I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome? [LWN.net]

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 28, 2009 21:36 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

exactly my reason for brining this up.

note that the response was 'nobody is asking you to do that', apparently you are.

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 28, 2009 21:43 UTC (Fri) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]

I'm confused by your comment, sorry. Are you saying that I shouldn't be bringing this up?

I certainly don't think that banning people who screw up pronouns is effective, but I still think it's a valid issue to bring up. I'm happy to do so in a friendly way, because I realize it's something that makes /no/ sense to many guys by default.

One really effective technique (which Miller and Swift advocate) is to simply alternate or vary your pronouns.

So in one description you refer to "he", in another "she".

The one gotcha there of course is falling back into stereotypes - if your "she" is always the graphic designer, and your "he" the programmer, well, that's not really helping either :)

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 28, 2009 22:32 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

You have to be careful there. I've read things which were written by people who tried to follow this and misunderstood it, alternating the pronouns *each time they were used*. This is incredibly confusing and distracting, as if the exemplar is someone having a sex change every ten seconds. Instead, just arrange for individuals in the examples to be of both sexes, chosen at random. It's not hard :)

(I've also read things written by people who'd heard of singular they, thought it was really great, and thought they could just replace all instances of 'he' with 'they'. Of course that's a grammatical abomination.)

(and this comment is off topic. Er, sorry, is that a bikeshed, I'll go and paint it...)

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 29, 2009 17:13 UTC (Sat) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]

That's why i suggested "per story" over "per usage" :) I've also seen them alternated, and yea, it's hella confusing.

I'm less flustered by the singlular "they". As paulj points out else-thread, this used to be a common English usage.

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 29, 2009 21:57 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

It's not the singular they that's flustering: it's when people think they can turn all 'he's into 'they's. You can't do that: singular they works only when number is uncertain, and fails horribly when it is known to be 1. (e.g. you cannot make 'he was a world-record high-jumper' use singular they). In practice, this is not often important when desexing examples. I'm just being pedantic. Again.

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 29, 2009 22:31 UTC (Sat) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]

ah, gotcha :)

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 31, 2009 22:37 UTC (Mon) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]

FWIW, using "they" to refer to a specific individual of indeterminate gender is perfectly acceptable in my dialect. For instance, I could totally say "Some biker nearly ran me over today -- they weren't even wearing a helmet!". Your example of "They were a world record high-jumper" is a bit odd, but only because that sentence sounds like it comes from a biographical article or something, and it'd be pretty unusual to write a biographical article without being aware of your subject's gender.

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 29, 2009 21:33 UTC (Sat) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]

My native tongue has no gender-specific pronouns, and I'm actually relatively uncomfortable with using either 'he' or 'she'. I prefer 'one', but it sounds odd.

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 30, 2009 2:39 UTC (Sun) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]

I use "one" sometimes too, but yeah, it usually sounds oldtimey :)

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 29, 2009 16:49 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

'they' is gender neutral, but it is plural, not signular.

english doesn't have a gender neutral singular pronoun, historicly 'him' has been used both for males, and for the generic pronoun.

in my opinion, getting to the point where you are arguing about what pronoun people use is over the line awaoy from sexual harrasment and sexism, and actually weakens your case.

this thread started out dealing with really important things (people sending death threats because a person is female), and here has devolved to "don't use 'him' to refer to someone that you don't know the gender of". can you see why arguing the latter cheapens the former?

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 29, 2009 17:26 UTC (Sat) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]

'they' is gender neutral, but it is plural, not signular.

as was pointed out elsewhere, they used to be in common usage as a neutral singular.

english doesn't have a gender neutral singular pronoun, historicly 'him' has been used both for males, and for the generic pronoun.

I've tried to explain why this is problematic. I'm curious if you read the Hofstadter piece I linked to?

in my opinion, getting to the point where you are arguing about what pronoun people use is over the line awaoy from sexual harrasment and sexism, and actually weakens your case.

Funny how you were the one who "devolved" this conversation by bringing this up in several comments:

http://lwn.net/Articles/349623/
http://lwn.net/Articles/349653/

Perhaps there's a difference to you between "aggressively stamping out" this usage and politely asking people to not do it. I'm curious as to whether you're receptive at all to the latter, given that several women have explicitly stated that male-only language makes us feel invisible, marginalized, and excluded?

I'm not all that happy to engage with arguments on "tone" but would at least like to clarify whether you're advocating for the continued usage of exclusionary language, or just uncomfortable with the "tone" of such requests in the past.

Thanks,

-Leigh

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 29, 2009 17:29 UTC (Sat) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link]

Historically, English has used the appropriate plural pronoun as a respectful singular pronoun for others; indeed, we've completely lost thou in favour of the plural pronoun you. If you skip the Victorian era, "they" is a common singular pronoun for either gender, where you wish to be respectful to the person you are discussing; hence you get phrasings like "My lord and master was pleased with what they saw".

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 29, 2009 18:00 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Obviously I meant "they" is used in British english as a gender-neutral *singular* pronoun (and similarly the possessive "their" can be used in a gender-neutral, singular fashion).

I'm reasonably certain this is a long-standing practice in english. It's also quite elegant.

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 29, 2009 21:59 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

It's such a longstanding practice that you could do it in Old English and probably in languages predating that. If what you're speaking is English enough that you can be understood without special training, you can use singular they.