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Comment by fckthisguy | Hacker News Reader

You can just say "they".

(Not trying to be judgy. People just seem to forget about the gender neutral use of "they".)

I'm not a native speaker but the problem I have with it is that it has the wrong numerus. Although I have done so in papers recently, because it seems to be a trend, sentences like "If a person chose option B, they were categorized as a cautious assessor" seem ungrammatical to me. (In this case it's easy to reformulate the sentence in plural and simpler, but that's not always the case and I hope you get the point.)

If the person is hypothetical or not fleshed-out and without a gender, like your example, they is fine and I don't even notice. But if the person is known, the use of they catches me off guard every time. I recently read a book by Brandon Sanderson that had aliens on another planet with a different gender system, so Sanderson just used they to refer to those aliens even though the characters were obviously either feminine or masculine. It completely broke the illusion of the story and was a complete turn-off. I always notice in such cases, but for some reason some people say it's totally standard English.

Ann Leckie has written a great sci-fi series, Ancillary Justice/Ancillary Sword/Ancillary Mercy, where the main character assumes everyone is a she and keeps referring to them as that all the way through (though it becomes fairly obvious to the reader which are hes and shes).

I found it actually fairly annoying at first, but quickly got over it because it is related to the plot. Same for Sanderson, I've read all his books and am not even sure now which one you're talking about!

Sometimes we need a nudge to notice the unconscious bias around us, and it's often uncomfortable.

It was Starsight (Skyward series, book 2). The diones are apparently genderless or have unknown genders, and reproduce by merging into a single being for a while so they can "try out" the adult version of the kid they're going to have. If they don't like the kid they can reject that version and try again (eugenics), otherwise the actual kid is born from an egg or something.

The whole genderless thing was completely irrelevant to the plot—the diones could have been male or female and little else would have changed. It's not that it made me uncomfortable, but it was an unnecessary distraction.

Anyway, the book was a 2/5 because it threw almost everything from book 1 away, had way too many characters and places, ended on a serious cliffhanger, and the fictional science was extremely far-fetched. Meanwhile, book 1 was fantastic (a full 1/1 in my opinion) was focused on a small cast of characters on a small set, had great character development, and resolved nicely.

> > the problem I have with it is that it has the wrong numerus.

Not really: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/singular-nonbi...

Why is it acceptable to use the wrong pronoun, such as "they", for someone who chooses the pronoun "she" or "he"?

> used to refer to a person of unspecified gender.

How is this offensive to anyone??

For the same reason referring to anyone with the wrong pronouns is, I would assume. Isn't that offensive? I didn't realize this was up for debate in 2021.

But you're not referring to someone with the wrong pronoun, but using a gender neutral one.

I'm sorry, I honestly don't understand what distinction you're trying to point out. If someone's preferred pronoun is "she", for example, and I refer to her as a "they", then that's the wrong pronoun, isn't it? That's literally the definition of "wrong", at least the definition I understand. The right pronoun is "she" and other pronouns such as "he" and "they" and "it" are, by exclusion, wrong.

But it seems like you're saying there's some kind of complex relation where sometimes people don't get to choose their own pronouns, but other people get to choose which one out of many to use based on convenience. Maybe it would help my understand if you could provide a chart relating the pronouns someone chooses with the pronouns other people are then allowed to use?

> Maybe it would help my understand if you could provide a chart relating the pronouns someone chooses with the pronouns other people are then allowed to use?

I think this is everything wrong with the world currently. Provide you with a chart, so I can justify using gender neutral pronoun?

https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/singular-they

This is barely more than a year old, is it already outdated? I am an asshole for daring to use “they”?

> If a person uses “she” or “he,” do not use “they” instead. Likewise, if a person uses “they,” do not switch to “he” or “she.” Use the pronouns the person uses.

This matches my own understanding; I have no idea why you are referring to this article as if it supports your bizarre crusade to misgender people.

You are aware that we are talking about the mars rover, right?

The comment that you replied to:

> You can just say "they".

Was a reply to this:

> S/he already did. We just don't know yet.

Which was talking about the mars rover.

They are not talking about a specific person, so how is "they" wrong?

There are like 500 other ways you could have said what you just said as well. Doesn’t mean the way you said it is invalid.

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