this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
132 points (100.0% liked)

Free and Open Source Software

18021 readers
8 users here now

If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 44 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Didn't they fly off the handle on someone for politely pointing out that the text shouldn't use the word "he" and assume that every user is male?

That's not political, thats flat out unprofessional. I would think it's a pretty junior mistake if any of my colleagues filed a non-gender neutral PR in the first place, and would flat out fire them if they ever reacted to a review that unprofessionally.

[–] CaptObvious@literature.cafe 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That’s not unprofessional. That’s just how English works.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 32 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

There are a million and one ways to phrase everything in the English language, it's flexibility is one of its most notable features. There is literally no instruction or label that requires non gender neutral language to be in it unless you're talking explicitly about gender.

Go ahead and name a label or instruction that you think requires you to use the word he and doesn't have a gender neutral equivalent.

[–] brie@beehaw.org 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

While I don't disagree, it is possible that Kling picked up the writing style of he/him for unspecified gender. Kling is Swedish, and Swedish only recently made their gender neutral pronoun official. On the English side, it seems he/him for unspecified gender started getting pushed in the 1800s, though I can't find info on when they/them regained usage.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 months ago

Given their reaction thinking that it was politics to correct, I find the idea the idea that it was an innocent translation issue a little hard to believe.

[–] CaptObvious@literature.cafe 7 points 5 months ago

SIngular they never fell out of usage, but it was considered non-standard English dialect for about three hundred years. Standard formal grammar rules from the 18th century until the last quarter of the 20th defaulted to he/him where gender was unknown or irrelevant. Singular they was grudgingly accepted as standard about ten years ago. Until then, every major style guide forbade singular they in favor of "he or she" or recasting the sentence to avoid pronouns altogether or to semantically justify plural they. Other languages have either found their own solutions or decided that their traditions are good enough and kept them.

Personally, I just avoid pronouns whenever possible, especially if someone is likely to throw a tantrum over an honest mistake due to a lifetime of custom. I've never been particularly upset at singular they, but I also don't take offense if someone follows the older formal grammar rules either.