3 ms·
I'm sorry but I have to ask: why assume the attacker is female?
by Tade0 5y ago
I'm sorry but I have to ask: why assume the attacker is female?
- leesalminen 5y agoIt seems like "they're" would've been a better choice there, as there are a plurality of attackers in the world.
- tacostakohashi 5y agoWhy not? Why assume that they are male?
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoStatistically it seems the safer bet that they are male.
- jmcgough 5y agoProbably trying to diversify pronoun usage. Would we be pointing this out if they said 'he'?
- flatline 5y agoNo, because for better or worse “he” is the default for a plurality or unknown gender in most (all?) romance languages, including English. Times and sensitivities change but “she” still connotes more knowledge than “he” so it’s bound to cause some confusion.
- acomar 5y agowhat was true centuries ago is no longer true. "he" is not gender neutral in English, in any sense of the term. it's only used as such in historical writing - languages evolve over time. "she" connotes as much knowledge as "he".
- wackro 5y agoLanguage changes over time, yes, but also over space. Something other than 'he' might be default where you are, but not where I am.
- gotoeleven 5y agoEnglish up until recently used male pronouns by default for everything but we have learned recently, thanks to our heroic Gender Studiers, that this actually perpetuates systemic sexist patriarchy. So the solution is to randomly use male or female pronouns, making language unclear and confusing--which helps fight the patriarchy.
- jessaustin 5y ago"Mallory" is commonly understood to be a woman's name. Come to think of it, so is "Trudy". It's interesting to see the various reactions to a perfectly innocent idiom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob#Cast_of_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob#Cast_of_characte...
- jalgos_eminator 5y agoThe first time I saw this (using female pronouns for an unidentified person instead of "him/her" or "they") was in RMS's writings. So instead of using the indefinite/singular they, RMS would just say she/her. I thought it was an interesting way to hack language to break assumptions we have about gender, especially in technology.
- wrycoder 5y agoTo preempt criticism.
- dang 5y agoI understand how this sort of off-topic snag can feel provocative, but please don't copy it into the thread where it can turn into an entire flamewar. There's nothing new in any of this at this point, and therefore nothing interesting. When there's nothing interesting, discussions turn nasty. Solution: focus on the interesting specific information and diffs in a post, and ignore the provocative bits. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html