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Comment by lexi-lambda | Hacker News Reader

You're going to spend all that work using "the author" everywhere and still manage to get my gender wrong ("his")? Okay. I don't really expect any different in this field, but just noting that.

Anyway, I'm well-aware of the temptation of writing point-free code. I did include the sentence "I can see the road to hell is paved with point-free style" myself, after all. I wouldn't prefer point-free style if it ends up looking indiscernible, but in this case I sort of wanted a way to express semi-declaratively "this function is the difference between these other two functions". Does the version I ended up with do that? Yes. But for all I knew there could have been a much better, more idiomatic way.

But yes, that was both a quest to improve that code and a mere learning exercise. I'm satisfied with the version I ended up with, though I don't think it's perfect, either.

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> You're going to spend all that work using "the author" everywhere and still manage to get my gender wrong ("his")?

As you notice, the poster to whom you are replying clearly goes to a lot of effort to say "the author" repeatedly, rather than 'he' or 'she'. I think that it's fair to assume that one slip-up after such work is a result of innocent inattention rather than a perpetuation of gender biases.

This whole ridiculous subthread is about programmers aggressively refusing to fix bugs. (Misgendering.)

"Okay. I don't really expect any different in this field, but just noting that."

What's being implied here? that because the OP is not omnipotent that there is gender conspiracy?

Broadly making assumptions about everyone within a particular field is as bad if not worse than someone using an incorrect pronoun.

Just as an aside; everyone has to deal with imbeciles in this field whether it be the pointy haired boss or just gross incompetence, it's not gender specific.

Eh, you're right, that came off as far too aggressive—I didn't really mean it to be. Of course the OP isn't going to be omnipotent, but then why default to male? I know English doesn't have singular gender-neutral pronouns, but I think "they" is acceptable now.

And no, obviously I'm not saying people in the field of CS are all misogynist bigots. I'm just saying it's really, really male-dominated, so defaulting to "he" doesn't really cause problems. I'm not trying to attack anyone (and I agree it came off that way, I'm sorry), I just get frustrated when it's a perpetual thing I run into, y'know? Eventually I can get a little terse.

because for many people, not even in CS, 'he' is the default pronoun. There's a trend in writing now to actually use "she," when writing about a hypothetical person who is genderless, rather than "he." But not only could this be construed as sexist (i.e. akin to reverse-racism), but randomly breaking convention can be jarring to the reader. It isn't necessarily, but can be.

I'm just saying that I've read some papers by leading feminist theatre art/drama scholars, and even they use the masculine pronoun.

Also, I find it annoying that while you adknowledge OP's attempt to be gender neutral, you destroy her (see what I did there?) over a single pronoun, which happens to be gendered but is used neutrally.

Consider that the author spent one short paragraph to talk about the OP's choice of pronouns, while you spent an entire comment taking her to task for it; that her criticism was politely stated, while you employ rank hyperbole in describing that comment as "[destruction]"; that you're expecting someone to be polite and dispassionate who by her own admission has dealt repeatedly with the litany of disappointments and frustrations that come with being a woman in a male-dominated field, while not even meeting that standard of even-handedness in your own comment; and then maybe reconsider how you're devoting your efforts in this conversation. From here it looks like thou dost protest too much, methinks.

> the author spent one short paragraph to talk about the OP's choice of pronouns

which was completely unnecessary and added nothing meaningful to the discussion.

(In fact, it was self-contradictory given the insinuation that the OP had to be male in "I don't expect any different from this field.")

I know I default to 'he', personally. I have become increasingly aware of it because I work in a call center at my college and I have to consciously refer to a parent's students as 'he or she'.

What's wrong with "they" as singular 3rd person pronoun? [0]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_(singular)

Why default to male? Because multiple generation of us got our writing marked wrong if we used a plural pronoun for a singlaur and "he" was the generic. We used he for unknowns and she for the thing we loved (e.g. ships). I would love for an agreed upon generic, and they is just a bad choice.

"They" has been acceptable for centuries.

https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-t...

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/generic-s...

It wasn't in my high school English book and I doubt there would be so many people using he if it wasn't taught that way.

Why is they a bad choice? It's worked forever and is already part of the language. Languages evolve.

We trade one dimension of uncertainty for two (count) when we know the count. I just write s/he or avoid pronouns altogether.

We did/do that in German too. Some people still ended up being offended.

Go figure.

I nowadays just use he or she (or rather: try to stick to that - I fumble at times when writing casually), in german and in english. The german form is longer, because the noun also has a gender there.

And as soon as everyone starts using s/he, bigender people get annoyed that heshe wasn't used. It's language...it's difficult to get everyday usage "normalized" into a different direction.

I would be annoyed too if people consistently assume something about me which I'm not, on the other hand, the second meaning of 'he' is to refer to a person without reference to sex.[1]

[1]http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/he

I hope I'm not explaining in a patronising manner.

