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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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I don't want to start a war here, and I don't have the context of what you experienced over there. Perhaps they did go too far. But if you don't know the gender of someone, it is indeed incorrect to assume "he" is OK. That's inclusion 101: don't assume things about people. There is a commonly accepted solution to this problem, used e.g. in the academic peer review world where the reviewer is anonymous, which is to default to "they". That's a good habit to take, costs nothing, and helps (particularly) women feel included. That's a hill I'd happily die on.
Speaking about assuming things about people, don't assume everyone is an English native. In some other languages there is no gender-neutral equivalent and instead the normal and expected way to address a stranger is by using male pronouns. Reacting aggressively instead of just politely correcting someone is the difference between making someone have a positive or a negative opinion on a given topic.
Being a non-native speaker doesn't help, for sure, but one can learn. Point in fact: I'm french :) And as a non-native speaker, I find it great that English has well-known gender neutral pronouns, so I'm more than happy to use them. I wish French had one so commonly accepted as "they" and "it".
Also I don't know if you refer to my post as aggressive, but if so I'd appreciate if you could tell me why. I haven't called anyone names, and I think I responded respectfully to the OP.
Even then some people throw their toys out because they believe "they" assumes a person is non-binary. "They" as a singular pronoun for someone of unknown gender has existed since at least the 16th century.
Look if people are getting mad because you're using "they" to refer to someone who has not disclosed their pronouns, then they're being unreasonable. But I've literally never seen that. What I have seen is people getting mad when someone uses "they" to refer to someone who has disclosed their pronouns. And often, this is something that is done by mildly transphobic people who aren't fully comfortable using, e.g., "she" to refer to someone who they feel looks insufficiently like a woman, but recognize that using "he" is wrong. Using "they" in this situation is just as wrong.
That being said, it doesn't help that there's no easy way to disclose your pronouns on this app. I'm a lot of discord servers I'm in, they use badges for pronouns so you can click on someone's username and see their pronouns. But no such option exists here
I would say people getting mad about a they instead of a he/she even after disclosure are being unreasonable. The word they is neutral ground in text conversation. I can see it being awkward to use in a direct conversation, but so often in threads, we're talking to the public not the individual.
Having said that, I still haven't seen anyone really get mad except in cases of direct misgendering. Yes some people will be unreasonable, but they are the exception.