User:RustyOldShip/She4Ships

It's a recurring controversy whether 'she' is acceptable for ships on Wikipedia. The rule, MOS:SHIP, says "either 'she' or 'it' is fine but be consistent and don't change articles without consensus," since October 2011. For some reason, I read all the many debates instead of working on pressing deadlines.

Seeing there is an opinion piece saying ships should be 'it', I thought a counter-opinion was fair. I've also included a summary of the debate below; maybe it will save somebody some time the next time this issue comes up.

'She' as disambiguation

'She' is very practical for ship contexts, as 'she' is frequently only attributable to the ship in question, which would otherwise be 'it', along with the sea, bulkheads, the weather, lunchtime, or myriadic other things. By calling her 'she', one disambiguates the ship (very frequently discussed) from nearly everything else which is 'it'. I think that this might be a large part of why 'she' has stuck.

I think this is useful on Wikipedia too. In my effort (below) to approximate how many articles use she or it, I word-searched "she" and "it". "She" usually means the ship; "it" is often a general situation, a piece of machinery on the ship, an organisation, etc.

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender comes up too, and oft misunderstood. Old English "scip" is neuter. But that is not the same as the gender given to an individual ship. In modern usage, one might discuss ships in abstract as "it", yet any particular ship as "she". German, like English, calls a ship "she" but "schiff" is a neuter word, so modern "she" could very well be a remnant of old gender.

A quote from the 1500s says all things inanimate are "it", except ships. Whether or not 'she' is from old gender, the ship exception is longstanding.

Some editors say the usage of 'she' is jarring; others say 'it' is jarring. Linguistically, it's understandable to be jarred by 'she', as English is otherwise nearly genderless, but equally, many people, particularly older native speakers, are used to ships being 'she' and find 'it' jarring.

I wish to stress, as a recovering conlang maker, that grammatical gender is a separate concept from biological gender. It happens to be that Indo-European tongues (the most prominent gendered tongues) relate them, but "grammatical gender" can be any system that classifies nouns, for example, Swahili has 18 noun classes (genders) with categories for such things as plants, animals, "things with an extended outline shape" and abstract nouns.

Ships are different

Sometimes, people refer to cars, machines, motorcycles as "she" also. It comes up in these discussions. But it's not the same for ships. I don't think anybody would be jarred by calling a car "it", but some (including myself) find it jarring for a ship to be "it". Unlike anything else, ships are "she" even in formal writing, such as an online encyclopedia that debates this repeatedly and has continued to allow "she" every time. There was a proposal to allow "she" for steam locomotives, which was roundly rejected. A $62,707 US Navy report on ship naming policy does not mention a preference for "she" or "it", but refers to ships with "she" or "her" 39 times.

Being philosophical and thoroughly unacademic, ships have souls. So is quoted FDR, allegedly. A ship has a crew, a culture, a collective conscience. I liken it to a corporation with legal personhood, except a ship has a body, and is therefore more personlike than an abstract legal entity.

Offensive?

Offense seems to be at the heart of the discussion. The very first points raised were, in order, "I'm offended" and "I'm offended that you're offended". Both sides appear to come from opposite ends: is calling a ship "she" objectifying "she" or personifying the ship? To quote a reddit user on r/feminism: "Referring to a human being as an object and humanizing an actual object are two very different things ... it’s rather typical for a female soldier to refer to her weapon as “he” with a male name, and male soldiers to refer to their weapon as “she” with a female name. Trust me, this has literally nothing to do with objectification and is quite honestly a play on relationship dynamics. You quite literally have a relationship with your vessel/weapon. You are reliant upon it for your survival, for your comfort, you maintain and car for it. "

Frankly, I agree. The early discussions often come down to offense and political correctness. Newer discussions tend to eschew those words, but the underlying sentiments of both sides remain.

The debate summarised

The general aim of the proposals is to change the MOS to enforce "it" for ships, instead of leaving at writer's choice.

Prevalence of 'she'

I made a crude survey of articles. Of 43 articles I checked, 29 used "she", 7 used "it" and 7 used both (a violation of MOS:SHIP; each article should be consistent). It's a small sample size and hardly representative, but it's enough to affirm my feeling that "most articles use 'she'". SchreiberBike tallied up news articles in one of the discussions and it seems both "she" and "it" are commonly used in non-specialist sources, so WP:SSF would not apply to editors using "she". He/she did that in 2013, and from poking my nose around in 2026, I think very little has changed. I noticed many

A few articles also use neither, preferring awkward rephrasings, such as TS King Edward's repeated "the vessel", "the turbine vessel", "the ship" and her name. This must handily be the worst approach the problem; pronouns are useful, and writing without them, tends to suck. HMS Calliope is another article specifically mentioned in the 2019 RFC for avoiding "she" and "it". Amusingly, her article is now peppered with both, as new editors have evidently used pronouns as they felt natural.

Previous discussions

In general, all the RFCs have been split remarkably equally. No clear consensus has emerged from any discussion, and I doubt one ever will. Discussions generally split along ship-interest: editors "with a bit of salt" near ubiquitously prefer "she" and do not want to change the current rules. This includes most of the editors who work on naval articles. Some "it" editors simply find the use of "she" suprising, unencyclopedic or odd, and are swayable; some believe using "she" is offensive or sexist and appear equally as rusted-on as the naval editors.

The pattern remains though, the more interest somebody has in ships, the more likely he/she is to prefer "she", and this includes most of the editors who write about ships. An MOS change will be a sweeping change and is likely to annoy them and drive some editors off.

• A 2004 discussion

• A 2006 discussion hits it in tangent

• A 2007 discussion

• A 2010 discussion

• A quick 2011 discussion

• A 2013 discussion

• The 2014 RFC

• The 2019 RFC

• The 2022 RFC

• The 2022 RFC decision is overturned: "They tried to craft (or select a minority) a 'middle of the road' solution, a nice move in most other venues but a super-vote in the context of a closer. Overturn either to 'no consensus to change';" "it seems a staggeringly inappropriate close."

• A quick 2022 discussion

• A 2024 discussion (brief)

• A 2026 discussion; someone "thinks it should be considered again"

Common Points