Coincidence. While I was away a friend left a newspaper article next to my computer about the shift that's going on in the use of pronouns. Where we used to make a difference between male, female and neuter now the tendency is towards changing the neuter to a gender related pronoun.(for as yet mostly in spoken language) "Het meisje (girl), dat..." (neuter) now often is shifted to "Het meisje, die..." (female). This happens mainly with living creatures.
Quote:
"This counts as well for animals that live close to people, like pets and cattle. All other animals are simply, whether they are male of female: 'he'. Plants and countable items (like objects)
are also all 'he'- a 'he' that in fact is not really male, but just neuter. And non-countable items, such as 'rice', 'milk'
and 'pepper', are 'it' - the pronoun that since the old days
already has a neuter meaning."
