Hm. Interesting argument, but I kinda disagree with the premise that "if we have anything exposing gender metadata, the rest of the language around it in a sentence must be pulled into referencing that to be more correct".

It's a coherent thing to argue for, I'll give you that, but it's also.. kinda arbitrary? And one can make an equally convincing case for statelessness in the sense that just because one word carries metadata, doesn't mean that the other words around it must react to it.

You're making a straw-man argument with "anything exposing gender metadata". It's not like I dug up some obscure article - it's literally his chosen brand name. There's nothing arbitrary to use "he" for somebody who calls himself "mr".

Is it possible that you have a good point about inclusive writing in general, but you just happened to hop on the wrong case to make your stand, didn't realize that we're talking about an explicit "mr"?

Huh?

Isn't a strawman something I would make up that you would have said to then attack it?

[delayed]

Uh, okay, but, how do you just disagree with an idea then?

The idea being

> it's stylistically incorrect to choose a more ambiguous pronoun

And my disagreement being with the assessment that it is "incorrect". It's not. That's an arbitrary choice and pointing to "authorities" there changes nothing about the arbitrary-ness.

In fact, I went all in on good faith there by validating that idea as one coherent way to see this topic.

I just fundamentally disagree with it and brought forward my equally valid and coherent way to see this topic.

Which got countered with a "this is just a strawman" (which is false, as that is not how strawmans work) followed by a direct attack

> but you just happened to hop on the wrong case to make your stand, didn't realize that we're talking about an explicit "mr"?

And now you show up and.. uh.

Yeah anyway. The direct attack there alone is enough to lose any moral highground. So even if I had been doing what I was accused of (which I clearly did not), that would be a less worse offense?

Idk.

If you ask me I am seeing people here, desparate to have a culture war discussion and force reality into their tiny little pre-defined shapes they have in their heads. Regrettably.

But I am only saying this now that the thread is already dead and I am not the one who killed it.

> And my disagreement being with the assessment that it is "incorrect". It's not. That's an arbitrary choice and pointing to "authorities" there changes nothing about the arbitrary-ness.

I don't see why de-gendering people would be less upsetting than gendering them correctly, and THAT is clearly seen as absolutely unacceptable by many. One can't claim a moral high ground if one is just as obnoxious as ones opponents.

I said:

> it's stylistically incorrect

Not grammatically, not factually - but stylistically.

I also said:

> In this case, where he literally calls himself "Mr"

Not all cases, not as a general idea, but rather when his self-identified pronoun is known.

You're free to ignore style guides, in fact you're free to write your own - but they generally agree that when a self-identified pronoun is known, it's clearer and better writing to use that specific pronoun rather than the ambiguous "they"