Sic erat scriptum

This week I encountered a sentence of the following sort:

Bloggs (2013) states that "when a participant has finished his (sic) task then the researcher can move to the next."

As I found myself in the company of the author, and one other, I queried the use of sic.  This is an abbreviation of sic erat scriptum, which means thus it was written.  The conventional use of sic is to indicate an exact rendition, and to imply that there are errors committed by the author quoted. In this case I was informed that the error was the use of his, which the other claimed was androcentric and sexist.  The author agreed.

A few things struck me about this.  First, this is not evidence of sexism.  The use of his to denote a participant does not imply any value judgements. Replacing the term with her could lead to a claim of gynocentrism, but again, not sexism.  But even the centric claims are laboured as this is but one sentence of many, and the remainder are not quoted.  The reader has no idea whether or not Bloggs has adopted a strategy of evenly distributing male and female denotations throughout each and every piece written.

Were Bloggs to have constantly used his throughout all of the piece, and all other pieces, and to do so in a sexist manner, this is still not an error in the sense demanded by the convention.  Bloggs has a right to be an androcentric and sexist author, that is his or her choice (I genuinely do not know the sex of Bloggs).  We can take issue with this opinion, argue with it, and make counterclaims from a more egalitarian basis, but we should reserve sic in order to denote errors of exposition and logic.

My reason for this view is simple - it is important to keep opinion separated from formal argument.  Views about sexism, at this level, are mere opinion. Bloggs was attempting to convey something about a particular method and that should remain the focus.  To that end Bloggs made no error of exposition, and there is, in fact, no evidence presented to declare Bloggs either androcentric or sexist.  If Bloggs were either of these things it would be hard to understand how this impacted upon an account of a method.  But if it did then I would recommend not quoting.  

I do not like sexism or sexists.  I do not really know what andro- and gyno-centrism amounts to, but I imagine they are the kind of terms one might attach to secondary school choices around football and netball team membership.  So, not precisely sexist, but labouring under a thoughtless tradition.  All the other forms of exclusion available are generally pretty unpalatable to me also and when I encounter them I like to tackle them head on with clear argument. Allusions in the absence of definite evidence do not help to reduce partisan views.  My suspicion is that they open one to claims of hypersensitivity and peculiar biases of one's own.  That is often a losing position.