That's a pretty petty reason. Also, you're only going to see usage of the singular "they" increase, so you'll be skipping a fair amount of content with that policy.
Especially in the workplace context, assignment of a particular gender for an example like this is often an issue. Many people (myself included) take the reasonable opinion that "they" is preferable to "he or she," if only on aesthetic grounds.
The problem is the male default. Grammatically it's fine, but when hundreds of article default to male, it has a growing effect socially. "They" or "he or she" is typically customary these days, more and more so the former as the latter is annoying to write and the singular they is becoming more accepted as a grammatical change in English.
My experience of writing that switches pronouns arbitrarily is that it continually draws attention to the ratio of men and women in programming, which makes the lack of women more obvious. I first noticed this in an advanced physics course where in deference to the presence of a lone woman in the course the professor consistently said "he or she". Except that it was a conscious attempt and served to draw attention every time to the lone she who clearly looked uncomfortable.
This is why I prefer to use singular they instead. It is less annoying, less likely to make people uncomfortable, and can easily be seen to include people no matter what their gender happens to be. It even includes those whose gender is ambiguous in some way.
It is a small thing, but my world view is that small improvements like this add up to create a more generally welcoming atmosphere.
I get it, but I thought it's merited in cases where the gender of the person referred to cannot be determined - usually because the reference points to an abstract class of people of any gender ("a manager") and not to a particular person of known gender ("John Smith"). In OP's case, the gender of their significant other is known, so why use "they" instead of "he" or "she"?
Using "she" and "he" would be hurtful in reference to a non-binary individual. Non-binary are more common than you think.
"they" is useful when you don't know someone's pronouns, and it's better to form a habit of using "they" for everyone (not just non-trans imo), than to accidentally use the wrong gendered pronoun, which may trigger their dysphoria more strongly.
I'm not getting the notion from this policy that it is intended to get individuals to deliberately use the wrong pronoun, because they're uncomfortable with using the correct pronoun for them. But, if you think it is ambiguous, then it could certainly be reworded.
Especially since he/she is already gender-neutral.
> clearly improve readability
Not necessarily. Some people object to singular they on grammatical grounds, in that it may confuse the reader who associates the pronoun with plural meaning only into thinking it refers to some previously unmentioned group. Infamously, Monica Cellio’s dismissal was more or less over this.
I happen to prefer singular they over he/she, but I acknowledge it’s not an obviously uncontroversial choice.
I find both "he" and "she" jarring. When there's no reason to use gender, it shouldn't be used.
It makes me think the author either 1.) does not have a strong enough command of the english language to use "they", or 2.) is trying to accomplish something by picking a gender explicitly.
It's only new, as I understand it, as a non-binary singular pronoun. Many of those contexts have also been used for a very long time as singular pronoun where gender isn't at present relevant, was clarified elsewhere or in person. An example.
I might send out a mail about Dave, the new hire, and introduce him in my opening sentence. I might write every subsequent sentence and paragraph with they where gender is neither stated nor implied. This is a form we're perfectly comfortable with, used to and doesn't break any grammatical law. They will be starting on Monday. Their desk will be the free one by Alice. etc. There are one or two contexts where we're not used to seeing it, so its use may seem contrived or unnatural.
The only difference as I see it, thanks to the recent rise of non-binary identity, is a wish for some not to ever have someone use he or she in their context. i.e. They always prefer "This is Bob, they started this morning and they will be taking the desk next to you" over "This is Bob, he..."
That, I suspect, is why some might dislike they. It's already natural in many contexts, but it's also natural to drop to he/she in a few other contexts. So it may inadvertently encourage accidental use of a non-preferred pronoun in a way that an impersonal it, or per would not.
I am a strong supporter of using the singular pronoun 'they' where the gender of the subject is unknown. People who say it is improper english are completely idiotic. It has been widely used in this way for a very long time and specifically as a direct substitute for the opposing trend for at least 30 years now.
That being said, I think it is perfectly reasonably to reject pull requests that only change the wording in a couple of comments and don't have any impact on the implementation /or/ the clarity. They should have added something else of value at the same time imo.
