Re: Pronouns (please bear with me)

[Alexandre François Garreau]

Le jeudi 5 mars 2020, 21:55:44 CET Per Bothner a écrit :
> On 3/5/20 12:33 PM, danielp3344--- via Feedback on the GNU Coding 
Standards. wrote:
> > I'm not proposing the use of they as a singular pronoun. I'm proposing
> > use of 'he' or 'she' which are actual english pronouns. ...  Are
> > users really offended by the use of gender in hypothetical
> > situations?
> It is not really an issue of being offended, but perpetuating
> stereotypes. Consider the statement:
> 
>     When you see your doctor, he will tell you what to do.
> 
> When people hear "he" they unconsciously visualize a man in their mind.
> This strengthens the subconscious idea in people's mind that "a doctor"
> is (by default, at least) male.

That’s why the default “she” has a good and funny effect: you visualize the 
unusual possibility of a woman AND the common one of a man.  Then it’s 
more equal, until both becomes usual and this usage starts to bug people 
beyond counterstereotypes.  Then it could be useful to change for 
something more neutral.  But I feel like currently “she” is good, in 
technical manuals.

Also because that usage and neutrality depends of the public, the country 
and the milieu, it appears to me that a texinfo macro could be pretty 
useful in that regard (for instance if a country or translator distribute 
it, they could adapt to the gender balance of their community: some seems 
pretty equal (I learnt there are almost half of women within MIT 
recently), and most are pretty not (in my university I think among 
students there are something like a dozen of women for 300 men, but the 
ratio is less worse for professors).