True, but follow me on a brief hypothetical journey. This takes place in a world where the word "Asian" is defined as people whose ancestors are primarily from Asia, but the second definition is "people regardless of ethnicity."

I can't speak for you, but I'd find it puzzling at best, and a little upsetting at worst.

Already occurs - The word Asian is used for people from East Asia, as well as people from anyhere in Asia regardless of which specific part with no regards to ethnicity.

The word 'Aboriginal' also means Indigenous Australians, with an alternate meaning the indigenous people of a non-specific land.

I'm Asian myself. Might I get annoyed with the word? It's a possibility in another universe. Would I be annoyed by people who use it because they use it differently to what I expect? No.

English is just another language. In javascript you might be annoyed scope for variables is different depending on whether var is present. Are you going to be annoyed at people who use the presence or absence of var to designate whether the variable is local or global, instead of using window.myvar exclusively for global variables?

Well that is your choice, and personally I'd rather be fine with it than to get angry at anyone who use the word Asian or Aboriginal or write javascript differently to what I expect, otherwise I'd be angry a lot, making myself and others more upset than is necessary.

Anyways it was my attempt to empathise with both of them.

> but then why default to male?

You know the answer: decades (centuries?) of usage defaulting to male.

OP went to great lengths to use neutral pronouns everywhere and you ding him (or her) for one slip up? One of the few people aware of the issues and trying to do good, someone in your camp?

And because of that obsession of yours, a good part of the entire discussion is now derailed.

You need to realize that you are part of the problem.

> You need to realize that you are part of the problem.

Oh my God. It's responses like yours that starkly remind me of how imbalanced it is for a woman in this industry and indeed in life.

I admit it was a bit melodramatic.

In this season of Survivor, there is this deaf woman who wears a Cochlear implant. She can hear okay and it doesn't seem to handicap her much, but she's been bringing it up all the time to her teammates to the point that she's under the constant impression that she's being discriminated against because she's deaf, while the reality is just that she's a subpar competitor and her team is getting tired of her bringing up her deafness all the time while the simple truth is that they really don't care.

Basically, the only person on the show who's making a big deal of her deafness is herself.

Seems to me OP is doing the same thing here.

> Eh, you're right, that came off as far too aggressive—I didn't really mean it to be. Of course the OP isn't going to be omnipotent, but then why default to male? I know English doesn't have singular gender-neutral pronouns, but I think "they" is acceptable now.

I really don't think you came off as far too aggressive at all. You called out a damaging trend and people interested in keeping privilege around didn't like it.

I think it's something that's worth pointing out occasionally. Male programmers tend to assume that all other programmers are male. Even if they don't actually think that, it slips out in their language (as in this case).

In this case the error is a little perplexing since the OP's name is "Lexi" which is almost never used as a male name!

Not a lie: I have never encountered the name Lexi before. I would have assumed it to be a made-up pseudonym. Or a reference to a post-modern sci-fi / futuristic book.

If it's short for "Alexis," which is a claim you edited out of your comment, then I'm even more confused, as that name seems to be male preferred within the US.

This conversation got really out of hand really quickly, so I've stayed out of it, but is Alexis really male-preferred? That's an honest question; I don't know. Wolfram Alpha seems to find the opposite.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Alexis

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Alexis&a=*C.Alexis-_*Gi...

This required a throwaway?

No - I just use a throwaway account by default (actually, several of them on different machines) because (a) sometimes I do want to comment on something without having my name attached to it, and (b) it's too much effort to switch between accounts depending on what I want to say.

Fun fact. I have a daughter who goes by Lexi and a former (male) co-worker (Aleksey) who went by Lexy.

Definitely didn't register that as a name until you mentioned it. I thought it was just clever alliteration of some reference that I was missing.

I feel silly now.

> Broadly making assumptions about everyone within a particular field is as bad if not worse than someone using an incorrect pronoun.

Not really, minorities have to face stuff like this on a more frequent basis. Gendered pronouns are more than incorrect and are harmful.

> Just as an aside; everyone has to deal with imbeciles in this field whether it be the pointy haired boss or just gross incompetence, it's not gender specific.

You can't just sweep away sexism under a rug.

> You can't just sweep away sexism under a rug.

Stereotypes are different than sexism. Some stereotypes are sexist, but assuming that someone is a man when it is likely that he/she is isn't sexist.

Maybe irritating, and rash judgement - but that's stereotypes in general.

Sexism is a belief that one gender is better than the other, or that some gender is bad in some way. Does assuming that someone is a male programmer make them sexist? Not really - not unless you _also_ assume other implications like "women can't program", or other such nonsense. But that's a leap to make.

