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).
