Totally agree with this. I'm conscious about it, I often say/write "he or she" when the gender isn't known and can be either - lately a new employee was announced who will work in QA, so I asked "when will he or she start"? Comes pretty naturally.
"Guys" though can be used in a gender-neutral sense - in the same way you'd say "folks". Doesn't necessarily mean 'boys' or 'men'.
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I've always thought that repeating, "he or she" in text comes across as very clunky. It's unnecessary, when we have a single word which encompasses both, and it intrudes on the message.
You still have to fall back to, "they" when "he or she" doesn't cover the person you're talking about anyway, so why not use "they" in the first place?
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Because they is a plural word and it seems awkward to use it to refer to a single person, whereas using "it" seems odd as well, I've been told when learning english that it's meant to refer animals, objects or already mentioned things in the context (hence not people).
Probably many would agree with english being difficult enough to add more exceptions and weird stuff 🤷🏻♀️
I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin.
Back in the day, I had a geekcode which I'm not going to share with you.
418 I'm a teapot.
Tech Lead/Team Lead. Senior WebDev.
Intermediate Grade on Computer Systems-
High Grade on Web Application Development-
MBA (+Marketing+HHRR).
Studied a bit of law, economics and design
Location
Spain
Education
Higher Level Education Certificate on Web Application Development
Either we assume that the gender is something subjective to any individual and subordinate the language to that subjectivity (thus you gotta use as many pronouns as people arbitrarily create), hence and ironically it couldn't even be considered as meaningful data in regards of PII (as it can change at any time), or we reject everything about segregating people by subjective gender "tags" and agree on considering each individual a "person", hence agreeing as well on sex/gender not being meaningful in our lives at all, while creating/using (depending on the language) a gender-neutral way of expression.
My point? Don't fix what isn't broken. If we are about to consider everybody equal we shouldn't be bothered about the language and accept happily that we are included in the statement, be it masculine or feminine. Any option outside of that is just a way to make people fight against each other and does either comply with the leftmost extremist policies (authoritarianism) or goes against them, polarising even more the society to the profit of few.
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I think we're having a different idea about what clunky means ... "they" is third person plural, it would refer to a situation where more than one person was hired, and I was curious when "they" were going to start.
Personally I'd just prefer to use "he or she", good that we have options.
Hey @leob and @joelbonetr (tagging you from this thread, but this concerns some others who have commented this post as well), I'm not even going to try to explain to you the problematics of your answers, because it seems that you don't want to listen to the points about e.g. "he/she" being excluding for some people.
I just want to ask, did you happen to read the Code of Conduct before posting (which is actually suggested before commenting to these #WeCoded-posts)? I'd like to kindly remind you of something from there:
Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:
...
Dismissing or attacking inclusion-oriented requests
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Examples of behavior that contributes to creating a positive environment include:
- Gracefully accepting constructive criticism.
And
- Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences.
It also states that:
We will not act on complaints regarding:
- Someone’s refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts
and
- Criticisms of racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions
There are people from tones of different cultures and backgrounds and we all can differ on viewpoints.
In this specific thread, the usefulness or convenience of the "singular they" (which I didn't even knew it existed as is, thanks to John for pointing it out) has been discussed and I would call it "safe enough" and "healthy".
By that means, I don't believe that this could ever be considered as Dismissing or attacking inclusion-oriented requests. You are, on the other hand, free to debate or not.
Hold on - I've just re-read my posts, but in all sincerity I can't imagine why any of them would be "problematic" - I seriously object to that qualification, and I'm kind of disappointed about it, because for all I know this was a respectful discussion throughout.
I'm not speaking for Joel, or for anyone else for that matter, only for myself, but to the best of my knowledge I have been (in those 3 or 4 comments):
respectful and empathetic
acknowledging that I'm mindful when it comes to gender (the example I gave about the new colleague demonstrated that)
not trying to attack anyone or anything, be aggressive or dismissive - the contrary I would say
Note that I only explained why personally I was using those particular pronouns in that particular example - I didn't give an opinion (let alone a dismissive one) about the terminology someone else wants to use, or about terminology that's recommended on dev.to for certain topics - I'm totally fine with all of that.
If my tone wasn't right, yes then you'd have a point - but I don't think that that was the case, at all.
I'm all for inclusiveness, and above all - respect, but calling people's moderate and nuanced comments "problematic" is, well, anything but, I would say ... honestly it irks me when I try to contribute to a discussion in a respectful way, and my contributions are put down as "problematic" ... case of pot and kettle, in my opinion.
