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.
> it disallows an English speaker to refer to a person in a gender unspecified way
it's really not that hard to use singular "they". we already do it naturally in instances like "someone left their coat here. i hope they don't need it today." it only gets confusing when you try to talk about a gender unspecified member of a group and the group at the same time.
you can certainly debate whether you should have to adjust the way you speak, but it's not like what people are requesting with pronouns is actually hard.
I use "they" and "them" as gender-neutral singular pronouns. There is disagreement on this choice of style. Alternating between gendered pronouns seems to be the preferred alternative to the last decade's (s)he he/she garbage.
>to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense. ... the insistence that pronouns should in fact be gendered.
So what. The request was rejected on the principle of it being trivial:
> Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that. [1]
I can find no mention in the discussion of anyone arguing against the change on the grounds that gendered pronouns are preferable.
We can still argue over wheather this is a good reason to reject a pull request. Personally, I think that trivial requests should be accepted if for no other reason than to be welcoming to newcomers who are testing the waters before becoming active. However, accepting pull requests takes time, and one might not want to encourage a community to spam oneself with minor corrections. Furthermore, in this particular example, the proposed changes were grammatically incorrect, as the object itself is the singular "user", while the new pronoun is the plural "they/them". This could easily be resolved by making user plural, or avoiding the pronoun altogether, but this still takes more of the maintainers time.
Notwithstanding that, it seems completely dishonest to frame the original dispute as Ben Noodhuis objecting to removing gendered pronouns on principle.
I did some quick research and found this [0]. It seems he rewrote some documentation changing "he/she/etc" to "they/them/etc". Doesn't seem like a terrible thing to do really. I had never particularly thought about the issue. The pull request was denied by another guy for some reason. I can't imagine caring if the "he"s get changed to "they"s.
Then everyone came out and started criticizing the other guy and it all blew up. I can see not necessarily spending time changing the documentation (it's certainly an easy task to set aside for later or not even think about in the first place) but to deny the pull request seems to be in bad taste in my opinion. It's not as if people who might normally use "he"s would see the the "they"s and have some sort of problem with it so if people want "they"s give the people "they"s if someone does it for you.
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.
> English has male, female, plural of people that is explicitly genderless (but not singular), and singular only of inanimate objects (but not plural). We don't have a pronoun that can fit a singular third gender or genderless reference.
Except that we do. Singular "they" has been used since Shakespeare. And you likely use singular they in your normal speech. When you don't know anything about a particular person, you ask about their attributes. Who they are and what they like, what their name is.
> Adding additional words to English may be required to deal with people who do not wish to use male or female pronouns, but also do not wish to be called an it
Indeed, and we generally do this by asking what those people want to be called, not by prescribing what they are allowed to be called. Prescriptivist language is both ineffective and rude, much as you trying to tell me what my name is is rude.
That said, even if you're interested in prescriptivist approaches, Merriam-Webster[0], and the OED[1] recognize singular they, as do the APA, NYT, and WaPo style guides.
Singular they, for a nonbinary person who prefers the pronoun, or for a person of unknown gender, is the standard. Stallman is the one causing needless conflict by trying to push a different approach when there already is a standard.
> Although we lately have seen the emergence of gender neutral pronoun, it is rather unpleasing to use "he/she" is an informal discussion forum when the unmarked form meaning is well understood and has been for centuries.
Singular "they" works wonders.
> Now, maybe english is not your first language
Only non-programming language, actually.
> because this was sincerely very clear and evident that this is what was meant in the message.
I disagree, and that was the entirety of my point here.
You, and most of the commenters in this thread, seem to have somehow missed that the author specifically objects to using the singular "they". Perhaps people are skipping to the comments and/or jumping to stock reactions to the topic of gendered pronouns instead of reading and responding to the content of the linked post. Otherwise, I've no idea why so much debate is ragimg around, for example, "custom pronouns" (ze/xir/etc), when the original author doesn't mention them at all.
The amount of pearl-clutching over the use of singular “they” from some people is astounding. It’s not difficult. Language is malleable. “They/them” works just fine, thanks. Newer pronouns similar to “xe” will get you nasty looks from people who already struggle with concepts outside the gender binary and IMO, not worth adding even more social friction into a conversation.
Sincerely, a non-binary developer and Linux user in the digital humanities field.
That's not a foregone conclusion. It's an active discussion on their github issue.
Yes, their style guide says to use singular "they," and that's what I'm criticizing. Aside from this particular carve-out, it doesn't really align with their style guide, which offers this advise:
* "To keep content understandable, concise and relevant, it should be incisive (friendliness can lead to a lack of precision and unnecessary words)"
* "You should not let caveats dictate unwieldy grammar"
It's perplexing that so many are insisting on creating a problem. There is a perfect solution that affords gender neutrality and incisive language. Why not use it?
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.
To some extent this is a hill I’m willing to die on. Singular they is pretty entrenched usage now, and as it implies nothing about its referent’s gender, I don’t see how someone could legitimately object to being referred to in that way.
However, if someone tells me that they don’t want me to refer to them using singular they (something which has never once actually happened to me outside of arguments on the internet!), then I would respect their wishes.
If you live in an English speaking country, listen closely for a week or two. You’ll probably find that people around you are already (without conscious intention) using singular they to refer to individuals of known gender.
I also wonder if you might not be undermining your own line of argument elsewhere in the thread. If you get to be fussy about being referred to using singular they (which is certainly unobjectionable from a grammatical and semantic point of view in modern English), then presumably everyone else gets to be picky about their pronouns too.
What "incorrect English" is being suggested? If it's the singular "they", then you must at least concede there's some debate about it, but most scholars have no grammatical problem with it. Using the term "forced" here also does a bit of a disservice to actual cases of compelled speech and restriction of speech (by governments, corporations etc.) - GP was very explicit that you're free to use the pronouns you want. If that's not unforced, I don't know what is.
>will not help in the current situation of gender imbalance
I'm not sure about "they" because it's so commonplace, but "she" might definitely cause someone to do a double-take. In fact, in academic philosophy, "she" instead of the expected "he" in thought experiments is very common, and on amateur philosophy forums, you can see that it does make people double take. Maybe that fact is something in favor of the argument that we tend to assume, as English language stylists have frequently in the past, that a third person is for some reason by default a "he". Arguably, being 'forced' to consider by reading why we were thrown off by a 'she' instead of a 'he' could go some way to seeing if we have the unconscious biases GP assumed exist. That 'evidence' might just lie with some introspection.
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.
I don't understand the outrage over singular "they". I agree that it's not particularly logical, but what part of the English language is?? It sounds natural, at least. It's certainly widely used, and will likely become a "correct" form within a few decades.
The OP suggests guessing gender from names. There are too many unusual cases and gender-neutral names to be able to guess gender from a name alone. Even ignoring non-english-speaking world, I know several guys named "Kelly" and "Kim" and I have a female cousin named "James" (she goes by "Jill", though).
Adding a gender field is often not feasible and a bad idea for other reasons (gender identity, etc). It's far better to sidestep the issue with commonly-used-but-not-quite-formally-correct grammar, i.m.o.
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.
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