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Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

Unrelated, but I've noticed that often when Ben Horowitz discusses a theoretical CEO, he will often refer to that CEO as a female. I'm sure it isn't a mistake, but that he is consciously trying to promote female leadership roles in the industry.

Does anybody else notice that?

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It's been common for a while. I usually do it too. Or if there are two unnamed people, I usually make the higher-status one "she" and the lower-status one "he".

That might help with the incorrect perception that a man is more likely to be relatively high on the social totem pole compared to a woman (well, correct me if I'm wrong about this).

If you wanted to be totally egalitarian, I guess you could role a dice each time you need to write about a new nameless person.

No, I couldn't. However, I could roll one die or multiple dice. ;) Anyhow -- in this case, I see no need to be egalitarian, as nobody is harmed by the reverse discrimination.

My other quibble with your comment is that the perception, on average, is correct. The point of what Horowitz, I and other writers are doing in this respect is to remind people that the common situation need not be the only one, and -- more important -- should not be regarded as the "natural" one.

> , as nobody is harmed by the reverse discrimination.

That's a funny word.

> My other quibble with your comment is that the perception, on average, is correct. T

Show me the numbers.

I've noticed this as well - and as a female co-founder of a hardware startup, I have to admit I really love it. Rarely do you find the female tense being used to describe tech related news. It's a subtle thing, yet it makes a world of difference to me when I read it.

This has been common in academia since the 1970s. It is an inexpensive way to show how 'enlightened' you are.

Alternatively, an inexpensive way to slowly erode some harmful stereotypes.

We need a gender-neutral pronoun already. If you use "he" when it comes to a hypothetical person, someone will say you're sexist, if you use "she" someone will think you're overly PC, and writing "he/she" just doesn't roll of the minds tongue.

EDIT: I've heard that "they" can be used.

The introduction of a genderless pronoun is a current topic in Sweden. Let me assure you that the accusations about being overly PC are far more prevalent when using the new gender-neutral pronoun than when simply using the female one.

Indeed, that is the biggest problem with trying to use gender-neutral pronouns. You'll probably be perceived as either someone who is overly cautious about offending someone, or a gender studies academic or something similar to that. Not that there's anything wrong with the latter, but you can't have words being associated with certain "types" if you want to achieve general colloquial adoption.

Agreed, and the singular 'they' sounds sufficiently natural to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

English already has gender neutral pronouns, though they are so rare or new that I only ran across one a few months ago. The words are: zhe, zher, zhim. I'm still waiting to actually hear one of these come out of someone's mouth...

http://www.progress.org/fold162.htm

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