Thank you for that interesting link, Sister Mitza. I was particularly taken with this:
Quote:
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So, gradually, people became more and more aware that midnight could actually mean a particular point in time. And at that point it changed to masculine. And so we find these particular points on a continuum, all are masculine. The extent of, or when something means a range along a continuum, we find feminine.
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This explains pretty much everything. It also, in theory, dispenses with the vexed problem of pronouns. Basically, everything that is definitively male
or female should be masculine (he/him/his) and everything else - i.e. the nonsense - should be female (she/her/hers).
Once we all get used to this, it will greatly simplify matters.
