Generally speaking with regards to pronouns, I prefer they, as the most inclusive option. (And yes, singular they is grammatically correct (even Chaucer and Shakespeare used it!), and has been since at least the 14th century.)
The issue with he/she is threefold.
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He/she enforces the gender binary and excludes people who don’t fit into either group. Especially when they is such a natural and easy word to use, it doesn’t make sense to avoid it.
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He/she is just plain awkward to use and read! You’re not gonna find many people who actually say he/she in real life.
- Have you ever noticed that it’s always
he/she? It’s never she/he, is it? Men always seem to come first for some reason. But she/he has its own problems; I would rather just sidestep the issue of “who comes first” entirely.
Though I don’t have particularly strong feelings about this PR (whatever it ends up being, I’m fine with it), I feel that they is best both from an inclusiveness standpoint as well as a consistency standpoint, both within this page and across the book as a whole, which uses they throughout.
This was mentioned in the other thread:
To me, this is misleading. To paraphrase, the argument is:
Because I suggested feminine pronouns, anyone who weighs in in support of neutral pronouns must have a double standard against feminine pronouns vs. masculine, because no one objected to the masculine pronouns but they’re objecting to the feminine ones.
But this ignores the fact that this issue wasn’t even brought to our attention before this PR. Had I known about this issue, I would support they regardless of whether or not feminine pronouns had been suggested, because neither masculine nor feminine pronouns are maximally inclusive.
