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 21:43 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 :)