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Wow, I guess you must feel compelled to call out unnecessary male gendering all the time!
by satyrnein 6y ago
Wow, I guess you must feel compelled to call out unnecessary male gendering all the time!
- OJFord 6y agoAs I said, I consider them both incorrect. Perhaps it's wrong, but much like incorrect use of 'I' vs. 'me', one annoys me more because, rightly or wrongly, it reads to me more like deliberate thought/effort went into it; that the author thought they were getting it right. I should also say I don't object to gendering specific hypothetical/imagined characters in a story-telling sort of way - 'let's say Sally is a software engineering manager, and her direct report Bob ...' - but the generic case should always be third-person, even if interspersed with such story-telling.
- satyrnein 6y agoI actually agree with you that the singular they should be used instead of any gendered pronoun, but I think your focus on only female pronouns is (very mildly and probably unintentionally) sexist, similar to how applying law enforcement unevenly can be racist.
- OJFord 6y agoLike I said, it just 'perhaps wrongly' stands out more. I have said the same thing in threads where people are arguing over whether or not an author's sexist for saying 'him' or something though. Particularly on HN those cases are more likely to draw other top-level complaints from a political or societal perspective, I don't care about that, I just think it's annoying and bad grammar.