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by bsaul
2535 days ago
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I don’t think you’ll speak a very nice language if you start to take into consideration what every single word implied meaning could be either when it’s used or when it’s not used, and you start to use the most neutral generic term all the time for anything related to any topic that may potentially offend 0.001% of the population. Remember one of the goal of a language is also to convey meaning, and if possible in the most precise way (which is already hard enough even without taking moral issues into consideration). |
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The only question here is whether using "they" instead of "he" in this case implies something about Woz rather than is just a way for the speaker to be gender neutral in how they are writing about it.
It is already increasingly common to use singular "they" when we don't know the gender - I did it above, when writing about the person who originally used "they" about Woz. The only question then is whether there's any issue with doing so when their gender is relatively well known.
Since singular "they" is already common in English, the only reason why there might be an issue with it in the case of Woz would be because someone concerns themselves with the signalling effect.
We also never use language in the most precise way possible. That is a total strawman. Pretty much everything we write is full of ambiguity, sometimes because easier, but often also very much intentional, e.g. to signal that certain details (such as the gender of the person you're talking about) is irrelevant to what you're saying. And sometimes because it is political, such as to signal that gender does not matter can be.