6 ms·

I don’t want to hate because the article in general is great. But it bothers me tremendously that the author continously refers to the player as ‘they’, ‘their’

• brailsafe 7y ago
  I probably agree about the prose issue but what's your issue with gender neutral toilets? Seems way more efficient and far less stupid.
  • radicalbyte 7y ago
    I'm not sure that they're more efficient. Take for example the large open urinals. In a situation dominated by people capable of using them and where most people are using the toilets to urinate then having Unisex (or Omnisex) toilets is extremely inefficient. A good example of this is pretty much any football (soccer) stadium. For matches most of the crowd are men and a large number of them are drinking more than usual. Heck, I've been in a stadium with a 50/50 crowd: even when the toilets were split 2/1 for women in favor of men there was always a long queue for the girls and nothing for the boys.
  • TomMarius 7y ago
    Since there are no pisoars in these it is far more stupid
    • anewhnaccount2 7y ago
      It's healthier for the male prostate to pee sitting down.
      • TomMarius 7y ago
        That's complete BS.
  • kabwj 7y ago
    Male toilets are always much more filthier than female toilets. If I was a female I’d be pretty pissed if they forced me to use a urinal for men.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • stevekemp2 7y ago
      I spent years working in nightclubs, and visiting them too, and this was never the case. Hover-pee is a really common thing for women, and the results are what you imagine bthey would be.
    • minitech 7y ago
      Forcing women to use urinals is very much not a thing that happens.
      • kabwj 7y ago
        By toilets I mean the room itself, not the appliance.
        • petepete 7y ago
          Oh, you mean the rest room. Where people go to rest. Or the wash room. Where they go to, erm, wash.
          • kabwj 7y ago
            Not native. But anyway I disagree that women squat pee. They usually sit to pee here. While men don’t so all the toilet (the appliance) and the ground are full of pee. Result: the whole room stinks of pee.
        • llamathrowaway 7y ago
          I don’t know why you’re downvoted. In the UK toilet means the room, not just the thing you sit on. It’s a perfectly fine clarification to make. (I cringe every time someone uses the euphemism 'bathroom' to mean toilet. Like, we all know you are not going to take a bath in a pub after two pints right?)
• vuldin 7y ago
  At best, this seems like a very weird thing to get up in arms about. But worse, and I think more likely, it shows you are intolerant to change. I think that, equally likely, it shows you are just plain intolerant to some people.
  • Aeolun 7y ago
    > You are just plain intolerant to some people Everyone is intolerant to some people. Apparently you are intolerant to intolerant people. I’m not sure if it’s something to get up in arms about, but it’s not really something to be bothered by either in my opinion. My opinion is that pronoun doesn’t matter regardless of whether it’s he/she or they. They just seems marginally less effective at conveying information.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • badpun 7y ago
    > But worse, and I think more likely, it shows you are intolerant to change. There are two kinds of changes: for the better and for the worse. Being always pro-change would make one an idiot.
• genmon 7y ago
  It might not be that "no one dares say it too loud," it might be that people don't hate it or even (like me) like this work towards rebalancing. btw being from the UK, "they" singular in text is normal, especially in this case where the gender of the player is unknown, and seeing he/she here would really trip me up (as it does when I read older articles from the US that use "he" arbitrarily). It's a style thing, but one I've always liked as more accurate.
  • JanSt 7y ago
    As a non-english native, I didn‘t know that. I thought „they“ always meant more than one. What‘s the reasoning if you know the gender? How to differenciate between a group and a person whose gender is unknown?
    • sarvind 7y ago
      It's not like words cannot be overloaded. Lots of languages use the plural form to show respect or politeness, or regard somebody with esteem (like the royal "we") for instance.
      • danielscrubs 7y ago
        But in this case it would lead to loss of information (singular or plural). I’d prefer he/she too or even a completely new word.
        • AgentME 7y ago
          Having more information isn't always better. Imagine if our language had pronouns that told you the race of the person, or whether they had a beard or not. A culture that primarily used pronouns like these would probably develop very strong arbitrary associations related to race or beards. If people were familiar with alternatives, plenty would be uncomfortable with one of these details always being packed in to references to them.
          • 7y ago
• manbash 7y ago
  Languages evolve, and in this case it's for the better.
  • kabwj 7y ago
    I don’t see how it’s any better that pronouns lose their gender, making them less specific and therefore less useful.