Singular "they" has been used for hundreds of years dating back to the 14th century -- comparatively, it's a very modern trend for people to say that it should only be used in the plural. Even forms like "themself" have a pretty long historical precedent.
> what purpose would a "gender-neutral" pronoun serve?
From a technical perspective, these pronouns allow you to refer to a single person without prescribing their[0] gender. This may have the effect of making some technical writing more accessible.
From a narrative perspective, these pronouns allow you to write about a character who's gender you might not want to reveal yet[1].
And from a political perspective, these pronouns allow individual to assert that they are nonbinary. The political perspective is what gets people annoyed, but it's worth noting that both language and politics are a reflection of society. It's normal for one to influence the other. It's because of this that we consider language and grammar rules to be descriptive, not prescriptive -- they simply describe the words that people use, even if those words are being used for a political purpose.
Ignoring politics, why not use "he" as the gender neutral form and get rid of "they"? For the same reason why it can occasionally be annoying for `0` to be automatically cast to the boolean false in languages like Javascript. If I use the word "he", I don't want someone to have guess whether I'm using it in the gender neutral form or if I'm literally describing the person's gender. Singular "they" serves as a strict typecheck -- it makes "he" into a more useful word because you can use it exclusively to refer to male subjects.
[0]: Also note the usage of singular "their" here, which is almost universally accepted. I've never heard someone argue that we should get rid of singular "their" just because we already have "his" and "her".
[1]: "The cloaked thief stepped into the house. Their eyes scanned left and right, as if they couldn't decide what they wanted to take first." Is the thief a man or a woman? Only the detective will know!
I 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.
I think in this case, it's raised that we know the subject's gender identity, so the use of gender-ambiguous "they" isn't necessary. Not out of any sense of pronoun policing or bullying - I suspect more because it scans weirdly when you have the information that it would normally abstract.
The footnote of that policy allows you to persistently call a trans man "they", even if his preferred pronoun is he. That is, the policy endorses you misgendering.
Calling a he/him person a "they" is a way of saying that you don't think they're a real man. It's really not much better than calling a trans man "her".
Finally, the previous version of the said guidelines used to reject singular they. Singular they is a great way to refer to somebody whose pronouns you don't know. Moreover, it's the preferred pronoun for many non-binary people.
Each person makes his own decision about this, but some prefer to use "they". To each his own.
Everyone has his own reason for choosing a particular pronoun. Some people do it because they think it is less sexist. Some people do it because they want to be part of the in-group, and they see others doing it. Some people are personally offended by the generic "he" and want to refer to both genders so they use the singular "they" or the awkward "he/she".
Because in English (at least speaking formally) there is no singular gender-neutral pronoun that can be used to describe people. Many people (including me) incorrectly use "they", which is actually a plural. "Her" was used in place of "his" more in the interests of political correctness than anything else. Some authors will switch genders between examples, some will use "his or hers" (which seems overly formal to me), and some just use "they".
I'm of the opinion that English will evolve over the next few decades to include "they" as a formally recognized singular pronoun. Languages exist to serve the culture they're a part of, not the other way around - and many (most?) of us are already using "they" incorrectly.
Two reasons: first, it contributes to general presumptions of male-ness as the societal default and female-ness being out of place, and second, using either gender as the default in English just plain sounds weirder and more jarring than "they" in a variety of sentence constructions.
For the second factor, the example sentence presented first in the original article:
> She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes.
...sounds pretty jarring when you make it 'he'...
> She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in his clothes.
Singular they is linguistically better than "he or she".
Banning Karen (and most of these lists) is a ridiculous demand, I think this one instance is the place where politicization is preventing people from considering the benefits. It makes language a lot smoother independently of non-binary uses.
This comment is off-topic to the issue at hand, which is about forcing people to use "they" instead of any other singular gender-neutral pronoun or simply avoiding pronouns.
Especially in the workplace context, assignment of a particular gender for an example like this is often an issue. Many people (myself included) take the reasonable opinion that "they" is preferable to "he or she," if only on aesthetic grounds.
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