In general people use "him" as a replacement for "him/her". Other people use the pronoun "her" to combat the implicit assumption that people must be male. Since they are not identifying the student in this blog post one cannot ascertain the sex of the student from the fact that blog post uses the word "him". My use of the word "her" had nothing to do with any fucking.
> In general people use "him" as a replacement for "him/her".
That's one of the ways people use "him". Other times, they use "him" to mean that the individual in question is male.
These days, "her" to combat the implicit assumption that people must be male is common enough, it's almost safer to assume that "him" means someone who is specifically male.
> These days, "her" to combat the implicit assumption that people must be male is common enough, it's almost safer to assume that "him" means someone who is specifically male.
I think this is not true yet. Anecdotally I personally only noticed this first a few months ago and no one I've discussed it with in real life has yet known what I'm talking about.
Because unlike you I read the fucking article. In it, the author directly refers to the student as 'him' and 'he'; therefore it is safe to say, despite your politically ridiculous musings, that the protagonist is male.
Well... in JupiterMoon's defense, the word is overloaded (in the C++ sense). We use "him" for "male", and also (historically) for "person of unspecified/unknown gender".
Now, we're more using "her" for "person of unspecified/unknown gender", but the problem remains: We've got three states (male, female, and unknown/unspecified), and only two words (him and her). No matter what, there's going to be this kind of problem, until we come up with a third word. (People have suggested "they" or "them", but I don't like it because of singular/plural issues.)
Like "they", "them" and "their"? English is a wonderfully flexible language, it's such a shame that ridiculous and faddish political correctness is so utterly blind to it.