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)