[amluto]

I regularly write emails on mailing lists in reply to people whose gender and pronoun I do not know. Sometimes their name is ambiguous (as an American English speaker — maybe it’s reasonably clear in another language or region). Sometimes someone’s name is in an alphabet or other orthography that I can’t read at all. In general, this isn’t a problem, and I usually manage without pronouns.

In fact, I would find a policy that would require me to know someone’s pronoun at all to be deeply problematic. Imagine for a moment a purely binary world in which everyone was simply male or female. I would still prefer to think of kernel contributors I’ve never met as people, not as men or women. Adding LGBTQ+ into the mix changes nothing. If someone sends me a patch to review, my response should not depend on whether the sender is male, female, “they”, “xe”, or anything else.

So I tend to agree with Monica’s publicly stated point: if I’m going to use a potentially gendered pronoun to refer to someone, I should respect their preferences. But I don’t think I should be required to do so in the first place.

For what it’s worth, there are contexts where personalized pronouns are a nonstarter. If someone is anonymously reviewing an academic paper or a blinded resume, the reviewer must not know the pronoun in question.

[alluro2]

Fully agree - I believe one of the core stated issues about writing in a non-gendered way when the "preferred gender pronoun" is known is that is it can be considered rude and disrespectful to the persons identification. And, to me, this seems quite forced and too "inclusive". I have absolutely no issues with any preferences, identifications or anything similar, but I don't think anything positive for any community can come out of characterizing people as rude when they simply try to write/speak in a way that is as neutral as possible, and instead require them to go out of their way to find and recognize the person's preferred pronoun. Especially so when the topic/context is one that has nothing to with the person / gender / identification - as is mostly the case on sites like SE...

[Legogris]

Is using "they" as third-person pronoun across the board potentially problematic on SE?

I can get that a person identifying as "she" shouldn't be referred to as "he" and vice-versa, but if somebody's having issues with the only all-inclusive alternative, it's not something anyone should be expected to accommodate for.

I seriously hope this is a straw man. Same thing as the few individuals who make a ruckus whenever they're not referred to as "Dr". If I'm forced to keep track of people's gender identities to be able to contribute, I'm out.