Talk:Bitfrost

There have been now and then some discussions about the use of she, he or s/he... since the argument has to do more with the style rather than the subject of the page, I moved it here.

Note: I added my signature to a comment I did, the rest is copy-paste. --Xavi 22:57, 8 February 2007 (EST)

Well, it is about style yet it is also about the quality of English used in the Bitfrost article, so it is about the subject of the page in that using the phrase a user can choose to protect her files from other people on the system, which suggests that all users are female, is factually misleading.

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Sexist Article

Original discussion at Talk:Bitfrost

Author refers to user in the feminine sense (she). Why not use non-gender-specific terminology such as they and their? ~ Some user.

She is understood as s/he. 209.181.213.53 21:44, 7 February 2007 (EST)

A good way to use non-sexist language is simply to use the phrase he or she. Using he is traditional and is unfair to women, using she reads awkwardly. The German language has different words for male teacher and female teacher and so on and uses the equivalent of teachermale or teacherfemale in sentences. Reading he or she seems natural, balanced and factual. So maybe each use of she could be changed to be he or she please?

This does go rather deeper than just this particular article. As this article is an official OLPC managed page one may perhaps wonder how OLPC documentation for the children will be worded. The use of the word they as a way of referring to one person so as not to indicate gender is an unfortunate trend in English these days. It is not, however, as bad as another trend, namely using the word you to mean someone or using the word you to mean some particular organization whose responsibilities are being discussed. This produces sentences which upon analysis sound ridiculous, yet such usage happens very often in television news interviews nowadays.

I also 'dislike' the pc-emphasis on 'she'... I would prefer the explicit 's/he' which goes perfectly highlighting the gender issue, while addressing both and remaining neutral. Unlike spanish where although you could write 'el/la' (el/ella) but then has to drop neutrality in the words following