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Re:Jelly Sheet by Leonard_of_Q on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @01:34AM (#50362122)
> The they/them swap is the most elegant implementation I am aware of.

Far from it, it only creates confusion and injects ideologically charged "pronoun language" into the discussion. If you feel the need to make clear that yes, the person you're talking about can be a man as well as a woman - something which most people realise and the ones who don't won't anyway no matter which words you use - use something like s/he or "he or she". The first form is just as short, is not ideologically charged and does not create ambiguity.

Re:Jelly Sheet by hypfer on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @01:38AM (#50362145)
What confusion does it create?

You may genuinely not know the gender of an online nickname, and, frankly, you also don't really have to know? Why share this metadata in the first place.

I kinda see your point regarding "it pulls in culture war", but, to be fair, it's "they/them". Language that - in this very usage - predates the culture war by centuries.

So.. idk I think you might be wrong here.

Re:Jelly Sheet by boxed on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @02:05AM (#50362296)
"They" is plural AND singular. Obviously it creates confusion.
Re:Jelly Sheet by hypfer on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @02:08AM (#50362311)
Fair pushback, however, again, I would ask to which degree and to what end.

"There is an entity named doob, and they are responsible for this thing" at least to me kinda solves the exact thing (attribution, "where to ask with questions") it needs to solve, while simultaneously encoding the least amount of metadata possible.

Re:Jelly Sheet by boxed on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @04:45AM (#50363245)
In this case it could be plural though. Very much so.
Re:Jelly Sheet by exe34 on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @01:57AM (#50362259)
Unless they are non-binary? But in some languages you'll still run into trouble. In Italian, if your masculine, it's non-binario, and if you're feminine, it's non-binaria.
Re:Jelly Sheet by hypfer on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @02:00AM (#50362270)
> In Italian, if your masculine, it's non-binario, and if you're feminine, it's non-binaria.

Haha what the fuck. Who implemented that oh my god.

Genuine question though. That cannot be grassroots, can it? Because it completely defeats the purpose of that. Did this just come up because someone _had_ to translate the english culture war during news reporting?

Re:Jelly Sheet by exe34 on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @12:01PM (#50368435)
It reminds me of the atheists of northern Ireland getting asked, yes but which atheist are you, Catholic or protestant?
Re:Jelly Sheet by DrammBA on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @02:17PM (#50370239)
It was implemented when gendered languages developed a few thousand years ago, neutral words in english (binary) are gendered in other languages (e.g.: binario/binaria in spanishas well). Americans tried to fix the issue for latinos/latinas by coming up with latinx/latine and similar modifications to gendered spanish words, but it was wholly rejected by actual latin-americans.
Re:Jelly Sheet by mock-possum on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @04:56AM (#50363340)
Prefer harmless confusion to harmful intolerance
Re:Jelly Sheet by Leonard_of_Q on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @06:55PM (#50373100)
Intolerance of what? The term is used here because the person can be either male or female. S/he does that job just as well without creating confusion.