pronoun for the default is indeed sexist.
I think by now it should be clear to everyone that anyone who aspires to the position of public intellectual should know that the singular they is the proper form, and has been the proper form for a great many great authors for a great many decades.
Even Wikipedia knows it:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
BTW, make “centuries” instead of just “decades”.
And even if it wasn’t, writing, particularly on factual matters (presumably what Harris considers his writing to be) demands clarity, and clarity is ill-served by use of male pronouns as universals, while clarity is promoted by use of the singular they.
Hunt @3: he didn’t say “Dan Carlin.” He said “a person.” Dan Carlin is a he. A person gets an indeterminate pronoun: “she or he” if that’s your bag. “they” if you’re less stilted.
Hunt:
But the reference was to a person, not to a male person; as Ophelia noted*, it was revealing.
(Or: what quixote wrote, above)
—
* “just couldn’t manage the follow-through”
@ 3 Hunt
So your claim, then, it that Harris was saying, “From time to time one discovers Dan Carlin”.
I must dispute the claim as I haven’t discovered him even once, and I’m very dubious I’ll ever do it from time to time.
Athywren #1
(Apologies in advance for my snark) Well, perhaps no matter how good a woman is at her job, he can always imagine her giving it up (heroically) to have a family.
Harris pedestalizes Carlin and then identifies with him. Aren’t we so good at our jobs? It’s all about the me.
Also it’s example of having let go of the big god needing to find little gods to fill the void. One does not want to go to bed without a banky.
It’s depressing when you see this from someone like Harris. I’ve not read all of his work but what I have does indeed demonstrate this sexist tic. If you read stuff from Christian literature much still resolutely uses male pronouns and “man” when discussing the human race. Humanists should be above this kind of thing. It’s not simply political correctness; it’s acknowledging that fifty per cent of the world’s population aren’t male. It shouldn’t be a very difficult thing to do.
I think these guys need a friend, someone nearby who could say ok, ‘a person’ is a good start, now sit down here by me and we’ll take a look at the rest of that sentence.
@Ophelia Benson
@quixote
@John Morales
You should not be interpreting him so literally. In the following sentence he states he is referring to Dan Carlin, a man. The English language is wonderfully flexible; you can’t just read sentences in isolation and expect to understand the message the writer is trying to convey.
@Daryl Carpenter, 12
So you’re saying that, rather than being political correctness, it’s factual correctness? I wonder how many people would be able to bring themselves to scoff and roll their eyes at factual correctness?
Joseph Thomson#14
But he’s not talking about a specific person in that sentence. He’s speaking in the general sense. The idea that this situation is one that everybody finds themselves in. That from “time to time one discovers a person.” That is to express to us that he has found himself in a situation we should relate to. That sentence was not about Dan Carlin. That sentence was about the reader.
To my shame it took me several re-readings before I noticed it. Fucking privilege blindness.
@ 17 screw dog
Aye. Which is the whole point of these posts. To raise awareness. But you still get the clueless going, “Ophelia’s just looking for any excuse to pick on Sam Harris”.
I confess I didn’t catch it on the first read either. I assume that the non-gendered “person” camouflaged the “his” and “him.”