One Reader’s Confusion Over Political Correctness
January 25th 2010 21:00
My colleague loves movies as much as I love books. If he wants to see a particular film, he checks the reviews on imdb.com first. I do the same thing with books but on amazon.com.
One book I was thinking of buying was The Cat Owner’s Problem Solver by Margaret H. Bonham HERE. I have to admit, it was more for the photos than the subject matter as I already have a couple of cat psychology books. I was reading the reviews on Amazon when I came across one where the reader complained the book was only about female cats. I thought this was strange as when I had a browse of that book at Dymocks, I did not get the same impression.
Underneath the comment was the author’s response: that instead of using the generic ‘he’, she decided to use ‘she’ for a change.
Shortly afterwards, I got a Dymocks voucher so I decided to buy this book and I’m glad I did. Not only is it full of adorable photos of cats, it is easy to read and full of practical tips on how to let your kitty know if he/she is out of line. As I started reading it, I noticed the generic ‘she’ straight away but I took that as a reversal of the commonplace use of ‘he’. Okay, maybe I am biased as I had already seen the author’s comment on Amazon and also because I have feminist beliefs, so I’m all for eradicating the use of ‘he’ in place of ‘he or she’ but I think this reader has taken the pronoun literally. In any case, it’s nice to read a book where the female gender is the dominant sex for a change.
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