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Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

They/them works if you don't want to think about it. A very few people take offence because they assume you're taking a political stance; a few more are unaware singular they has a many centuries of history in English and may correct you.

It may seem odd to some in English in contexts where the gender is well established and/or obvious, but they'll get over it.

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>They/them works if you don't want to think about it.

Except that's it's typically used a plural. Referring to one person as multiple is weird, awkward and clunky. Or, you're making a multi-personality joke. I thought we were at the point where poking fun at mental illness was a no-no? That's micro-aggression behavior there on your part. So sure, if you don't think about, it works. Just like saying apple instead would work if you don't think about it.

Yes, languages differ. Why anyone still uses accent marks is weird too. Oh well. A few people forcing their own ideals on the masses isn't right either. Two wrongs don't make a right.

>Why anyone still uses accent marks is weird too.

I consider it a lot weirder that letters are pronounced differently depending on which word they are used in.

Yet the world keeps spinning just fine since it was adopted as the main language of the world. French has its own insanities and it was the lingua franca beforehand. Looks more like the more weird a language is, the more likely it will be internationally adopted. Every language has its quirks. The mere concept that a handful of people should have the dictative right to alter any of them in their own image, with force adoption by all, is far more insane than the quirks themselves. If you learn the history of the standardization of spelling, most of the fuckups we groan about to this day you can find roots in some authoritative asshole going, "You know, English needs to be a lot more like XYZ language." You see this is many words where they try to formalize English spelling using Greek and Latin spelling principles or word origins. Even if the English word was never derived from Greek or Latin, but it made it look better. Off top of my head when I read about this long ago, the word island. It's like isla or isula for Latin that relates to the concept of an island. So someone thought that English speakers saying, "iland", should add an s in there. The whole English spelling issue is a far more deep rooted and complex problem than your hand-wavy comment gives it credit for. In truth, folks with your attitude are what led us to the current mess because, "they knew better than all those low lives".

As I pointed out, singular they/them has been well established in English for centuries (it dates to the 1300s)

Trying to cater for people who get worked up over singular they/them is not worth the effort.

And how do you feel about the use of "he" as a generic pronoun in reference to an individual of undetermined gender? That has also been well established in English for centuries.

I think "they" is better because it also works even when referring to a specific person whose gender may be known, such as the Finnish author mentioned earlier. Minimal cognitive processing.

I have no objections to it personally, but in the context I proposed they/them, where the point was to not have to think about it, it is not applicable as you then need to consider the distinction between an unspecified person and a named person of unknown gender, where 'he' is not generally applicable, and often comes across as rude and presumptuous if you get it wrong.

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