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Re: Debian Project Leader Election 2009: Final call for nominations.



Matthew Johnson <mjj29@debian.org> writes:

> How about accepting that "he" is the gender-neutral pronoun in
> English?

Because that's not true; “he” is a male-gender pronoun. The pronoun
“he” is sometimes awkwardly and explicitly defined for
gender-neutral use in specific cases, but it's never the case that
“he” is by default understood to be gender-neutral.

The English gender-neutral singular pronoun for people, if such a
pronoun exists in English, is “they”. If someone disagrees, they are
welcome to fight the tide and historical usage, but I think they are
fooling themselves.

-- 
 \      “Reichel's Law: A body on vacation tends to remain on vacation |
  `\            unless acted upon by an outside force.” —Carol Reichel |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney


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