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Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

> I feel being patronized by a large SW vendor who forces me to automatically run his software on my system after each login.

I know this isn’t really related, but we should really get rid of the nasty habit of genderizing people and companies.

In this sentence it would be more appropriate to use “their software,” not “his software.”

A large software vendor most certainly isn’t a “he.”

Edit: every time I point this out on a threads I get downvoted. That’s fine, I don’t really care about that. But it disappoints me to see that because it reflects how so many people are that much against a really simple way to be inclusive. So, I want to emphasize that this is just a polite suggestion, not an inquisition.

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I don't disagree with being inclusive, I disagree with the idea that grammatical details of how we speak have anything to do with inclusiveness.

It's like if I start complaining that you use "their" to refer to a software vendor because that implies there's more than one person involved and so you're not being inclusive of solo founders. Or that "their" antromorphizes a vendor and therefore isn't inclusive of sea cucumbers.

In reality, this has zero consequence to anyone, other than guys who enjoy feeling offended on behalf of others.

EDIT: I'm finding a lot of pearls in your comment history. Like this one where you complain of people telling you what to do https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23006925 Now you know how we feel, I guess.

Fair enough, but FYI: In some languages, _all_ nouns are genderized and there isn't a gender-neutral form. e.g. in Arabic, "table" is grammatically female, while in Hebrew, it's grammatically male.

You say it's just a polite suggestion, but you describe alternatives to your suggestion as a "nasty" habit - is it really polite?

It's a slippery slope to eir/em/..etc and other "new" pronouns; The latest thinking is you have to ask someone what their pronouns are, and they can insist on pretty much any fad pronoun they want, or else you'll be accused of anything between "being rude" to "hate-crime" (lot of motte-bailey around this). It's probably no wonder people want to keep things simple and stick to convention.

In other words, this simple way might get a lot more traction, if it wasn't a gateway / stepping-stone to a worse way.

I feel like the author probably isn't a native English writer, so maybe give them a break.

It’s not an inquisition, just something to be aware of.

I’m downvoted every time I point out this very simple thing we can do to be more inclusive.

I don’t see any indication that the author isn’t a native English speaker and I wouldn’t want to make any assumptions in that regard either.

I don't think anyone's disagreeing with the idea of being inclusive.

But if the author very clearly isn't used to writing in English in the first place (you cannot possibly have missed that) then you can start gently with the fact that we don't use genders for all nouns, as they may not even be aware of that, before you go in with the big guns of calling people's efforts at writing in a foreign language 'nasty'.

If I asked you to write a blog post in Sumerian and you made a faux pas and I jumped all over it you'd be a bit put out wouldn't you?

I thought the piece was written well enough that I couldn’t tell they were not a native speaker. I checked the about me page and the author said nothing about location. That’s about as far as I got.

When I see a genderised statement like this I always wonder if I had missed something earlier in the writing and the author was referring to a specific male person rather than a company. I also find it equally jarring when authors unexpectedly use “her” for a gender neutral object like a company in some misguided attempt to write with inclusivity.

Yes but pedants are jarred by 'their' and 'them' which are technically plural. I know, in speech we abuse them freely, but in writing it can be jarring to some.

Your info is out of date. Singular “they” is now standards compliant.

‘The singular “they” is a generic third-person singular pronoun in English. Use of the singular “they” is endorsed as part of APA Style because it is inclusive of all people and helps writers avoid making assumptions about gender. Although usage of the singular “they” was once discouraged in academic writing, many advocacy groups and publishers have accepted and endorsed it, including Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary.

‘Singular “they” is covered in Section 4.18 of the APA Publication Manual, Seventh Edition’

https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/si...

Yeah, I'm out-of-date because I'm older than that 'decision'. Which is why its jarring, and will remain so despite appeal to authority.

Unless you're more than 700 years old, you're not older than common usage of singular "they" (which entered common usage in the 14th century). It's honestly not that new of a concept.

I'm honestly always a little surprised when this topic comes up with the number of people who find this grammatically jarring. To be fair, I am fairly young, but I do remember learning about singular "they" while I was in primary school in the early 2000s. Is the issue that this isn't taught in US schools, hence all the confusion?

Yeah I was in primary school in the 1970s

That's akin to saying that python2.7 is just as valid a language as python3. And it is. But it is also correct to say that python2.7 is out-of-date as it is no longer being updated, as it was sunset on January 1, 2020, and all are advised to port to python3, as no further updates will be done to the 2.7 codebase.

In much the same way, it's not wrong to use plural "they," but it is no more correct than singular "they." Language is descriptivist. Its rules are determined by usage and clarity as well as historical usage patterns, all of which are subject to change. As of of release of the APA Publication Manual Seventh Edition in October 2019, the APA acknowledged such language usage pattern changes and by doing so, the major standards body which codifies style for major publications has adopted singular "they." Resisting such change is fine, but seems a strange hill to die on.

https://www.python.org/doc/sunset-python-2/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APA_style#Seventh_edition_of_t...

Here's another hint for you https://blog.bembel.net/2019/07/ebbelwoi-statement/

I do think this topic is something it doesn't hurt to be mindful of. However, it's pretty clear to me that the author's first language is not English. One of my mother tongues has gendered pronouns, and I find one of the simplest tells that a speaker's native tongue isn't English is the inappropriate usage of gendered pronouns. In fact I don't recall a single time I've heard a native English speaker use gendered pronouns in this manner (not to mention a company is a collection of people -- so there isn't even a singular "they" discussion to be had here).

So my main issue with this discussion topic is not that we shouldn't use more inclusive pronouns generally, it's these discussions seem to always ignore that folks whose mother tongue has gendered pronouns automatically think about objects differently when talking about them. For instance, a table being masculine (at least in my mother tongue) is not a conscious judgement of tables on the speaker's part -- it's a kind of classification that your brain does on autopilot. It should just be seen as the garden variety grammatical slip-up that it is, and treat it as such (ignore it and move on).

As I mentioned in another comment, singular “they” is now standards compliant.

‘Singular “they” is covered in Section 4.18 of the APA Publication Manual, Seventh Edition’

https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/si....

Good point and one I overlooked until you pointed that out. Let's leave genders at the door. A bad vendor is a monster without a gender.

If you keep getting downvoted, why don't you get a clue?

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