I have a couple of text books who opt for gender non-specific description (the Director, the convenyancer etc) and it tends to annoy me as it tends to increase the length of sentences and can get quite confusing, as the description often appears several times in a sentence. I like simplicity in my reading. I also dislike the he/she his/hers things that some of my books do. I know enough that not all criminals are men, not all people buying houses are men etc. On the flip side, my criminal law books often give examples of the idea they are trying to convey and swap between using male and female names. But to be honest it's not something I notice especially. They could use initials for all I care :>

More interesting to me, is the use of insults, and the gender-specific nature of them. There are a number of insults that are particularly related to the fact that you are a woman - bitch, whore, bint, slut, slag, slapper. Other insults, such as bastard, git, bugger can be used to describe either sex, and whilst probably these are used more with men, can be interchangable. I can't think of as many insulting descriptions which apply specifically to men, as my first list do to women. I also find some of the insults that are 'female' much more insulting than the general ones - for example the word bint is completely repulsive to me, and i've rarely, if ever, used it. Similarly, the phrase mother-fucker. I'm not even entirely sure why this is an insult, although I could hazard some guesses. But we don't have father-fucker.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I got to write a list of semi-swear words, so I guess my work here is done.