He And She: What's The Real Difference?

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Clive Thompson’s article “He and She: What’s the Real Difference?” poses the controversial question that various millennials have been debating for years: “What the heck is gender, anyway?” (365). For a large number of people, gender exists as a social divide solely based on whether an individual is anatomically and biologically male or female; nevertheless, there are those who argue that gender involves more than what anatomy and biology offer. Regardless of the perspective, gender affects how one behaves both privately and publicly, appears in social and private settings, communicates with others, and above all, uses language for literary purposes. Thompson’s writing observes the experiment of Bar-Ilan University’s professor, Moshe Koppel. …show more content…

In his article, Thompson exposes Koppel’s evidence that women use more personal pronouns when writing than men. A group of Koppel’s computer scientists analyzed the writings of men and women by comparing them with their invented algorithm. The team found that women tend to utilize a greater number of personal pronouns than men. Often times men write about objects rather than people while women enjoy writing about people and expressing their emotions. (365). Personal pronouns such as “he”, “she”, “you”, and “they” produce personal and emotional meanings, and because women express their emotions more frequently than men, women gravitate toward the use of personal pronouns in their writing. By adding factual evidence into the article, the author places the focus of his writing on the usage of personal pronouns in women’s writing. Similar to Thompson, McWroter’s explains how the usage of pronouns should completely be gender neutral in literature (373-379). The entire article concentrates on the personal pronouns “they” and “he/she”. At first, McWhroter discusses the use of “they” as a singular pronoun although grammar experts consider it to be a plural pronoun. According to McWhroter, “they” creates a more gender neutral style in writing than “he/she”

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