I believe this would be the earliest example of the cancer at D&D and it started with TSR by February 6, 1995.

If you go to the 2nd Edition Players Handbook Revised pg 9: A Note About Pronouns

They make it a point they are using male as neuter and not to exclude women.  I wonder which artard at TSR thought to include that line of horseshit.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on May 19, 2023, 01:07:17 AM
I believe this would be the earliest example of the cancer at D&D and it started with TSR by February 6, 1995.

If you go to the 2nd Edition Players Handbook Revised pg 9: A Note About Pronouns

They make it a point they are using male as neuter and not to exclude women.  I wonder which artard at TSR thought to include that line of horseshit.

Isn't AD&D 1E's constant use of "he or she" more progressive then 2E's use of generic "he"? So I'd think the cancer started with AD&D.

No, Gygax correctly identified the two genders there.  Now if Gygax wrote They in place of he or she you'd have a point.  In the 2E PHB they specifically had a section on pronouns describing why they went with the He as neuter.  Style guides from the 90s included using he and she.  The woke cancer wasn't in the high schools yet at that time and were at the carbuncle phase in the university during the 90's they had festered yet to have a societal impact then.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on May 19, 2023, 01:07:17 AM
I believe this would be the earliest example of the cancer at D&D and it started with TSR by February 6, 1995.

If you go to the 2nd Edition Players Handbook Revised pg 9: A Note About Pronouns

They make it a point they are using male as neuter and not to exclude women.  I wonder which artard at TSR thought to include that line of horseshit.

No, that's standard and correct usage, and it has been for a very long time

Quote from: Mishihari on May 19, 2023, 01:51:20 AM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on May 19, 2023, 01:07:17 AM
I believe this would be the earliest example of the cancer at D&D and it started with TSR by February 6, 1995.

If you go to the 2nd Edition Players Handbook Revised pg 9: A Note About Pronouns

They make it a point they are using male as neuter and not to exclude women.  I wonder which artard at TSR thought to include that line of horseshit.

No, that's standard and correct usage, and it has been for a very long time

Yup. Use of "he" as gender neutral was the older, more traditional approach -- going back two hundred years. If you look back in 1950s writing, say, you won't see much use of "he or she". Using "he or she" largely came from a 1960s push for more gender equality.

Quote from: Mishihari on May 19, 2023, 01:51:20 AM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on May 19, 2023, 01:07:17 AM
I believe this would be the earliest example of the cancer at D&D and it started with TSR by February 6, 1995.

If you go to the 2nd Edition Players Handbook Revised pg 9: A Note About Pronouns

They make it a point they are using male as neuter and not to exclude women.  I wonder which artard at TSR thought to include that line of horseshit.

No, that's standard and correct usage, and it has been for a very long time

Greetings!

Exactly right, my friend! All of this language twisting and screeching "OFFENSE" by all of these Feminists and Marxist Cucks, is, ultimately due to Marxist brainwashing. These various "Activists" had to be brainwashed and *Trained* to be offended. They were trained in books written by Feminists and Marxists, and taught all of this BS in schools.

How do we know this is true?

We know this is true because when we were kids--and for centuries before us--no one had any problems with our language. Women all *knew* that when someone gave a speech talking about "Mankind"--he wasn't excluding women. MANKIND encompasses both male and female. The same manner, as you noted, with the unknown or neutered use in general speech of "HE". Everyone new that by context, it also included WOMEN.

No one had to walk around saying "He or She" or alternating saying He and She, or His or Hers. Whatever. Everyone knew by context. If you wanted to be exclusionary, or strictly specific, you said "All of the passengers were men." or some such.

When Gygax was using He or She, that was from being influenced from pressure by fucking Feminists at the time that had infiltrated our schools, and had begun whining and crying about it. Again, how do we know? Because all of this BS started in the late 1960's with the Liberals and the Feminists being brainfucked by Marxist revolutionaries and hippies.

Just ten or twenty years prior, no one whined about this kind of BS.

That train has left the station, and now we are where we are at, with all new stupid "pronouns", our language being mangled left, right and center, and people everywhere being offended by something.

There was a time we had rules. Rules were simple, and applied to everyone, the entire language, and no one gave a fuck about someone who got their feelings hurt. Suck it up buttercup! That's the way it is!

People throughout our society no longer have the guts to stare down a screeching feminist and tell her the same thing, nor do we have the fortitude to stomp on all the other mentally ill crybabies screaming in our society today.

Our society has become full of frothing-at-the-mouth Feminists, and weak, feminized men and crybabies.

Our language gets bastardized and mangled every year now, as well. So sad and pathetic.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

The earliest would be The Dragon issue 39, I think it's the first time the feminist complaints were given any serious attention from TSR, but it wouldn't be the last.

Edited to add:

Dragon Issue 57 presents us one of those "I'll take shit that never happened for a billion Alex" stories feminists love to tell. Not forgetting the comic strip mocking the chainmail bikini.

I'm sorry to burst anyone's bubble but the rot was already there back in the 80s

'Men' as including 'Women' also goes back to the Dark Ages. If you wanted to talk about only-male Men you'd say "Wer-Man". 

