Eh, you're right, that came off as far too aggressive—I didn't really mean it to be. Of course the OP isn't going to be omnipotent, but then why default to male? I know English doesn't have singular gender-neutral pronouns, but I think "they" is acceptable now.

And no, obviously I'm not saying people in the field of CS are all misogynist bigots. I'm just saying it's really, really male-dominated, so defaulting to "he" doesn't really cause problems. I'm not trying to attack anyone (and I agree it came off that way, I'm sorry), I just get frustrated when it's a perpetual thing I run into, y'know? Eventually I can get a little terse.

I would be annoyed too if people consistently assume something about me which I'm not, on the other hand, the second meaning of 'he' is to refer to a person without reference to sex.[1]

[1]http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/he

I hope I'm not explaining in a patronising manner.

True, but follow me on a brief hypothetical journey. This takes place in a world where the word "Asian" is defined as people whose ancestors are primarily from Asia, but the second definition is "people regardless of ethnicity."

I can't speak for you, but I'd find it puzzling at best, and a little upsetting at worst.

Already occurs - The word Asian is used for people from East Asia, as well as people from anyhere in Asia regardless of which specific part with no regards to ethnicity.

The word 'Aboriginal' also means Indigenous Australians, with an alternate meaning the indigenous people of a non-specific land.

I'm Asian myself. Might I get annoyed with the word? It's a possibility in another universe. Would I be annoyed by people who use it because they use it differently to what I expect? No.

English is just another language. In javascript you might be annoyed scope for variables is different depending on whether var is present. Are you going to be annoyed at people who use the presence or absence of var to designate whether the variable is local or global, instead of using window.myvar exclusively for global variables?

Well that is your choice, and personally I'd rather be fine with it than to get angry at anyone who use the word Asian or Aboriginal or write javascript differently to what I expect, otherwise I'd be angry a lot, making myself and others more upset than is necessary.

Anyways it was my attempt to empathise with both of them.

Why default to male? Because multiple generation of us got our writing marked wrong if we used a plural pronoun for a singlaur and "he" was the generic. We used he for unknowns and she for the thing we loved (e.g. ships). I would love for an agreed upon generic, and they is just a bad choice.

"They" has been acceptable for centuries.

https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-t...

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/generic-s...

It wasn't in my high school English book and I doubt there would be so many people using he if it wasn't taught that way.

Why is they a bad choice? It's worked forever and is already part of the language. Languages evolve.

We trade one dimension of uncertainty for two (count) when we know the count. I just write s/he or avoid pronouns altogether.

We did/do that in German too. Some people still ended up being offended.

Go figure.

And as soon as everyone starts using s/he, bigender people get annoyed that heshe wasn't used. It's language...it's difficult to get everyday usage "normalized" into a different direction.

I nowadays just use he or she (or rather: try to stick to that - I fumble at times when writing casually), in german and in english. The german form is longer, because the noun also has a gender there.

> Eh, you're right, that came off as far too aggressive—I didn't really mean it to be. Of course the OP isn't going to be omnipotent, but then why default to male? I know English doesn't have singular gender-neutral pronouns, but I think "they" is acceptable now.

I really don't think you came off as far too aggressive at all. You called out a damaging trend and people interested in keeping privilege around didn't like it.

> but then why default to male?

You know the answer: decades (centuries?) of usage defaulting to male.

OP went to great lengths to use neutral pronouns everywhere and you ding him (or her) for one slip up? One of the few people aware of the issues and trying to do good, someone in your camp?

And because of that obsession of yours, a good part of the entire discussion is now derailed.

You need to realize that you are part of the problem.

> You need to realize that you are part of the problem.

Oh my God. It's responses like yours that starkly remind me of how imbalanced it is for a woman in this industry and indeed in life.

I admit it was a bit melodramatic.

In this season of Survivor, there is this deaf woman who wears a Cochlear implant. She can hear okay and it doesn't seem to handicap her much, but she's been bringing it up all the time to her teammates to the point that she's under the constant impression that she's being discriminated against because she's deaf, while the reality is just that she's a subpar competitor and her team is getting tired of her bringing up her deafness all the time while the simple truth is that they really don't care.

Basically, the only person on the show who's making a big deal of her deafness is herself.

Seems to me OP is doing the same thing here.

because for many people, not even in CS, 'he' is the default pronoun. There's a trend in writing now to actually use "she," when writing about a hypothetical person who is genderless, rather than "he." But not only could this be construed as sexist (i.e. akin to reverse-racism), but randomly breaking convention can be jarring to the reader. It isn't necessarily, but can be.

I'm just saying that I've read some papers by leading feminist theatre art/drama scholars, and even they use the masculine pronoun.