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Totally agree with this. I'm conscious about it, I often say/write "he or she" when the gender isn't known and can be either - lately a new employee was announced who will work in QA, so I asked "when will he or she start"? Comes pretty naturally.
"Guys" though can be used in a gender-neutral sense - in the same way you'd say "folks". Doesn't necessarily mean 'boys' or 'men'.
I've always thought that repeating, "he or she" in text comes across as very clunky. It's unnecessary, when we have a single word which encompasses both, and it intrudes on the message.
You still have to fall back to, "they" when "he or she" doesn't cover the person you're talking about anyway, so why not use "they" in the first place?
Because they is a plural word and it seems awkward to use it to refer to a single person, whereas using "it" seems odd as well, I've been told when learning english that it's meant to refer animals, objects or already mentioned things in the context (hence not people).
Probably many would agree with english being difficult enough to add more exceptions and weird stuff 🤷🏻♀️
Yep which is why I'd just say "he or she" :-D
It's clunky when you have to do this a dozen times in a row, and it doesn't cover anyone who isn't a he or a she.
If you want a more developer-y reason to avoid gendered pronouns: they leak PII.
Either we assume that the gender is something subjective to any individual and subordinate the language to that subjectivity (thus you gotta use as many pronouns as people arbitrarily create), hence and ironically it couldn't even be considered as meaningful data in regards of PII (as it can change at any time), or we reject everything about segregating people by subjective gender "tags" and agree on considering each individual a "person", hence agreeing as well on sex/gender not being meaningful in our lives at all, while creating/using (depending on the language) a gender-neutral way of expression.
My point? Don't fix what isn't broken. If we are about to consider everybody equal we shouldn't be bothered about the language and accept happily that we are included in the statement, be it masculine or feminine. Any option outside of that is just a way to make people fight against each other and does either comply with the leftmost extremist policies (authoritarianism) or goes against them, polarising even more the society to the profit of few.
'They' is also singular (at least in English) - has been since the 14th century - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
Okay, but I'm not doing it a dozen times in a row, I'm usually doing it once ... I think I'll stick to "he or she" whenever the need arises.
Ty for the info John!
After cross reading the wikipedia entey, I'm still on the side of considering the "singular they" an error 😂
There are many situations I can think of it being prone to confusion:
they, would you mind picking the burgers? -> you need to ask explicitly how many people.Okay, so then I'd ask:
"when will they start?"
I think we're having a different idea about what clunky means ... "they" is third person plural, it would refer to a situation where more than one person was hired, and I was curious when "they" were going to start.
Personally I'd just prefer to use "he or she", good that we have options.
Hey @leob and @joelbonetr (tagging you from this thread, but this concerns some others who have commented this post as well), I'm not even going to try to explain to you the problematics of your answers, because it seems that you don't want to listen to the points about e.g. "he/she" being excluding for some people.
I just want to ask, did you happen to read the Code of Conduct before posting (which is actually suggested before commenting to these #WeCoded-posts)? I'd like to kindly remind you of something from there:
Hi @eevajonnapanula , no worries for the direct tagging.
Yes I did. And it also explains very clearly that
And
It also states that:
and
There are people from tones of different cultures and backgrounds and we all can differ on viewpoints.
In this specific thread, the usefulness or convenience of the "singular they" (which I didn't even knew it existed as is, thanks to John for pointing it out) has been discussed and I would call it "safe enough" and "healthy".
By that means, I don't believe that this could ever be considered as
Dismissing or attacking inclusion-oriented requests. You are, on the other hand, free to debate or not.Best regards 😄
Hold on - I've just re-read my posts, but in all sincerity I can't imagine why any of them would be "problematic" - I seriously object to that qualification, and I'm kind of disappointed about it, because for all I know this was a respectful discussion throughout.
I'm not speaking for Joel, or for anyone else for that matter, only for myself, but to the best of my knowledge I have been (in those 3 or 4 comments):
Note that I only explained why personally I was using those particular pronouns in that particular example - I didn't give an opinion (let alone a dismissive one) about the terminology someone else wants to use, or about terminology that's recommended on dev.to for certain topics - I'm totally fine with all of that.
If my tone wasn't right, yes then you'd have a point - but I don't think that that was the case, at all.
I'm all for inclusiveness, and above all - respect, but calling people's moderate and nuanced comments "problematic" is, well, anything but, I would say ... honestly it irks me when I try to contribute to a discussion in a respectful way, and my contributions are put down as "problematic" ... case of pot and kettle, in my opinion.