> Does assuming that someone is a male programmer make them sexist? Not really - not unless you _also_ assume other implications like "women can't program", or other such nonsense. But that's a leap to make.

In my experience I've found people who assume genders to have a reason for assuming. The most common reason is they don't believe women can program as well as men.

I'd argue a simpler reason is that the vast majority are male.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

- As an aside, while I firmly believe that both genders have equal _potentials_, I think that due to various socioeconomic and cultural pressures, genders are _not_ equal at everything in execution, on average. It might take a while for that to happen.

You do realize that by saying "in my experience, people do X are more likely to be Y", you're doing the exact same thing you're criticizing?

"(Minorities) who do X are more likely to be Y"

and

"(Privileged) are more likely to reinforce their privilege (because the don't see their privilege and/or want to keep it)"

are two different things.

At face value these to things look the same, but upon examination it's only a convenient simplification.

The first post (who you were assuming stuff about) said nothing about any minorities.

The fact is, regardless of how you paint it, you're making prejudiced assumptions about him/her based the fact that (s)he belongs to the group of "people who write 'he' when talking about coders of unknown gender".

Assuming that (s)he is "privileged" is just yet another prejudice, not a fact upon which to base your opinion.

> Assuming that (s)he is "privileged" is just yet another prejudice, not a fact upon which to base your opinion.

???

Men are more privileged than women, that is fact.

    > You're going to spend all that work using "the author"
    > everywhere and still manage to get my gender wrong
    > ("his")?

Where would you have had the commenter go to establish your gender? You haven't attached your name to the article, but even if you had, it's a name that in many countries is male anyway. Would you have rather the commenter have said 'their'?

> Would you have rather the commenter have said 'their'?

Yes, of course.

> Would you have rather the commenter have said 'their'?

As the poster demonstrated (by using "the author" in almost all places), it is often possible to go without pronouns entirely, at the expense of some repetitiveness or awkwardness. In this case, all that would have been required would have been to change

> The author spends a lot of effort trying to make his functions point-free.

> The author spends a lot of effort trying to make functions point free.

or, if the possessive is really important, the awkward

> The author spends a lot of effort trying to make the author's [or just "his or her"] functions point free.

However, as I have said elsethread, I think that this was almost certainly inattentiveness rather than any attempt to perpetuate gender biases.

I personally would have gone with:

> The author spends a lot of effort trying to make their functions point free.

Then your answer to peteretep's question (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9188477) "Would you have rather the commenter have said 'their'?" is 'yes', which is fine.

I agreed with what I took (emphasis: my interpretation, not endorsed by peteretep) to be the subtext of that question, namely that the use of 'their' in that context is undesireable, and argued that it was not the only alternative to a gendered pronoun.

The sentence in question is:

"The author spends a lot of effort trying to make his functions point-free."

You can simply remove the word "his".

Maybe the poster isn't even a primary English speaker and their language uses masculine as the default. BUT sorry that most people when they see anything aggressive from a female they get all worked up. It is a strange phenomenon when most never sees any bias in themselves because they like their mom and sister and they only dislike that woman and that other one oh and maybe the other one. It is so strange.

> You're going to spend all that work using "the author" everywhere and still manage to get my gender wrong ("his")? Okay. I don't really expect any different in this field, but just noting that.

Wow, you got some really hostile reactions for your politely worded comment. Some of those responses belong on @shithnsays

> But yes, that was both a quest to improve that code and a mere learning exercise.

What was there to improve? It's totally sensible and readable, and you even mention that you had people on IRC tell you the function was fine as it is.

If your first focus is on the usage of "his" in the response then maybe the next language you should consider studying is English.

For starters you might want to read up on gender neutral pronouns. He/She or his/hers can be used in a gender neutral manner, however traditionally the masculine form is used in English when gender neutral is intended.

Wow, that's some extraordinary condescension.

They/them/their has been seeing broad adoption as a, y'know, actually gender-neutral pronoun, and it should be encouraged. I know some people prefer he/him/his but

a) many people think that reeks of implicit sexism

b) even ignoring a), elevating that to The One Correct English Way is ridiculous overreach

Meh, I like 'hen'[0] a lot, wouldn't mind seeing a concerted effort to introduce it in English as well. I doubt it would go over well in the states, however.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen_%28pronoun%29

Unfortunately, pronouns are a closed class[1] in English; the possibility of getting people to adopt a new one is vanishingly unlikely. Fortunately, we already have “they”, which has been used as a gender-neutral pronoun in the singular for at least half a millennium.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speech#Open_and_closed...

Interesting, hadn't heard about closed/open classes in speech. I agree that "they" serves the purpose well, but it's nice to see an explicit, consciousness-raising fix (though it's the ultimate bikeshed politically, everyone feels they're qualified to comment - even me!)