Also, I find it annoying that while you adknowledge OP's attempt to be gender neutral, you destroy her (see what I did there?) over a single pronoun, which happens to be gendered but is used neutrally.

Consider that the author spent one short paragraph to talk about the OP's choice of pronouns, while you spent an entire comment taking her to task for it; that her criticism was politely stated, while you employ rank hyperbole in describing that comment as "[destruction]"; that you're expecting someone to be polite and dispassionate who by her own admission has dealt repeatedly with the litany of disappointments and frustrations that come with being a woman in a male-dominated field, while not even meeting that standard of even-handedness in your own comment; and then maybe reconsider how you're devoting your efforts in this conversation. From here it looks like thou dost protest too much, methinks.

> the author spent one short paragraph to talk about the OP's choice of pronouns

which was completely unnecessary and added nothing meaningful to the discussion.

(In fact, it was self-contradictory given the insinuation that the OP had to be male in "I don't expect any different from this field.")

I know I default to 'he', personally. I have become increasingly aware of it because I work in a call center at my college and I have to consciously refer to a parent's students as 'he or she'.

What's wrong with "they" as singular 3rd person pronoun? [0]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_(singular)

I think it's something that's worth pointing out occasionally. Male programmers tend to assume that all other programmers are male. Even if they don't actually think that, it slips out in their language (as in this case).

In this case the error is a little perplexing since the OP's name is "Lexi" which is almost never used as a male name!

Not a lie: I have never encountered the name Lexi before. I would have assumed it to be a made-up pseudonym. Or a reference to a post-modern sci-fi / futuristic book.

If it's short for "Alexis," which is a claim you edited out of your comment, then I'm even more confused, as that name seems to be male preferred within the US.

This conversation got really out of hand really quickly, so I've stayed out of it, but is Alexis really male-preferred? That's an honest question; I don't know. Wolfram Alpha seems to find the opposite.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Alexis

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Alexis&a=*C.Alexis-_*Gi...

Definitely didn't register that as a name until you mentioned it. I thought it was just clever alliteration of some reference that I was missing.

I feel silly now.

Fun fact. I have a daughter who goes by Lexi and a former (male) co-worker (Aleksey) who went by Lexy.

This required a throwaway?

No - I just use a throwaway account by default (actually, several of them on different machines) because (a) sometimes I do want to comment on something without having my name attached to it, and (b) it's too much effort to switch between accounts depending on what I want to say.

> Broadly making assumptions about everyone within a particular field is as bad if not worse than someone using an incorrect pronoun.

Not really, minorities have to face stuff like this on a more frequent basis. Gendered pronouns are more than incorrect and are harmful.

> Just as an aside; everyone has to deal with imbeciles in this field whether it be the pointy haired boss or just gross incompetence, it's not gender specific.

You can't just sweep away sexism under a rug.

> You can't just sweep away sexism under a rug.

Stereotypes are different than sexism. Some stereotypes are sexist, but assuming that someone is a man when it is likely that he/she is isn't sexist.

Maybe irritating, and rash judgement - but that's stereotypes in general.

Sexism is a belief that one gender is better than the other, or that some gender is bad in some way. Does assuming that someone is a male programmer make them sexist? Not really - not unless you _also_ assume other implications like "women can't program", or other such nonsense. But that's a leap to make.

> Does assuming that someone is a male programmer make them sexist? Not really - not unless you _also_ assume other implications like "women can't program", or other such nonsense. But that's a leap to make.

In my experience I've found people who assume genders to have a reason for assuming. The most common reason is they don't believe women can program as well as men.

You do realize that by saying "in my experience, people do X are more likely to be Y", you're doing the exact same thing you're criticizing?

"(Minorities) who do X are more likely to be Y"

and

"(Privileged) are more likely to reinforce their privilege (because the don't see their privilege and/or want to keep it)"

are two different things.

At face value these to things look the same, but upon examination it's only a convenient simplification.

The first post (who you were assuming stuff about) said nothing about any minorities.

The fact is, regardless of how you paint it, you're making prejudiced assumptions about him/her based the fact that (s)he belongs to the group of "people who write 'he' when talking about coders of unknown gender".

Assuming that (s)he is "privileged" is just yet another prejudice, not a fact upon which to base your opinion.

> Assuming that (s)he is "privileged" is just yet another prejudice, not a fact upon which to base your opinion.

???

Men are more privileged than women, that is fact.

I'd argue a simpler reason is that the vast majority are male.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

- As an aside, while I firmly believe that both genders have equal _potentials_, I think that due to various socioeconomic and cultural pressures, genders are _not_ equal at everything in execution, on average. It might take a while for that to happen.