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interests / alt.english.usage / Re: Interesting use of 'they' to hide gender?

Re: Interesting use of 'they' to hide gender?

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From: hayes...@telkomsa.net (Steve Hayes)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.english.usage
Subject: Re: Interesting use of 'they' to hide gender?
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2022 03:05:12 -0000 (UTC)
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by: Steve Hayes - Tue, 22 Feb 2022 03:05 UTC

On Sun, 20 Feb 2022 15:56:32 +0100, occam wrote:

> The following sentence is from an article about the Firefox browser, in
> Ars Technica <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/is-firefox-ok/>
>
> "Chrome has won the desktop browser war," says one former Firefox staff
> member, who worked on browser development at Mozilla but does not want
> to be named, as they still work in the industry. "
>
> It is the 'they' that jars. The former staff (singular) .. does not want
> (singular) ... as they (plural) still work...
>
> Is this just a trick to conceal the interviewee's gender, or something
> else?

Since the person in question did not want to be named, perhaps the writer
of the article did not know their (see what I did there?) sex, and so
used a neuter pronoun.

--
Steve Hayes http://khanya.wordpress.com

Re: Interesting use of 'they' to hide gender?

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Subject: Re: Interesting use of 'they' to hide gender?
From: henha...@gmail.com (henh...@gmail.com)
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by: henh...@gmail.com - Sat, 28 May 2022 14:30 UTC

iirc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
has been common since the 1980's

Maybe you've found a Singular-THEY in the wild.

i'd prefer something like:

> > "Chrome has won the desktop browser war,"
says a former member of the Firefox team
in Mozilla's browser development but does not want
to be named, as they still work in the industry. "

On Monday, February 21, 2022 at 7:05:14 PM UTC-8, Steve Hayes wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Feb 2022 15:56:32 +0100, occam wrote:
>
> > The following sentence is from an article about the Firefox browser, in
> > Ars Technica <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/is-firefox-ok/>
> >
> > "Chrome has won the desktop browser war," says one former Firefox staff
> > member, who worked on browser development at Mozilla but does not want
> > to be named, as they still work in the industry. "
> >
> > It is the 'they' that jars. The former staff (singular) .. does not want
> > (singular) ... as they (plural) still work...
> >
> > Is this just a trick to conceal the interviewee's gender, or something
> > else?

> Since the person in question did not want to be named, perhaps the writer
> of the article did not know their (see what I did there?) sex, and so
> used a neuter pronoun.
>
>
> --
> Steve Hayes http://khanya.wordpress.com

Subject	Author
Re: Interesting use of 'they' to hide gender?	Steve Hayes
Re: Interesting use of 'they' to hide gender?	henh...@gmail.com