I think the point here is more that perceived hostility is not about intent. Perception is reality when you are not there in the user experience to give more information about your intent.
Another good argument here is that gendered language is intended to be hostile (as much as a cultural narrative can have intent) and you might just not realize it.
The article had me until it basically said using "he" in documentation makes you an asshole. It does not. Period. You can say it's better to use they, and I would even agree with it. But the article did not stop there.
There is a prescriptivist movement that has branded the use of a generic "he" as not generic and therefore sexist. I refuse to feel guilty because someone else has decided that they can declare language to have officially changed, and dictate what I meant by words I used.
I guess it depends whether calling figurative-you hostile is itself hostile. Is it offering advice on how to communicate better, or implying that figurative-you is an asshole? You could interpret it either way.
The actual problem here is that English has become an essentially gender-free language, with its vestigial gender closely linked to sex. He doesn't necessarily indicate a male person in English; it just usually does. (Sex and gender are not interchangeable terms. European languages tend to get hung up on masculine/feminine/neuter, but it could just as easily have been human/animal/food/etc., or long/flat/round/etc., as in other languages.) They, them and their are the closest thing we have to sex-neutral third-person pronouns (if one does not wish to engage in the grammatical acrobatics required to consistently use one), but then there's the prescriptivist idea that those pronouns can only be used as plural forms to deal with. (Shakespeare used them in the singular.)
Agreed. The author here is talking about being offensive and/or insensitive (which is subjective and not related to intent). Hostility is something else.
Comments
"...hostility isn't about intent".
Wrong, it is about intent. By alexgaynor's logic, all traffic accidents are assaults.
I think the point here is more that perceived hostility is not about intent. Perception is reality when you are not there in the user experience to give more information about your intent.
Another good argument here is that gendered language is intended to be hostile (as much as a cultural narrative can have intent) and you might just not realize it.
"perceived hostility" is not "hostility"
The article had me until it basically said using "he" in documentation makes you an asshole. It does not. Period. You can say it's better to use they, and I would even agree with it. But the article did not stop there.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/he
There is a prescriptivist movement that has branded the use of a generic "he" as not generic and therefore sexist. I refuse to feel guilty because someone else has decided that they can declare language to have officially changed, and dictate what I meant by words I used.
I don't think that the author intended any hostility towards you.
touche
...
Although it's hard to read the following as not calling a figurative-me hostile, for my choice of pronoun.
I guess it depends whether calling figurative-you hostile is itself hostile. Is it offering advice on how to communicate better, or implying that figurative-you is an asshole? You could interpret it either way.
The actual problem here is that English has become an essentially gender-free language, with its vestigial gender closely linked to sex. He doesn't necessarily indicate a male person in English; it just usually does. (Sex and gender are not interchangeable terms. European languages tend to get hung up on masculine/feminine/neuter, but it could just as easily have been human/animal/food/etc., or long/flat/round/etc., as in other languages.) They, them and their are the closest thing we have to sex-neutral third-person pronouns (if one does not wish to engage in the grammatical acrobatics required to consistently use one), but then there's the prescriptivist idea that those pronouns can only be used as plural forms to deal with. (Shakespeare used them in the singular.)
Agreed. The author here is talking about being offensive and/or insensitive (which is subjective and not related to intent). Hostility is something else.