Now that we have had a good bit of discussion, which I have enjoyed, about the wierdness of grammatical gender, I have to put in a plug for clearly defined gender.

The lack of any indication of gender in 99% of cases in modern English is perhaps a shortcoming. In situations when it may be desirable to indicate gender, you usually have to resort to some sort of periphrasis, often clumsy.

For example: When Charles de Gaulle started a speech, he opened with, "François et Françoises!" (Frenchmen and Frenchwomen!). I suppose that in Canada one would start with "Canadiens et Canadiennes" or "Québecois et Québecoises" and if one were addressing an American audience in French, "Américains et Américaines". But when the President starts one of those speeches televised from the Oval Office, it starts, "My fellow Americans" and has to cover both genders. The French examples above make it clear the orator is addressing his fellow countrymen of each sex/gender specifically and individually. To do this in English is not possible except by importing some noun that does have specific gender and constructing something, like perhaps, My brothers and sisters throughout America, or some such tripe.

The question asks itself, Is there any necessity to specify gender except in rare cases? Are we not beyond putting people in little boxes and avoiding unnecessary labels? Should we be paying much attention to sex/gender?

The answer to that is, I think perhaps a cart/horse or chicken/egg situation. It may be that other nationalities are more aware of gender and the differences between the sexes than we precisely because their language makes clear differentiations between the genders. And we English speakers are in the forefront of the movement towards androgeny and eliminating the differences between the sexes maybe partly because our language makes it easy to ignore gender.

What do y'all think?