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Comment by DangerousPie | Hacker News Reader

I don't know the details of this case, but is anybody else a bit shocked by this quote from Joyent?

> to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me

They justify this by arguing that "that insistence can only come from one place: that gender—specifically, masculinity—is inextricably linked to software".

Is it really that impossible to believe that someone would just prefer gendered pronouns for stylistic reasons? I find it quite scary that you apparently can't risk having an opinion on something like this without committing a fireable offense in some peoples' eyes.

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From a stylistic perspective, it is challenging to write gender neutral pronouns. In English, the third person singular pronouns are he, she, it. However, using "it" sounds very strange since it is often used as pronoun for objects, not for people.

You might say: "The user does an action. Next, he cooks lunch." Saying "The user does an action. Next, it cooks lunch" is odd.

A common workaround is to use "they" as a 3rd person gender neutral singular pronoun. "The user does an action, Next they cooks lunch." But this is even more odd and confusing, since they is a 3rd person plural pronoun. So you have to alter the verb to match, and you get "The user does an action. Next, they cook lunch." This is turn can change the meaning of your sentence, because you really don't mean 2 or more users. You are talking about a single user.

I have always struggled with this myself and am never really sure what to do. My default is to alternate between "he" and "she"

Personally, I think this varies very heavily depending on the language that you're writing in. I'm not fluent in EFIGS or Japanese without dictionaries, but the pronouns I use in English, French, and Japanese are quite different.

Personally, I suggest having professional translators deal with your documentation if you are having trouble expressing yourself clearly in multiple languages. But then again, I also think you should have professionals dealing with anything having to do with copyright assignment and translation, period.

YMMV I suppose, but on my end the usual IANALTANSTAAFL&EIIWTINFLA&cetera disclamers for things that I post publicly.

> they is a 3rd person plural pronoun

I don't know why people keep repeating this. The usage of 3rd person singular "they" is older than the modern English language itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they. In other words, it is correct, and has always been correct. If your English teacher told you differently, they were either mistaken or lying.

Alternating between he and she is very confusing and breaks the flow. Are you discussing two different people, or the same person.

Yes, there was quite an uproar about this.

It turns out that the reason claimed for the revert was even more mundane than that, too: the commit was pushed in without the existing review process being followed and reverted on principle. I can imagine myself doing the same, regardless of the content of the commit, on technical grounds.

One of the things I find most abrasive about our culture is how quickly people jump to namecalling, labels, and calls for heads on spikes, without caring to understand or ask questions first.

> Is it really that impossible to believe that someone would just prefer gendered pronouns for stylistic reasons?

This kind of preference is completely believable, but I'm afraid it's also a little bit sexist.

I sort of see where you are coming from ("it's just an opinion!"), but it's the awareness of the impact this has on others that is the key thing in judging whether it's a big deal.

It's a little like saying "why can't I just have pictures of white people in all of our marketing materials for stylistic reasons?". If you do this, then you're implying that the other not-included group do not belong there in some way. This creates a very unpleasant feeling of 'otherness' for those who are not part of that group. This is very easy to overlook if (like me) you are a white male and have never been put in that position. It's a little like the awkwardness of being at a cocktail party where you don't know anyone, which is not a good social environment to be creating for others at work.

Should be a fireable offence? Sadly, there are lots of opinions that can cause distress to others when publicly expressed. Not being able to identify them and subsequently causing damage to your relationships with coworkers and to the company culture is a sign of incompetence. I think this should be a fireable offences for that reason.

I see what you're saying and it makes sense. I used to think that the cure for epithets was to ban them (that's how you think in grade school). But I have come to think that in some instances something becomes noticeable in the conscious only after others point them out.

In other words, when people use 'she' for ships, aircraft, etc. I didn't/don't really think of them as 'female'. It's only pointing out that 'she' typically means grammatical female gender that I even think about it. So when my father would use 'she' for ships and aircraft I never thought about the pronoun implications. It was only until much later in life and seeing these issues discussed that I saw some oddity in the pronoun usage.

That is, in some cases it can be that a non issue is made an issue by bringing attention to it. A kind of Streisand effect. In other words, we can be actively socialized into thinking about something thinking something typically neutral as positive or negative or inconsequential.

Oh, it's pretty bad. Using masculine gendered pronouns in that way steals individual identity from an entire sex! Unambiguously misandrist. Until it recently became fairly common to use feminine pronouns in the same way, "she" was always a particular person, while "he" may not be. I'm so glad the uncertainty and loss of self is now shared at least in part by both sexes, but we still have a long way to go to equality. </sarcasm>

(Seriously, please use third person plural for this—I still trip over feminine indeterminate pronouns thinking I've missed who in particular we're talking about. Third person plural has a long history of serving this purpose, embrace it.)

Personally, I prefer indefinite articles for third person when possible, but you should talk to folks fluent in your target languages for clarification.

For example, when we're talking in French, I don't mind folks (especially students and non-native speakers like myself) confusing on/il/elle. Il faut imaginer and On faut imaginer are only very subtly different and not enough to bother this French speaker.

That said, if you're posting to someplace that deals with regular recurrences of Eternal September, you're better off being cautious. A lot of the 25-35 year old "digital native" crowd has been seriously burned by WELL leaks and the like.

"They justify this by arguing that "that insistence can only come from one place: that gender—specifically, masculinity—is inextricably linked to software"."

This justification reveals Joyent's (and many others) misunderstanding of English. The usage of the third person male pronoun is, and has been for many years, considered to be gender neutral. This is the case in many other languages, such as German and French. Sexism is a big issue, but I am not convinced grammar is the place to have this fight.

Grammatical gender and biological gender are two entirely different things. They are trying to be politicially correct in cases where the biological gender is not relevant at all.

What you're spelling "politically correct" I tend to spell "on faut dit-il elle heureux là" と思うのけれども， but I tend to prefer business English to other languages when in California.

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