this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
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*they
the researcher's pronouns and such are unknown at this time as they have remained anonymous
assuming male as default for everyone leads to trans people getting misgendered and is just generally a shitty out-of-touch thing to do
I happened to pick up in the article the neutral pronoun and have avoided it, but to accuse a pretty casual use of a prounoun as being a shitty thing to do is.. a shitty thing to do.
Incidentally, I hate the plural pronoun as the stand in for unspecified. Especially when talking about a company versus an individual, it is useful to use the plural to refer to company and a singular for the individual. Otherwise it's a vague mess. It's so confusing when folks are using plural to refer to singular people.
Why should misgendering be treated with more respect than the respect given?
Sorry but they has always been both singular and plural.
'Can you flag the waiter when they're not busy?' Has always been grammatically correct. Its always been the 'I'm not sure option'. You don't say he/she when you don't know how to refer to someone, you use they.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
You imply they intended some disrespect. They used a default pronoun and when asked to do otherwise they obliged, despite being immediately accused of doing a shitty thing. Folks are being offended on behalf of a person that hasn't said anything about how that person feels one way or another.
A "could you use a non-specific pronoun instead of masculine when you don't know" might have gone a long way, but implying some mundane default use of a pronoun is malicious and shitty is just a really excessive amount of vitriol when absolutely nothing was meant by any of it.
I know about singular they, but I don't like it. Perhaps because there was a movement in my childhood education to "correct" the use of singular they, as noted in that wikipedia article there was significant pressure for hundreds of years to make people not use plural pronouns singularly. I for one wish that a singular, human appropriate, non-specific personal pronoun emerged because singular "they" just grates my nerves.
Just because you didn't intend to disrespect someone, doesnt mean you didn't. Impact over intent every time. Its a shitty thing to do. So someone should kiss your ass and hold your hand through misgendering someone?
Your personal gripes about they are frankly just your opinion on them, and I'm not givibg it more weight that that.
Like I said in a different reply,
This is people asking for the respect and thought to you know, check a profile before you speak. No one here got offended, it was called out as a dick move, as it should have been.
If you don't see that as basic respect, thats part of the problem.
EDIT: it's the same level of respect as spelling someone's name correctly.
Its kinda shitty thing to do. Mistakes happen, but it says a lot when people dig their heels in.