[Bug 8850] “himself” assumes all authors are male, which is incorrect (and misogynistic). “themself” is correct.

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=8850


Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|NEW                         |RESOLVED
         Resolution|                            |WONTFIX




--- Comment #1 from Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>  2010-02-14 06:30:27 ---
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are
satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If
you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please
reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML
Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest
title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue
yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Rejected
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: The Chicago Manual of Style (13th edition, 1983, p. 233) says:

"On the one hand, it is unacceptable to a great many reasonable readers to use
the generic masculine pronoun (he in reference to no one in particular). On the
other hand, it is unacceptable to a great many readers either to resort to
nontraditional gimmicks to avoid the generic masculine (by using he/she or
s/he, for example) or to use they as a kind of singular pronoun. Either way,
credibility is lost with some readers."

Currently the spec throughout uses "he", "him", "his", and "himself" as
gender-neutral pronouns, as has long been standard practice in English. This is
clearly not intended to be sexist — much less misogynistic! — and changing
it to using the singular "they", the periphrastics "him or her", the Spivak
pronouns ("ey"), the historical gender-neutral pronouns ("ou"), or the variety
of other forms ("s/he", "ze", etc) would not lead to a document that was any
easier to read and may in fact in many cases lead to a document that is
significantly harder to read, especially for non-native readers (the majority
of the target audience for this document).

I do understand the complaint, and consider it a valid issue with the English
language. I do not think that the HTML5 spec is the right place to be breaking
ground with regard to English grammar. Sexual equality for all genders —
female, male, transgender, intersex, and the raft of other gender identities
— is of great importance to me. For example, every year I volunteer at a
number of FIRST events to attempt to redress the gender imbalance in our field
on the long term. In my own endeavours I embrace gender identity issues; for
example, the game I am currently writing offers third gender pronouns on an
equal footing to male and female pronouns.

I hope this response shows how I have carefully considered the issue, and I
hope the explanation for the resulting decision is understandable.


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Received on Sunday, 14 February 2010 06:30:28 UTC