Basically, it is becoming more common in English writing to use the masculine “hero” as gender neutral when the figure is a famous and/or historical figure.
If it is a fictional character, “heroine” is still widely used.
There’s been a wider trend of using gender neutral terms in the language. “They” as a replacement for “he” or “she”, for example, used to be improper but is now quite widely accepted and not only when speaking about a non-binary person.
Just because your English professors taught at a university, does not mean they are the final authoritative word on how the English language is spoken.
That’s kind of the point: there isn’t an authority on English. The closest we come is a bunch of English elites making up informal rules on grammar, spelling, and pronunciation and judging everyone else for not using their version. … And a bunch of try-hards who enforce their arbitrary and often nonsensical 'rules '.
Off topic and pedantic question. I’m not a native english speaker so, please don’t take this in any other way.
In the last sentence you said “hero to women”. Is that the correct usage? Or should it be " heroine to women"?
Good conversation on the topic here
Basically, it is becoming more common in English writing to use the masculine “hero” as gender neutral when the figure is a famous and/or historical figure.
If it is a fictional character, “heroine” is still widely used.
There’s been a wider trend of using gender neutral terms in the language. “They” as a replacement for “he” or “she”, for example, used to be improper but is now quite widely accepted and not only when speaking about a non-binary person.
“they” has always been proper, it just used to be incorrectly taught agaist like split infinitives and ending a sentence with a proposition.
Wikipedia dates its first usge as over 500 years ago, and complaints less than 300.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
Take that one up with my English professors in University.
Just because your English professors taught at a university, does not mean they are the final authoritative word on how the English language is spoken.
That’s kind of the point: there isn’t an authority on English. The closest we come is a bunch of English elites making up informal rules on grammar, spelling, and pronunciation and judging everyone else for not using their version. … And a bunch of try-hards who enforce their arbitrary and often nonsensical 'rules '.
If it parses, it rolls.
*preposition. Many people end sentences with proposition ;-)
In English hero is mixed and heroine is exclusively feminine.
I tried to find “usage” stats on the word, but all I got was listings for substance abuse helpline. :D