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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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Didn't they fly off the handle on someone for politely pointing out that the text shouldn't use the word "he" and assume that every user is male?
That's not political, thats flat out unprofessional. I would think it's a pretty junior mistake if any of my colleagues filed a non-gender neutral PR in the first place, and would flat out fire them if they ever reacted to a review that unprofessionally.
I found both sides rather aggressive to be honest. The implication that the use of "he" implies that the author assumes every user is male comes with an implied accusation of some form of misogyny. The aggressive defence again at the implication went too far, but the implication of malice was unnecessary, especially for an unknown outsider butting in.
Furthermore, the "generic he" has also been acceptable English for centuries, and has only been starting to be phased out in the past few decades. In high school, some of my English study materials still came from thirty years before, and certainly didn't contain gender neutral words like "postperson". Singular "they" may have been around since the 14th century but that doesn't mean it was commonplace. My native language doesn't have an equivalent for the singular they, so I'll probably use "he" in wrong places. Accusing me of not considering female users because I'm not a native English speaker certainly won't make me want to help you (though I'd probably just ignore you rather than shut you down; then again, I'm not recovering from substance addiction like the original author was back in the day, so that's not hard for me to do).
I mean, the whole point is kind of that the problem is getting defensive rather than making a change.
That's the root of a lot of these problems. People are intimidated by 'wokeness' because they think that caring about how they affect other people means that if they have the wrong idea they're irredeemable. Clearly that isn't compatible with continuing to feel alright about themselves, so they become defensive and double down. But the reality is, if they'd just like, quit it with the callousness and cruelty they'd be eliminating the problem to begin with.
Lack of acknowledgement of there being an issue becomes the primary motivator for making the issue worse.
It's like becoming a hoarder because you're too embarrassed to acknowledge what a mess your house is to clean it. Rather than pick the trash up off the floor, they shout about how clean their house really is and how deluded we all are for talking about the smell.
No, it didn't. Go read the PR, it's extremely polite. I in fact, would challenge you to try and think of a more polite and less accusatory way of bringing up the same issue. I can't.
Yeah, you know what else has only been around for the past "few" decades? Literally every single computer and piece of software ever made, you know what literally none of them do? Refer to their users as "he".
You want to make it sound like it's a simple ESL mistake? That's fine you're welcome to believe that, but do you know how I respond to translation mistakes when I'm speaking a foreign language? I laugh and say oops, sorry, my mistake I'll fix that. I don't say "don't bring your politics into this".
I'm sorry but you are making up a fantasy to try and believe that the author wasn't being an explicit asshole.
You’re either deliberately lying or haven’t bothered to actually look.
I'm waiting. A screenshot, video, link to the GitHub file, etc. will do.
This was what I thought as well. The PR was a simple request that I thought wasn't political at all, just a matter of inclusion which I thought fit. Kling got aggressive thinking it was a political move or some shit then the rest piled on calling him names and such.
I think he just thought it was bringing politics into his project, I don't think he was taking any sides at all but people made up their minds. His silence is a bit concerning, probably ignoring it all but, whatever, It's his project.
That’s not unprofessional. That’s just how English works.
There are a million and one ways to phrase everything in the English language, it's flexibility is one of its most notable features. There is literally no instruction or label that requires non gender neutral language to be in it unless you're talking explicitly about gender.
Go ahead and name a label or instruction that you think requires you to use the word he and doesn't have a gender neutral equivalent.
While I don't disagree, it is possible that Kling picked up the writing style of he/him for unspecified gender. Kling is Swedish, and Swedish only recently made their gender neutral pronoun official. On the English side, it seems he/him for unspecified gender started getting pushed in the 1800s, though I can't find info on when they/them regained usage.
Given their reaction thinking that it was politics to correct, I find the idea the idea that it was an innocent translation issue a little hard to believe.
SIngular they never fell out of usage, but it was considered non-standard English dialect for about three hundred years. Standard formal grammar rules from the 18th century until the last quarter of the 20th defaulted to he/him where gender was unknown or irrelevant. Singular they was grudgingly accepted as standard about ten years ago. Until then, every major style guide forbade singular they in favor of "he or she" or recasting the sentence to avoid pronouns altogether or to semantically justify plural they. Other languages have either found their own solutions or decided that their traditions are good enough and kept them.
Personally, I just avoid pronouns whenever possible, especially if someone is likely to throw a tantrum over an honest mistake due to a lifetime of custom. I've never been particularly upset at singular they, but I also don't take offense if someone follows the older formal grammar rules either.
Lmao, bruh. Your inability to read properly is not my problem.
Again, name a time you think you need to use the word "he" in a software instruction or label and I'll point out how you don't. Don't worry, we'll wait for you to think of one.
And again, I didn't say they should be fired for making that mistake, I said that's a junior ass mistake to make. I said they should be fired for being childish, immature, and defensive in the face of valid criticism. You might want to reflect on how childish, immature, and defensive you're being in response to calling someone else that.
If you get enough words out I suppose you really can convince yourself that you've made a coherent point when all you've done is made up different scenarios and missed the point.
You've successfully raised my self awareness in that I'm now aware that if someone else makes up a scenario where they explicitly can't read, they could draw wild conclusions and get offended.