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Comment by curiousgal | Hacker News Reader

Why did you assume an expert Erlang programmer to be a female?

Edit: I always use "he/she" or "her/him"

It's just an alternative to using "he" (or "they", which still feels a bit awkward) to describe a hypothetical person. Either flip a coin to choose their gender, or always use "she" to counter-balance (a little) all the times writers default to "he".

I know two people who present a non-sex-specific identity to the world, and both have a preference for being called "they". Most friends and family respect that preference. Even those who find a non-binary construction of gender a challenging concept, "they" isn't proving awkward (just hard to remember sometimes).

I do think "they" will prevail, certainly more easily than than xe or thon or other invented options. So I actually use it, though there's still a part of my brain that flashes a red light each time, and I have to consciously ignore that.

I do think using "she" as the hypothetical example for roles people think of as male is still useful; it hopefully makes people question their knee-jerk response a bit.

As the wiki said that usage of they has been around since the time of Shakespeare so it's not super modern, just coming back.

Using the names and pronouns with someone that they prefer is the polite thing to do, even if you don't "get" it. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_antecedent#Approaches_...

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