> preferred gender pronouns versus gender-neutral pronouns like "they"
Not even. The issue is with the need to care about one's gender whatsoever on a tech q&a site. Your compiler surely doesn't care. What place does a pronoun have on SO at all?
Not even. The issue is with the need to care about one's gender whatsoever on a tech q&a site. Your compiler surely doesn't care. What place does a pronoun have on SO at all?
So your compiler might not care about pronouns, but apparently gods are very interested in such things. Unfortunately this seems to be the religious equivalent of "undefined behaviour" so you get people believing that their god is on both/all sides of the issue, similar to how the bible was used to both oppose and support slavery in the American south.
The argument (as far as I can tell) is fairly subtle and revolves around whether it's okay to carefully avoid using pronouns for someone if they have a preference that differs from what you believe your god approves of.
Stack Overflow policy wants you to use whatever the person you're addressing prefers, but some people think their god would prefer them to reword a sentence to avoid using the "wrong" pronoun and that this isn't against the letter of the policy, even if it's clearly against the spirit.