5 ms·
Most of the time people use "he" when they don't know the gender of the author. It's not assuming the author is a man. It's a place-holder word in English.
by verroq 14y ago
Most of the time people use "he" when they don't know the gender of the author. It's not assuming the author is a man. It's a place-holder word in English.
- RegEx 14y agoI do this as well, simply because using 'they' in reference to a single person irks me.
- orangecat 14y agoIf it helps, singular "they" is a long-standing practice: www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html
- RegEx 14y agoOh, I have no opinion at all on its correctness, I myself just hate using the singular 'they' when writing a comment. Thanks for the link!
- danso 14y agoSo why use "he" when in contemporary usage, "he" almost always refers to male?
- RegEx 14y agoHonestly, because I'm lazy. Maybe I'll use 'they'. Maybe I'll use 'he'. Maybe I'll use both. If I'm not given the gender of the author, I'm just going to write what sounds right rather than take the time to make it gender-less. It's not like I would blatantly disregard the author's gender if it was provided, though.
- MBlume 14y agoHonestly, this is something you should get over.
- RegEx 14y agoI probably won't. In formal writing with an anonymous subject, sure. For casual conversation, I don't care enough.
- aiiane 14y agoAnd you don't see how that leads people to unconsciously bias themselves towards thinking of the author as male, even if they don't actively decide to think of them that way?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- RegEx 14y agoIf the habit of using 'he' causes an subconscious bias, yet you refuse to correct our subconscious, what's to be done?
- aiiane 14y agoWhy should I have to correct something I didn't cause?
- RegEx 14y agoBecause a convention which many people consider harmless is causing you harm. Using 'he' when gender isn't known is not a tech-specific phenomenon.
- verroq 14y agoBecause you are outnumbered, basically. You have to make a stand or this problem won't ever go away. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4187333 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4187333
- roguecoder 14y agoBecause that way they don't have to take responsibility for their actions. Also note that their proposed solution doesn't solve anything; it might just prevent you, personally, from being able to complain about it. I'm guessing that is their actual goal.
- lmm 14y ago"she" is a diminutive of "he". As with other female-specific diminutives ("poetess", "actress"), the solution is for women to start using the "male" version, making it gender-neutral.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoI think you are right about using "he" in a non-gender-specific way, but I think there are ramifications. It becomes obvious that all articles are written by men, since you see so many he's writing them. Perhaps English needs a truly gender-neutral pronoun.
- verroq 14y agoPeople have no need to write "he/she" when referring to the author when using "he" is correct 90% of the time. If women really want people to be know them as women then they should make it clear that they are. Hell, the suffragettes persevered through much worse than creepy internet comments.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoYou should just write in caps "I don't get it". It would more helpful than what you're doing. You don't just seem to think it's okay, but you're actually excusing the fact that our society still defaults to male-first. >Most of the time people use "he" when they don't know the gender of the author. It's not assuming the author is a man. That's exactly what it's assuming. Why else would you "default" to "he" instead of "she"? Because you assume the author to be a man. And what the hell is the suffragettes comment supposed to mean? In one sentence you managed to trivialize the way women are treated often in this industry and basically say the equivalent of "They've had it worse, so who cares".
- verroq 14y agoThat doesn't sound like anything I wrote. Here's a summary of what I wrote. 1. Sometimes people use "he" to refer to unknown gender. 2. Men outnumber women in tech 3. Men make assumptions because they outnumber women. 4. If women want to make it clear that they are not second-class citizens, they should correct these assumptions. 5. The author of this article feels that if they do (4) they are discriminated against in the form of inappropriate comments etc. 6. I say so what, it's better in the long run.
- roguecoder 14y ago"He" is not gender-neutral, no matter how hard the Latin-obsessed grammarians tried [citation: http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1288&context=theses http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12...] If you want a gender-neutral pronoun, "they" works perfectly well. It doesn't matter what you intend when you type "he", everyone reading it will interpret it as male.
- sliverstorm 14y ago"They" is confusing, as it can be singular or plural.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoMost of the time, context alleviates that confusion pretty quickly. "The developer of AppX [blah blah]. They wrote it in C#". Etc. A lot of closeted or previously closeted homosexuals can tell you that it's not that terribly confusing. I used "they" for years to refer to a singular person. After coming out, I was accused of lying. My response was that I'd never lied about the gender of someone I was seeing or referring to. No one ever asked. Which ironically plays into a whole different set of gender assumptions, but that's a can of worms I don't want to open in an already dangerous thread.
- MBlume 14y agoYeah, it's really confusing. "You" has the same problem, so I try to avoid that too. /s
- sliverstorm 14y agoHuh, I never knew "you" was also plural. Practically never heard it used that way.
- dsrguru 14y agoThe second person plural in my parents' idiolect of English is "you", but in mine there's effectively a familiar/formal dichotomy of "you guys" and "you", with the latter rarely used. In the American South, many people use "you" for singular and "y'all" for plural. I wouldn't be surprised if other dialects are also losing the plural "you".
- undantag 14y agoJust start using "she" instead of he.