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Is political correctness more valuable than technical ability these days? My personal opinion is to make "he" gender neutral again. According to Wikipedia, "he

by nawitus 13y ago

Is political correctness more valuable than technical ability these days? My personal opinion is to make "he" gender neutral again. According to Wikipedia, "he" used to be gender neutral[1]. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neutral_pronouns#Generic_he http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neut...

juridatenshi 13y ago
Being respectful of diverse groups of people and technical ability are not mutually exclusive.
auganov 13y ago
It seems like though it was used as gender neutral only for undefined gender. So if one knew for a fact that a given person is female, "he" would not be appropriate anymore.
- sontek 13y ago
  But when writing documentation, you are unaware of who it is for, so it would be a valid use of gender neutral he, correct?
  - auganov 13y ago
    Yep. But the gender undefined pronoun would be the male pronoun. So while semantically it would be gender neutral, from an overall perspective it's still male-centric. And we might want to have a way to refer to humans in a completely gender neutral way without ever having to explicitly specify it. But still, I guess using 'he' as a universal pronoun would be the most elegant solution. Although you can imagine some not liking it's historical baggage.
acdha 13y ago
Your question was discussed at length in the post above. Part of your ability to function on a team requires empathy – deliberately choosing to be antagonistic over an admittedly small effort to be more inclusive shows lurking problems in that area
mdisraeli 13y ago
If you'd read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_English#Pronouns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_English#Pr... as linked to from your link, you would have seen that there has been issues caused by this style guideline actively preventing women from entering professions. Also, if you look at historical language, it has never in English to say that 'he' was gender neutral. It would be more correct to interpret it as "women are not real". See also "Mr and Mrs John Doe".
rsynnott 13y ago
Singular 'they' has been in use for far longer than gender-neutral 'he', and is more inclusive. It is also used in virtually all modern tech writing. I'm really not sure what people have against it.

by nawitus 13y ago

juridatenshi 13y ago

Being respectful of diverse groups of people and technical ability are not mutually exclusive.

auganov 13y ago

It seems like though it was used as gender neutral only for undefined gender. So if one knew for a fact that a given person is female, "he" would not be appropriate anymore.

sontek 13y ago
But when writing documentation, you are unaware of who it is for, so it would be a valid use of gender neutral he, correct?
- auganov 13y ago
  Yep. But the gender undefined pronoun would be the male pronoun. So while semantically it would be gender neutral, from an overall perspective it's still male-centric. And we might want to have a way to refer to humans in a completely gender neutral way without ever having to explicitly specify it. But still, I guess using 'he' as a universal pronoun would be the most elegant solution. Although you can imagine some not liking it's historical baggage.

acdha 13y ago

Your question was discussed at length in the post above. Part of your ability to function on a team requires empathy – deliberately choosing to be antagonistic over an admittedly small effort to be more inclusive shows lurking problems in that area

mdisraeli 13y ago

If you'd read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_English#Pronouns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_English#Pr... as linked to from your link, you would have seen that there has been issues caused by this style guideline actively preventing women from entering professions. Also, if you look at historical language, it has never in English to say that 'he' was gender neutral. It would be more correct to interpret it as "women are not real". See also "Mr and Mrs John Doe".

rsynnott 13y ago

Singular 'they' has been in use for far longer than gender-neutral 'he', and is more inclusive. It is also used in virtually all modern tech writing. I'm really not sure what people have against it.