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Bug#263084: "Sexist language" not fact



On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 03:41:35AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> On 2004-08-07 23:02:10 +0100 Matt Kraai <kraai@ftbfs.org> wrote:
> 
> >I've been converting "he", "him", "his", and "himself" to "they",
> >"them", "their", and "themself" respectively.  I don't think the
> >new version is harder to read.
> 
> For example, in http://www.debian.org/devel/join/nm-advocate it is no 
> longer clear after "signed by a developer" whether "they" refers only 
> to "NM" or to both "NM" and the developer who signed. I think it 
> becomes clear at the end of the paragraph it's singular, but that's 
> quite a wait.

It seems clear to me that the "they"s later in the sentence refer
to the same person as the first one, which to me refers to the NM
unambiguously.  If you have a suggestion for how it could be
improved that doesn't involve reverting to "he", I'd be happy to
apply it.

> I don't think a few anecdotes are a clear net benefit, given some of 
> debian-women's preferred references say it's merely debatable.

Are there women who've said that they prefer "he" and friends?

-- 
Matt Kraai            kraai@ftbfs.org            http://ftbfs.org/

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