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On a slightly unrelated note, I like how the author referred to the attacker with she/her, a small detail I can appreciate since they normally refer to them wit
by Somasis 11y ago
On a slightly unrelated note, I like how the author referred to the attacker with she/her, a small detail I can appreciate since they normally refer to them with he/him.
- locokoko 11y agoI appreciate that too.
- mhurron 11y agoGiven that the attacker is unknown, the correct term would be they or them. Gender is unknown, a gender neutral description should be used.
- Somasis 11y agoYeah, true. Most authors seem to like to assume male, though. :(
- reinhardt 11y agoYeah, contrary to the overwhelming evidence of evil female hackers... /s
- ExpiredLink 11y ago>> I won't post it on here because it isn't my intention to start a witch hunt. It must be a female.
- MichaelGG 11y agoNo, many authors just use the default pronoun, which happens to be male. I don't like it. But that's a defect in English. They/Them is less precise. Using "her" actually apparently attracts attention away from the content. Perhaps mixing both within a longer body of text is a more subtle way.
- jakobegger 11y agoI like "they". It's especially suitable in this case, because we don't even know if it is a single person, or a group, or maybe even an automated attack (allthough that sounds unlikely). "They" leaves it open to the reader to imagine their stereotypical hacker.
- thomasvarney723 11y agoI agree "they"/"them" sounds cleaner than "he or she"/"him or her" but isn't it officially incorrect? I do like that Facebook has started using "they"/"them".
- mhurron 11y agoWhy would it be incorrect? Now it could be against style guides for an organization, but that is something of an arbitrary decision.
- monochromatic 11y ago"They" is plural.
- cddotdotslash 11y agoBut they is plural, so wouldn't the author technically need to say "he or she" for each occurrence? Sadly, English has no singular gender neutral pronoun.
- Somasis 11y agoThey can be used singular. Most people use it without thinking about it in conversation.
- monochromatic 11y agoOnly people who don't mind sounding ignorant.
- enneff 11y agoRelax. They sound just fine.
- TheyAreFine 11y ago"...including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Thackeray, and Shaw" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
- dang 11y agoOh yeah. Also Byron ("Every body does and says what they please"), Austen ("Nobody thinks of that when they fall in love"), Thackeray ("A person can't help their birth"), Wilde ("Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes"), Shaw ("It's enough to drive anyone out of their senses"), Lewis Carroll: "'Whoever lives there,' thought Alice, 'it'll never do to come upon them this size: why, I should frighten them out of their wits!'" C. S. Lewis: "She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes." Doris Lessing: "And how easy the way a man or woman would come in here, glance around, find smiles and pleasant looks waiting for them, then wave and sit down by themselves." E.B. White: "But somebody taught you, didn’t they?” This is settled. Singular 'they' is good English and always has been. The rule against it was just made up by 18th century grammarians (including the fascinating Ann Fisher [4], who surely would regret it now) and they even got a law passed in 1850 prohibiting it, which only goes to show how widely used it was. 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20150328135337/http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/sgtheirl.html https://web.archive.org/web/20150328135337/http://www.crossm... 2. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.h... 3. http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/austhlis.html http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/austhlis.html 4. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=0&gwh=CC1FD7DF9F445A743AE7FFF6E7016729&gwt=pay http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-...
- ryanlol 11y agoConsidering the writer supposedly knows the attackers identity, I don't really see why they'd use the wrong gender pronouns.
- stingraycharles 11y agoAt the same time the author referred to the attacker as a "guy", so that just proves how difficult it can be to get rid of the gender bias (assuming this was the author's intent).
- Dylan16807 11y ago"guy" is gender neutral in my dialect.
- bartbes 11y agoThe owner of HutHos does appear to be female, so that may be related?
- tptacek 11y agoI did the same thing in this paper me and Tim Newsham wrote in 1998: http://cs.unc.edu/~fabian/course_papers/PtacekNewsham98.pdf http://cs.unc.edu/~fabian/course_papers/PtacekNewsham98.pdf Partly it was a showy gesture, but after writing that way for a few days, I came to like how the distinct pronouns made it easy to track "attacker" and "defender" in the narrative, too. I'd just use "they" now, though.