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The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

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Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#12
post #7
post #3

An off-topic question: > When a client Googles your name, who is she more likely to seek out? > she Can someone elaborate the benefits/goals of using the feminine pronoun here? If "he" isn't (for some reason) acceptable as a gender-neutral pronoun, wouldn't "they" be a better fit? I fail to see how gender flipping is a step towards reduction of sexism if that's the goal.

Everything does not need to be made part of culture wars. Why would using she be any different than he? It's like Alice and Bob of oh so many quantum thought experiments but without Bob. If there is only one protagonist you have to go 50/50.

Off topic question for you: I'm an ESL speaker and I notice a trend where some people phrase it like

"Everything does not need"

But in my head it sounds better as

"Not everything needs"

Is the latter not acceptable English? Or is it something regional? In my language, it is customary to negate individual nouns, but some English speakers seem to only ever negate the verb.

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#13
post #8
post #3

An off-topic question: > When a client Googles your name, who is she more likely to seek out? > she Can someone elaborate the benefits/goals of using the feminine pronoun here? If "he" isn't (for some reason) acceptable as a gender-neutral pronoun, wouldn't "they" be a better fit? I fail to see how gender flipping is a step towards reduction of sexism if that's the goal.

"Back in the day", some of us used to deliberately alternate pronouns for these sorts of hypothetical people. The idea was to help nudge people toward perceiving "gender-atypical" occupations/situations/etc. as normal: "The programmer opens her text editor...". Since then the world has changed quite rapidly when it comes to norms around writing, pronouns, and gender, so perhaps "they" fills the same role for younger…

Large corporations sometimes come up with user personas, which I've always thought are fun to work with. Like alternating pronouns, they're a very reasonable, noncontroversial way to remind people their users might not look like them (busy parents, someone performing the same repetitive tasks all day with your application who would appreciation automation, etc)

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#14

Why does medium break text selection?

Because they tested on Chrome/Chromium but not on Firefox.

Maybe the selection disappears on Firefox because their custom context-menu is rendered on top of the selection, thereby "obstructing" the selection by a few pixels?

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything does not need to be made part of culture wars. Why would using she be any different than he? It's like Alice and Bob of oh so many quantum thought experiments but without Bob. If there is only one protagonist you have to go 50/50.

Off topic question for you: I'm an ESL speaker and I notice a trend where some people phrase it like "Everything does not need" But in my head it sounds better as "Not everything needs" Is the latter not acceptable English? Or is it something regional? In my language, it is customary to negate individual nouns, but some English speakers seem to only ever negate the verb.

Sample size of 1, but as a native American English speaker, I'd use the latter phrasing of "not everything needs."

The former example seems characteristic of non-native speech, but is completely understandable also.

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#17
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything does not need to be made part of culture wars. Why would using she be any different than he? It's like Alice and Bob of oh so many quantum thought experiments but without Bob. If there is only one protagonist you have to go 50/50.

Off topic question for you: I'm an ESL speaker and I notice a trend where some people phrase it like "Everything does not need" But in my head it sounds better as "Not everything needs" Is the latter not acceptable English? Or is it something regional? In my language, it is customary to negate individual nouns, but some English speakers seem to only ever negate the verb.

In my experience as a native speaker "Not everything needs" is the more common phrasing.

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#18
post #3

An off-topic question: > When a client Googles your name, who is she more likely to seek out? > she Can someone elaborate the benefits/goals of using the feminine pronoun here? If "he" isn't (for some reason) acceptable as a gender-neutral pronoun, wouldn't "they" be a better fit? I fail to see how gender flipping is a step towards reduction of sexism if that's the goal.

Are you new to the internet, or the English language? This style has been done for several decades now, even before the internet, in various publications.

Why do you think it's supposed to be a "step towards reduction of sexism"?

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