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Comment by crackercrews | Hacker News Reader

It is hard to choose which of these is silliest, but my vote goes to the replacement of "he" with [name] or "they", until you know the person's preferred pronouns. [1]

The vast, vast majority of people who present as male wish to be referred to as "he". Many of them would be offended or confused if you used "they" as a term of reference. Many listeners would also be confused if you referred to a person who appears to be a typical male as a "they".

If 99% of men go by "he", why should we use "they" as a term of reference by default? This is the tail wagging the dog, to say the least.

1: the list also says we are not to refer to "preferred pronouns" anymore. They are just "pronouns" now.

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Combine your two conclusions and sex (material reality) ceases to exist yet non-binary (an identity, not a sex) is to be respected as if it is a hard biological fact. After all, you don't decide to be non-binary, you just are. Yet this does not apply to sex.

It's almost as if reality, facts, logic, consistency don't matter. Which is postmodernism. A power struggle.

You are exactly right to say that this is postmodernism. Postmodernism says that all speech is not about truth, but about power. These people believe that.

And they act the way they think. Their speech is all about power, not about truth. That's why their claims are so absurd and nonsensical - because it's not about the truth of the claims. It's about them asserting power over you.

The only reasonable response, then, is to not accept their assertion of power. No. Just no. (Or "no" with as many profane modifiers as you feel is appropriate.) No, we don't agree. No, you're ridiculous. No, we aren't going to get in a debate with your ridiculousness. And most of all, no, we aren't going to follow your stupid rules. No. Get lost. Go away.

Totally with you, but the problem is that the amount of places where "no" is not an option, is growing. Meaning, it's personally risky to go against this narrative in some contexts.

That might get you in jail.

Until 'they' got pulled into duty, English didn't have a non gendered pronoun, so if you were referring to someone where you didn't know the gender, you had a choice of defaulting to "he", randomly choosing "he" or " she", or using "he or she" or "the [descriptor like 'programmer']*

They at first sounded weird being repurposed this way, but I think now it works better than any of the list above. Once you start using it for people who's gender you don't know, it's a pretty small step to use for someone's gender you don't want to assume.

> it's a pretty small step to use for someone's gender you don't want to assume.

Well that's the question, isn't it? How often do I have occasion to talk about someone whose gender I don't want to assume? In virtually every case, I am able to correctly ascertain the gender identity of a person I am going to talk about.

The Stanford rules would have me pretend as if I just have no idea, and use "they" instead of "he" or "she". This is utter foolishness. It ignores the offense and confusion that will result from "they-ing" someone who goes by "he" or "she". And it ignores the fact that it is generally very easy to deduce someone's gender identity.

All the time! When you don't know the identity of the subject, you also don't know the gender.

"Someone ate the last slice of cake. I wish they had considered me!"

"Phone for you" "What do they want?"

Yep, and I am happy to use "they" in that setting. The Stanford rules are silly because they also call for using "they" to refer to people whom you do know, if they've never specifically instructed you on their preferred pronouns. I am apparently supposed to refer to President Biden as a "they", since he's not told me otherwise.

That's not true at all, it was always ('always') 'they' when unknown. I was taught as much in school well before all this.

It's a big and bizarre step to throw out 'he' and 'she' completely for all known men and women until such time as they confirm that yes they indeed are men and women, just to satisfy the miniscule proportion of them who are not. The exceptional ones should be the ones to point it out and then we can just say 'oh ok sure sorry' and move on.

> someone's gender you don't want to assume

Unless they look like someone who 'might not want their gender assumed', I'm perfectly happy assuming peoples gender, because it will be correct in the vast vast vast majority of cases.

I was taught to use “he” by default in grammar lessons in ~2005.

For what it's worth, my experience (use 'they') was (not that long, but) before then, in the UK.

What really irks me (as a result I suppose) is the sort of passive aggressive use of 'she' for gender unknown, as though righting some wrong or making some sort of point that we don't know it's 'he' either - true, that would be wrong too!

Matt Levine does it an awful lot, recently-ish I even noticed one was actually a man; he was just using it in the general sense not having checked who the specific person was in the role that he was talking about - 'they' would have been fine, but 'she' was more incorrect than usual, a factual error.

they/them has always been a neutral pronoun in English. It's only now that it is a controversial topic that everybody is fussing about it. Imagine the following sentence.

"Someone is knocking at the door, can you let them in?"

Nobody would say "let him in", unless they knew a man was behind the door. This is utterly uncontroversial and boring.

>Someone is knocking at the door, can you let them in?

That is not a good example since there is presumably only 1 person knocking ("someone"), but there could be multiple people ("them") at the door waiting to come in.

Since you don't know the amount of people waiting to come in, using them would be appropriate.

What about : "I am expected either my father or my mother to come, but not both of them. Someone is knocking at the door, can you let them/him in?"

using him sounds silly when there's a 50% chance it's you mother doesn't it?

That is a better example for sure. I still think there are issues since it could be somebody other than one of your parents knocking (including multiple people)

I think the better example would be when you know there is only one person. Person 1: "I went to the movies with a friend". Person 2: "Did they like the movie?"

This still has the issue about talking about somebody who is not present. Many people are advocating for using they/them when the person is right in front of you.

Agreed. That said, ‘they’ has been “on duty” as a singular pronoun since at least the 14th century https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...

Indeed, if someone refers to me as "they" then (1) I am being misgendered (2) probably intentionally (3) to score some political goal.

That this is considered "okay" by certain people proves that they do not care about (1) or (2), only (3).

"He" -> "they" further implies that there's something wrong about "he", a defect not present in "they". Otherwise the opposite replacement would also be acceptable. It is morally despicable.

I think the real issue is that until recently 'they' was considered a plural pronoun, whereas the gender revolutionaries want it to now be considered a singular pronoun.

This one seems fair to be honest, it's not just about those with non standard pronouns, but also women.

there is the same recommendation for "she".

The "don't assume" logic would also apply for feminine sounding names, especially when the name is from a different culture to your own and/or ambiguous. He has the problem of the out of fashion gender neutral he along with guessing incorrectly from name or appearence, but the second issue also applies to she.

Many of us will have been in a professional context (an audio conference call maybe) where someone guessed the person’s gender incorrectly from their name and the sum total of the offence was a shrug, and a quick apology was enough to set things right and move on.

This is a non-issue for almost every person on the planet except for maybe the most easily offended.

It’s about power and dictating what good manners are now and a way to determine quickly if someone is of good breeding and worth continuing with much like how groups used other coded language and gestures in the past.

20 years ago, using they in this way would have really tweaked my ears, but I find myself using it in this way and hearing it in this way more and more, and I think it won't be long before we've forgotten how odd it used to feel.

It still sounds odd to my ears, but that's because I usually hear "they" as a plural pronoun. For example, I was watching a TV show with two siblings, one used "they/them" pronouns. When the mother said "I'm really proud of them and everything they have accomplished", I didn't know if that was referring to one sibling or both.

I know it will probably feel less odd as time goes on.

Singular they for when you aren't sure of gender actually seems to simplify language quite a bit in my experience. There are lots of non-non-binary situations that its helpful and you can avoid those awkward "he or she" "his or her" type phrases. Plus, everyone knows how to use they already, never had anyone get confused by it.

"Bob went to the store and they bought some beer" is completely parsable by everyone - nobody is getting confused unless they are trying to be.

I know many people who would be honestly confused by your example.

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