    • genmon 7y ago
      It's more specific, not less: having he/she/they allows us to refer to male/female/unknown instead of overloading "he" to mean both male/unknown. Similar reason to why you sometimes want to allow NULL on a boolean column.
      • hatboat 7y ago
        I think the argument is that "they" is often used in the plural form, and requires context to determine where it's referring to the singular. This context isn't always clear which leads to ambiguity.
• sarvind 7y ago
  You were uncomfortable with textbooks when they used 'she', and against them trying to include you once more with 'they/them'? So the only acceptable option by this line of thinking is that the default pronoun should be 'he/him'. This attitude seems something a little different from 'conservative'.
  • pfisch 7y ago
    I'm not sure he was saying he was uncomfortable. I agree that "they" is awful, and I would definitely prefer that we just have to make the unknown pronoun always be "she" if that is what everyone needs to not throw an inequality tantrum.
• rejschaap 7y ago
  > screenshots even shows the player char is female The fact that they play a female character does not mean they are female.
• HoppyHaus 7y ago
  I agree with you. In addition to it being weird to read, having 'he' and 'she' also allows you to be able to mentally separate two individuals in a context where applicable.
• rymate1234 7y ago
  You realise you don't have to play the same gender as you are in real life right? It's probably more likely they just wanted to remain anonymous rather than this being part of some sort of movement to eliminate gender in text
• Operyl 7y ago
  I don't honestly notice it, it is a non issue and I use them without thought. I think you're just overthinking it here.
• eftychis 7y ago
  Use of 'they' if sex is unknown is normal I'd say. This is not the case here it seems though, so a complaint is valid. I do not think a formal 'they' is improper, or a new innovation e.g. see comment here (https://www.lexico.com/en/grammar/he-or-she-versus-they https://www.lexico.com/en/grammar/he-or-she-versus-they) (I might amend this later to add some examples with some google-fu, but it shouldn't be hard to find some 17th-century prose). See also the comments and answers here https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/108457/is-using-she-when-the-gender-is-unknown-ungrammatical. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/108457/is-using-...) That said, the author misuses and misapplies the construct, as the gender seems known to me from a quick pass of the article, and as mentioned by other commenters. Yes, it feels forced and it usually doesn't -- you probably have already encountered similar examples before, but did not notice them.
  • DanBC 7y ago
    Singular they is fine even if you know the gender. We don't know the gender here.
• cs02rm0 7y ago
  It's because the person behind the character is a man. I'm from the UK, it might be normal to occasionally say they when you don't know the name, gender and have an image but I don't agree with others that the way this article is written isn't very stilted as a result. I think the wider debate has probably sailed. I remember the confusion at having to add a fourth gender (beyond M/F/other) to an input dropdown list on a system 10 years ago. It's probably a textarea now.
• jdgoesmarching 7y ago
  Damn are you really so triggered over pronoun use that you needed a multi-paragraph comment about it? Conservative definitely checks out
• taurath 7y ago
  I don’t think there’s a movement to remove gender from text. I think you’re reading into the overuse/misuse of “they” in this article in a super extreme way, and have connected it to all sorts of unrelated political movements regarding gender expression, of which you are clearly not a supporter. You see a connection here that I don’t think exists.
• Rainymood 7y ago
  >they’re known as Katia Sae I thought this referred to a group known as the Katia Sae? Is this a person?
  • r3bl 7y ago
    Yes, it's a person using a female character in-game. No way of determining the gender of the player behind that character. Hence, a gender-neutral term.
• hkon 7y ago
  Was thinking the same thing, I am not used to reading like this and it seems like constant grammatical errors. I don't know, English is not my first language, but I believe I would have failed my tests in school, had I written like this.
• arbol 7y ago
  It's because the reader does not know the gender of the anonymous human player.
• simonjgreen 7y ago
  “When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
• arnvald 7y ago
  Maybe the player themselves wanted to referred to using neutral pronoun? Maybe they didn't want to reveal their gender? I don't see why this is a problem and triggers such reaction
• spookware 7y ago
  I agree. I was confused as if there were two people? Stopped reading
• mceoin 7y ago
  From recollection the article was clear in inferring that the human player wished to remain anonymous including identifying features. We are only told: - avatar female - player had slight southern drawl on phone. From this information the gender of the player is unknown, and since the article is about the player, not the avatar, gender neutral pronouns are appropriate to maintain journalist integrity. From your comment it sounds like you’re attributing gender politics to this article where there isn’t necessarily any.