He is a she. There's a big picture of her, and she's called Stacey. Or did you not notice as the page doesn't have a pink background and it's about stats?
Personally, once the site stopped 500ing on me outright, I certainly didn't pick out her face in the sidebar full of social networking icons, random facebook faces, and navigation links until I went looking for it.
Then again, I didn't pick out the entire sidebar.
I had a hard time finding her name on the page even looking for it. It's not a signature, but tucked away nearer to the top between the blog title and more social networking noise, in light grey text on white background, in a completely separate column from the profile pic.
Perhaps if Facebook like buttons alone didn't out-number her name 4:1 (whether or not you count the comments) it'd be easier to notice these things...
Please grow up. It's common for people to default to "he" as when they do not know the gender of the person in question. I didn't even notice the author until you mentioned anything. If anything, your last comment is quite a bit more inflammatory than accidentally referring to a random blogger as a "he".
It's a common for people to default to "he" as when they do not know the gender of the person in question.
It says "by Stacy" at the top of the article and there's a picture of her next to it. Being unsure of the authorship after reading it would seem lazy at best.
I just tend to tune out whatever is on the sidebar of a website as it tends to be ads or other things I probably don't care enough to read. As for the "by Stacy", well it is rather small and gray. Of course I have a feeling the poster of the comment that sparked this little flame-war didn't read the article.
Again, I don't really see using "he" as sexist. It's just the English language.
From Merriam-Webster:
1: prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially : discrimination against women
2: behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex
I can understand an argument that the author of the comment said "he" because of some assumption that anyone doing stats must be a man. However I'm making the counterargument that using "he" is a standard default in English and that such usage is not sexist, but rather as a result of how the English language is used.
You are saying that using he as a default isn't sexist because it is a default.
However saying that a default position is a default position tells us very little indeed and nothing whatsoever about if that default position is sexist.
If you see "he" everywhere, you assume being a man is the standard, and being a woman is somehow not applicable. This is a subtle affect that, if applied to everything, will change your perspective on the world.
And it's not that hard to just use "they" instead.
Then again, I didn't pick out the entire sidebar.
I had a hard time finding her name on the page even looking for it. It's not a signature, but tucked away nearer to the top between the blog title and more social networking noise, in light grey text on white background, in a completely separate column from the profile pic.
Perhaps if Facebook like buttons alone didn't out-number her name 4:1 (whether or not you count the comments) it'd be easier to notice these things...