Men - Men, can include women.
Wer-men - Men exclusive of women.
Wo-men - Women, exclusive of men.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 19, 2023, 02:18:59 AMI'm sorry to burst anyone's bubble but the rot was already there back in the 80s

This goes back even to the 1970s. Here's an article from Playing at the World about early complaints. Note that the vast majority of these complaints are coming from male feminists, not actual women.

https://medium.com/@increment/the-first-female-gamers-c784fbe3ff37

Here are some female characters (played by men) hanging various D&D luminaries in effigy for the crime of suggesting female characters having different rules in game. SJW have always been nasty people. [from Alarums & Excursions #19]



All that being said, I will say that the renaming of demons and devil in 2e was really a turning point. As it showed the those writing D&D were willing to put the complaints of non-players over the needs of their own customers. Something they continue to do to this day.

First, the text there is identical to the text in the original 1989 printing of the PHB, so that pushes it back six years at least.

Second, any work of mortal man is going to be flawed, fallible, and prone to corruption. I think we can identify 'tipping points' where changes or corruptions took stronger hold, or potential tendencies in the material that lend themselves to corruption, but pointing to any single time or place as 'this is where it all went wrong' is harder.

Personally, I think the tipping point for D&D is three successive, interrelated points:

• The acquisition of TSR by Wizards of the Coast.
• The hiring of Jonathan Tweet as design lead for 3rd Edition.
• The decision, whether by Adkison, Dancey, Tweet, all of them, and/or others, that 3rd Edition should focus on "feeling like D&D."

If you want to really trace it to the origin, see Rousseau, circa 1754.  Then it gradually builds from there, through various French and German philosophers, some events in 1917, Thomas Dewey and his ilk in the 1930s, finally bursting out like a overripe pimple on the culture in the 1960s.  Some institutions resisted the rot longer than others. RPGs were way too far down the list of importance to get much attention from the viral spread until much later, but they were exposed to it from the get go. 

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 19, 2023, 10:47:12 AM
If you want to really trace it to the origin, see Rousseau, circa 1754. 

"Person is born free, but everywhere in chains!"

Quote from: SHARK on May 19, 2023, 02:14:20 AM
When Gygax was using He or She, that was from being influenced from pressure by fucking Feminists at the time that had infiltrated our schools, and had begun whining and crying about it. Again, how do we know? Because all of this BS started in the late 1960's with the Liberals and the Feminists being brainfucked by Marxist revolutionaries and hippies.

Just ten or twenty years prior, no one whined about this kind of BS.

That train has left the station, and now we are where we are at, with all new stupid "pronouns", our language being mangled left, right and center, and people everywhere being offended by something.

Factually, I agree that Gygax's use of "he and she" was an influence from the 1960s feminist movement. So it's been in the game since the original AD&D.

Also, in terms of actual language usage, "he" was never gender neutral. As used prior to the 1960s, it implied always or typically male. The older usage pattern was:

(1) Always male - use "he"
(2) Typically but not always male - like doctor, police, professor, politician, etc. - use "he"
(3) Typically but not always female - like secretary or nurse - use "she"
(4) Always female - use "she"

Even though there were male secretaries in the 1950s, people didn't use "he" as the gender-neutral pronoun for secretaries. They'd say "she" instead.


In terms of opinion, I don't agree about your characterization of the time. Prior to the 1960s, I don't think one can deny that society was sexist. Women frequently couldn't get their own bank account or credit card, could be legally discriminated against in job hiring or college admissions, couldn't serve on juries (i.e. 1957's "Twelve Angry Men"), and so forth. The prejudice wasn't subtle - it was outright legal and social inequality. So I don't agree that 1960s feminists were whiny crybabies over nothing, as you characterize them.

Quote from: Mishihari on May 19, 2023, 01:51:20 AM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on May 19, 2023, 01:07:17 AM
I believe this would be the earliest example of the cancer at D&D and it started with TSR by February 6, 1995.

If you go to the 2nd Edition Players Handbook Revised pg 9: A Note About Pronouns

They make it a point they are using male as neuter and not to exclude women.  I wonder which artard at TSR thought to include that line of horseshit.

No, that's standard and correct usage, and it has been for a very long time

^This^

We don't need to be creating shadows when there are plenty of real ones already out there...

Quote from: hedgehobbit on May 19, 2023, 08:17:09 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on May 19, 2023, 02:18:59 AMI'm sorry to burst anyone's bubble but the rot was already there back in the 80s

This goes back even to the 1970s. Here's an article from Playing at the World about early complaints. Note that the vast majority of these complaints are coming from male feminists, not actual women.

https://medium.com/@increment/the-first-female-gamers-c784fbe3ff37

And as all male feminists it lies:

QuoteIn 1943, Pratt wrote that "today there are nearly as many players of one sex as the other."

Now, that asertion could very well be true for his small circle at wartime when millions of men were figthing the war not playing pretend war like the pratt.

But you just need to look at the complaints and conventions to know this was a lie back then and keeps on being one today.