@AlSweigart One thing I've been thinking about is how we've started de-gendering slang terms. Like guy, dude, even bro or bruh can be applied to any gender now. Notice though, how it's the formerly male term that gets degendered? Because it was always the default, and we would have to make up terms to include women like "dudette". Women are never the default.
@JessTheUnstill@ned@AlSweigart yeah the only time you hear men call a group of men by a female term, it’s because they’re being sarcastic or disparaging. Like the stereotypical drill sergeant referring to his new batch of recruits as “ladies”
@ned@AlSweigart A good test for whether a term is really gender neutral is to use it in the phrase “I like to have sex with…”. A hetero man who uses “guys” or “dudes” as a gender neutral term would still be unlikely to say “I like to have sex with guys”.
@ned@AlSweigart I was just thinking recently we need to go much further, but I realized that there's somewhat of a shortage of terms which are conventionally female, and when they are, they feel much more personal and close: "babe", "sis", "girl"
@ned@AlSweigart Depends where you go - 'Hey girl' is often used for all genders. See also 'Sup, bitches?' Also 'queen' and various other originally female-coded terms, although I'm not sure guy or dude is new to being gender neutral, that's been around at least 30 years and I would hazard considerably longer.
@AlSweigart Uh, yes? Not only seen but designed it that way ourselves.
Quick chat with the corp. communications team how to phrase the neutral option respectfully and incusively and that was all.
About the only exception to this rule I can think of is the greeting: "Ladies and gentlemen". Outside of that, even in addressing a couple, it's standard to write it as Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
@AlSweigart I actually place gender options in alphabetical order when possible on a survey or form (and there are definitely more than two), so I definitely do. But yeah, it's a pet peeve of mine and so obviously a byproducy of the history of sexism
@AlSweigart Not being on the left side can be a good thing!
Sinister comes from a Latin word meaning “on the left side, unlucky, inauspicious.” Beginning with the appearance of Eve on Adam’s left side in accounts of Genesis, the Christian tradition finds instances of the left side being pinned to immorality.
So yeah, I prefer that “female” stays on the RIGHT side and let “male” be on the sinister side.
@AlSweigart I’m not sure how much it’s worth reading into that as it matches the common word pair “male or female”. Word pairs can frequently not be switched. Of course one could evaluate why that pairing has formed that way, but then we also get the reverse cases: ladies and gentlemen, mother and father. Often the word with more syllables is second, but there are many exceptions.
@AlSweigart maybe, but I’m not sure I’m convinced yet. As mentioned word pairs in English can’t be reversed without the phrase sounding ‘wrong’ and while we can speculate why the order is what it is, there are those examples of the reverse too that I pointed out. And as mentioned it is more common for the word with more syllables to be the second one in a word pair.
I’m going to speculate that UIs will almost exclusively follow the word pair order.
@AlSweigart I have been seeing it more lately, along with “we know not everyone fits into these categories but we have reasons for collecting this data so here’s how we use it” type disclaimers which makes me hopeful (in a very slow way)
No, but I have overheard a teacher at a girls' school say "she or he" when referring to someone whose gender he didn't know. I thought that was pretty neat although I don't know whether it was school policy or just his own idea.
@AlSweigart@soatok The “presumptive” choice is often easier. If the form make assumes everybody, say ordering food for a group dinner, is going to want the steak, it will usually be like 1) steak, 2) chicken, 3) vegetarian. Ordered in the assumed likely hood of choice. This is something that I think about a lot (for some very silly reasons), but has a huge effect on things like public polling and perceived inclusion. I think it’s important to pay attention to details like this, to be more aware of that biases and assumptions we are making both personally and institutionally. ^.^
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