3 ms·

What's with the use of female pronouns? I've seen it third time this week I think, referring to an imaginary/unknown developer as a woman. Isn't the norm to use

by rplnt 9y ago

What's with the use of female pronouns? I've seen it third time this week I think, referring to an imaginary/unknown developer as a woman. Isn't the norm to use "they" if one wants to avoid using specific gender?

uoaei 9y ago
>Isn't the norm to use "they" In theory, yes, but in practice we see "he" used way more. The subtext is that it is a lot more noticeable when people use "she" precisely because the opposite is used so often in typical writing. It is a response to underrepresentation, only made more salient because of the recent political conversation surrounding women in employment. Your reaction seems to prove the point.
- rplnt 9y ago
  While it stands out to me (for different reasons than you think), it doesn't evoke a message of awareness. I see "fixing" one issue by creating another as worse than doing nothing. Especially since there's a clear way how to solve it. And "they" is such a great concept in my opinion. Along with having neutral position name, there's no bias towards one gender. That is not possible in my native language, there would be different word for male and female occupations (think actor/actress, but for virtually everything).
  - uoaei 9y ago
    Pray tell, how is this causing a problem? One could reverse the gender of the pronouns in TFA and your argument still holds. In a perfect world, everyone would use "they." Some people consider it necessary to respond to the prevalent usage of gendered pronouns to reverse the gender in common usage for the purpose of inciting conversations exactly like this one. IMO it's working to bring gender assumptions from a subconscious to a conscious phenomenon, which is the biggest step toward dissolving the underlying assumptions.
- jhgb 9y ago
  > Your reaction seems to prove the point. I don't think it does. Markedness is much more universal in language and not merely affecting grammatical gender in indeterminate contexts. If "the point" in question is some kind of job underrepresentation, it would be more plausible that this pronoun thing is some kind of symptom of it if this indeterminate gender issue were isolated and recent, but the indeterminate gender is ancient (older than any jobs, in fact), and markedness in general is pervasive, so I'm not sure what it could prove about recent job issues.
  - uoaei 9y ago
    >If "the point" in question is some kind of job underrepresentation Still seeing the forest for the trees. The point isn't job underrepresentation in meatspace, the point is that the underlying assumptions about gender roles in employment are expressing and reinforcing themselves whenever the English language is written with a determinate gender as in TFA. And that determined gender seems to be disproportionately male to any perceptive reader. This betrays that the forces that engender (pun intended?) discrimination are operating in the writer and are reinforcing the worldviews of those who still hold such prejudices. The causal relation between using this language and discriminating against women is not a direct one, but it's intellectually dishonest to assume on the flipside that no relation exists in anybody who does habitually use gendered pronouns in their writing.
jhgb 9y ago
> Isn't the norm to use "they" if one wants to avoid using specific gender? Technically, the "norm" in IE languages that haven't dropped M/F distinctions (those that did include, e.g., some Scandinavian languages or dialects) is masculine in indefinite and interrogative contexts (feminine implies markedness), but since English doesn't really have a norm, it's more of a do-as-you-please situation.

by rplnt 9y ago

uoaei 9y ago

>Isn't the norm to use "they" In theory, yes, but in practice we see "he" used way more. The subtext is that it is a lot more noticeable when people use "she" precisely because the opposite is used so often in typical writing. It is a response to underrepresentation, only made more salient because of the recent political conversation surrounding women in employment. Your reaction seems to prove the point.

rplnt 9y ago
While it stands out to me (for different reasons than you think), it doesn't evoke a message of awareness. I see "fixing" one issue by creating another as worse than doing nothing. Especially since there's a clear way how to solve it. And "they" is such a great concept in my opinion. Along with having neutral position name, there's no bias towards one gender. That is not possible in my native language, there would be different word for male and female occupations (think actor/actress, but for virtually everything).
- uoaei 9y ago
  Pray tell, how is this causing a problem? One could reverse the gender of the pronouns in TFA and your argument still holds. In a perfect world, everyone would use "they." Some people consider it necessary to respond to the prevalent usage of gendered pronouns to reverse the gender in common usage for the purpose of inciting conversations exactly like this one. IMO it's working to bring gender assumptions from a subconscious to a conscious phenomenon, which is the biggest step toward dissolving the underlying assumptions.
jhgb 9y ago
> Your reaction seems to prove the point. I don't think it does. Markedness is much more universal in language and not merely affecting grammatical gender in indeterminate contexts. If "the point" in question is some kind of job underrepresentation, it would be more plausible that this pronoun thing is some kind of symptom of it if this indeterminate gender issue were isolated and recent, but the indeterminate gender is ancient (older than any jobs, in fact), and markedness in general is pervasive, so I'm not sure what it could prove about recent job issues.
- uoaei 9y ago
  >If "the point" in question is some kind of job underrepresentation Still seeing the forest for the trees. The point isn't job underrepresentation in meatspace, the point is that the underlying assumptions about gender roles in employment are expressing and reinforcing themselves whenever the English language is written with a determinate gender as in TFA. And that determined gender seems to be disproportionately male to any perceptive reader. This betrays that the forces that engender (pun intended?) discrimination are operating in the writer and are reinforcing the worldviews of those who still hold such prejudices. The causal relation between using this language and discriminating against women is not a direct one, but it's intellectually dishonest to assume on the flipside that no relation exists in anybody who does habitually use gendered pronouns in their writing.

jhgb 9y ago

> Isn't the norm to use "they" if one wants to avoid using specific gender? Technically, the "norm" in IE languages that haven't dropped M/F distinctions (those that did include, e.g., some Scandinavian languages or dialects) is masculine in indefinite and interrogative contexts (feminine implies markedness), but since English doesn't really have a norm, it's more of a do-as-you-please situation.