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Comment by edejong | Hacker News Reader

To me and many others it feels as a forced, immature (almost childlike), aloof desire for change. You use words like ‘rebalance’ as if there is an objective, universally shared belief our culture is out of balance. Thank God we have you as our savior.

Things will get out of balance the more it is forced, because with every politically correct motion, there is an equal opposite motion. All that is achieved is further polarization and misunderstanding.

To say the articles’ use of ‘they’ is normal in the UK feel duplicitous. I’ve read my fair share of British literature, newspapers and articles. The text feels completely alien to British writing.

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Because "they" in text has always been common for me, it's not a change and not forced -- it's been like this as long as I can remember.

I can't speak for the British writing you've read, but as a Brit living in and having grown up in the UK, singular non-gendered "they" is normal and common in both formal and informal text. Could be a function of my social context or the writing I've been exposed to, it's true. We all have our own perspective.

There's even an example of it in the Canterbury Tales (one of the most iconic early English texts). I can't remember the exact line now, but it got me quite annoyed when American writing teachers would mark my uses of "they" as incorrect and demand "he or she".

"They" as generic third person singular goes back at least five centuries. I am (obviously) referring to address a known individual using "They" / "Their".

It is common in colloquial English to use "they"/"their" as a generic third person singular.

For example: "Could the person who left their umbrella please pick it up?"

However, here it is used in a rather new setting for a specific and known individual. This is a rather new phenomenon pushed by the transgender and genderqueer community.

I am specifically addressing the latter usage of the form 'they' in the third person singular. Do you agree this form is new? If not, could you give references to earlier usage than, say 1990?

> You use words like ‘rebalance’ as if there is an objective, universally shared belief our culture is out of balance.

I thought it was a fairly universal idea that there’s an high level of amount of gender imbalance with regards to professional programmers. Most frequently seen at programming meetups and conventions. Maybe it’s not commonly accepted as a problem in your sphere, but I’d bet if you asked around you’d get answers that surprise you.

There are also many more male garbage man than garbage woman. Where is the outcry?

Why aren’t there more garbagewomen? Is it the same reason there are aren’t women professional programmers? What’s your argument as to why there are these differences - that it’s some sort of natural order?

People with low education have the opportunity to work an physically demanding low pay job regardless of gender. Women are forced out of high paying intelectual job because they can't be one of the Bros

This is the second time in the same thread that you've taken a leap into generic flamewar. That's exactly what we don't want in discussions here. Would you please review the site guidelines and not do that on HN? It's extremely tedious, only gets worse, and ends distastefully.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There is definitely a difference in outcome in the programmers community. The question is whether there is a difference in opportunity.

Don't you think that by emphasizing the differences by forcefully changing our accepted speech, you are making it harder for women to enter the sphere?

To be able to fight, but refraining from fighting, is what makes us human. It allows us to show mutual respect and to form true connections.

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