Re: [PATCH 1/4] Documentation: use singular they when appropriate

[Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>]

Hi Emily,

On Tue, 8 Jun 2021, Emily Shaffer wrote:

> There is value in intentionally defaulting to "she/her", especially in
> settings where women are underrepresented. It can be a nice way to shake
> the foundations of unconscious bias in the reader's head. See
> https://www.askamanager.org/2011/07/why-i-refer-to-everyone-as-she.html
> as an example.

I am glad you brought this up.

It is all too easy for male readers such as myself to not even notice how
effortless it is to read text that includes you, whether by the pronoun
"he" or by avoiding any gendered pronoun altogether.

All the more surprising that the same male readers (again, I will include
myself as it still happens to me, despite all the work I embarked on to
become more conscious of my own biases) will stumble over sentences where
a female pronoun "excludes" them.

And the first reaction, funnily enough, is rarely "Oh, _that_ is how I
make half of the population feel all the time!". Instead it is more like
"How dare they exclude me"?

Funny side note: this is precisely what happened recently in Germany,
where a law was proposed, and in contrast to common practices (which
dictates to use the "generic male form", i.e. "he/him", as the German
language does not have a singular "they"), it used the "generic female"
instead. I bet you can imagine the indignant backlash from male
politicians...

Let me be the first to admit that working on this kind of bias isn't easy,
and I imagine that other male readers' struggles will be similar (or even
more pronounced, if they are less interested in biases and fairness than I
am).

Seeing how threatening these efforts to adjust our language are sometimes
perceived, I often find it pretty difficult to tread carefully. For
example, I recently suggested that stumbling over a "singular they" might
give male readers an opportunity to develop empathy with the
underrepresented, to experience a glimpse of what it means to feel
excluded (even if they weren't excluded at all), and consequently to pay
more attention. This suggestion did not quite have the intended effect, I
must say: it seems that this invitation was misunderstood as an attack
instead.

In light of this experience, even if I generally agree with your point about
using "she/he" by default, I believe that Stolee's direction is more
diplomatic.

> On Mon, Jun 07, 2021 at 04:57:45PM +0000, Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget wrote:
>
> > Replace these uses with "they/them" to ensure that these documentation
> > examples apply to all potential users without exception.
>
> However, in this case, I think "they/them" is appropriate as a default.
> As you say, this documentation is intended as a guide to potential users
> and contributors, and should apply to them. Thanks for writing the
> change.

For what it's worth, I agree. Thank you, Stolee!

Ciao,
Dscho