I think I've only seen "they" used as a gender-neutral pronoun once or twice, outside of contexts where the topic itself is gender neutral pronouns. So going by that experience, I don't have much faith in broad adoption if the term can't seem to penetrate usage in writing outside of contexts where people are actively discussing the term itself.

Shakespeare good enough for you? http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.h... or Jane Austen? http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austhlis.html

For more fun facts and rants about gender-neutral they, see: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005423.h...

-----

Note: there's a strong difference between gender-neutral they when the gender is unknown, and singular they when the gender is known. Some people actually prefer being referred to with 'they/their' in sentences such as "Mary finished their ph.d. at Oxford". I doubt you'll find much historic precedence for that usage, but the use of 'their' when the gender is unknown/unspecified has a long history.

Well, each to their own.

I myself use they as a neutral pronoun, but I'd suggest that Shakespeare and Austen aren't great examples, especially the former, as the poster was looking for widespread adoption and those authors[1] both use language in ways that are very uncommon.

[1]: this right here is why 'they' as neutral is problematic, as I would have been able to use 'they' unambiguously (instead of 'those authors') had 'they' not grown a singular meaning. It's the point made above about two dimensions rather than one of uncertainty.

Maybe not the best examples, but people do tend to think of the usage as something new, while it's been around forever.

I wouldn't say "they both" is very number-ambiguous, though sure you can always find ambiguous examples, but then language is full of ambiguity and humans still seem to manage fine.

> Maybe not the best examples, but people do tend to think of the usage as something new, while it's been around forever.

To bad then that I never said anything about history, but just widespread adoption. So there is not much need to condescendingly point out Shakespeare and Austen, when they are just tangentially related.

> I don't have much faith in broad adoption if the term can't seem to penetrate usage in writing outside of contexts where people are actively discussing the term itself.

The usage doesn't need to spread beyond discussions of the term itself, because it was already being used long before these discussions. That's why I linked to the articles about Shakespeare's and Austen's usage, they are data. I find it a bit of a stretch to interpret that as me saying "you obviously haven't read Shakespeare and Austen" (in any case, I've never read Austen myself and definitely can't remember what pronouns Shakespeare used from what little we read in school; I leave it to the historical linguists to dig out the usage examples).

Back to the matter at hand, if you want something definitely contemporary, of the five first tweets at https://twitter.com/search?q=they I see two which could have been replaced with "he" ("if someone wants to follow you {he,they}'ll follow", "Never miss an opportunity to tell someone how much {he,they} mean to you.").

> The usage doesn't need to spread beyond discussions of the term itself, because it was already being used long before these discussions.

My mistake. I should have known that someone would take the opportunity to mince words when we're on the topic of language and communication, if it would suit their goal.

To be more concrete: I meant penetrate usage in writing in a contemporary setting. I don't know if it penetrated usage over a hundred years ago if it isn't relevant to written communication today. I communicate with people in this era, not with people from the past. Debating whether using a gendered pronoun obscures meaning or not implicitly refers to communication in this day and age, not the past.

Is that supposed to prove something? Well, I guess it proves that I don't read such classic authors, which is right. My background and experience is more humble, mostly to do with writing and reading things in online forums like this or other contemporary settings.

But if you want to be an elitist and dismiss my experience over not being literate with the classics, go ahead.

Interesting how you focused on "he/him/his" when I said "He/She" and "his/hers", noting that either gender based term can be used in a gender neutral manner, but that "traditionally the masculine form is used". My point was to indicate that it is common enough that insult should not have been taken to the original post.

I certainly never said anything about "The One Correct English Way".

As for the condescension; yes that was intended. The response was overly hostile and out of line so the condescension was deserved IMHO. Don't worry yourself though Mike; I spread around the condescension equally to all genders.

> I spread around the condescension equally

Please don't spread any more condescension on Hacker News. Although I'm sure you don't mean to, it's one of the worst things you could do to damage this community.

Claiming that the author is sexist for using "he" in a gender neutral setting, which has been standard practice for decades, is an over-reach.

Is "they" or "him/her" a better way forward? Sure. Is it standard practice? No. Can you infer anything about the author's attitudes by his use of standard English grammar? No.

Gender neutral pronouns can only refer to abstract persons

> "The student will have to read this book carefully if he wishes to do well." - OK

> "A student is expected to attend 90% of the lectures, or he will be in trouble." - WRONG, if your audience has women

> "Julia thought she did well on the exam and he was right." - WRONG

> "Julia thought she did well on the exam and they were right." - WRONG

(Only on Hacker News -- a discussion on point-free style devolves into a discussion on gender-free style!)

> maybe the next language you should consider studying is English

Personal swipes are not allowed in Hacker News comments, regardless of how annoying or provocative some other comment may have been.

(I'm inclined to say that pronoun wars shouldn't be, either, considering the madness that this thread devolved into.)

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