Why do people post in this style?

Because there are some mn who, believe it or not, actually track posters down and forget that the wholesalers reason this place works is : antimony.

Sp 😂.

They have tracked people down, found their fb, jobs, they will pull posters up if they feel any detail is fake and slam the poster for being a troll.

Well it IS ridiculous. As I said, if you could follow the post if it used a gender neutral name, there’s no reason you couldn’t follow it when a gender neutral pronoun is used instead.

@StockpotSoup People are entitled to say they find posts like this hard to follow ... Just because YOU clearly don't, that doesn't make them automatically wrong, or ridiculous, or 'painfully transparent...'

What a narrow-minded view you have.

Why? Would your advice change depending on the OP’s partner’s gender?

That sounds like an attempt to make a point of some kind. It hasn’t really come off.

This “hard to follow” line that gets trotted out on every thread that doesn’t specify a gender is ridiculous and painfully transparent. It’s perfectly simple to follow a thread without knowing the gender involved.

I can’t help thinking if an OP used a gender neutral name (e.g. Pat or Sam) throughout instead of a pronoun, posters would still be demanding to know if Pat was a boy or a girl, even though the post would be no “harder to follow” than one about Katie or David.

Because everyone has unconscious biases that can make quite a difference to the responses people give.

For example, when someone says “My teenage son is eating us out of house and home” there will be a hundred replies saying “All teenage boys have massive appetites, they’re always starving! You need to make sure they’ve got lots to snack on! My son eats like a horse, he’s got hollow legs! So we buy extra bread/milk/fruit/cereal for him.” But when someone says “My teenage daughter is eating us out of house and home” there will be far more comments like “Hmmm, that’s really greedy, she doesn’t need more than X number of calories. You need to encourage healthy eating habits and stop having snacks in the cupboard. Is she overweight? Do you role model healthy eating habits? I would be worried about binge eating disorder. This doesn’t sound healthy.”

So I can absolutely see why people might make posts about their kids non-specific.

Does it matter if you're male or female? You haven't declare yourself. Likely because it's not necessary.

They do it with partners too. Do their best to not reveal the gender.

I find these posts very annoying to read.

But it's perfectly correct grammar.

You do know that the use of they is perfectly acceptable normal grammar, font you? Doesn't have to be about concealing anything?

So for 99% of Mumsnet - not outing!

If you want to conceal stuff, just change some details. Being vague is just irritating.

If your hobby really is super specific, pick one with enough similarities in terms of cost/time commitments/ travel etc.

If you don’t want people to know you’re talking about your 4 year old DD, says it’s your DS. Call your partner DH even though you’re not married.

Just don’t just being deliberately obscure in an irritating manner. It actually draws more attention to the details.

If I were posting about my family, I would refer to a hobby rather than being specific, because it genuinely would be outing!

Millions cycle and play golf. I'd guess there are under 1000 people in the UK (probably only one or two hundred) who have the same hobby as my husband.

So if someone thought the situation sounded a bit like me, with the same number and ages of children, the same faith (under 1% of the population) and then I mentioned the hobby, they could be confident it's me.

So maybe some of these hobbies are skydiving in drag, or playing gamelan halfway up mountains...

But I also think that a lot of people now use the singular "they" almost all of the time. Often without noticing it too, they aren't doing it on purpose.

I think it’s this, and it matters because words matter.

Or golf.

FWIW, if I want to conceal details about someone's sex, for privacy reasons, I sometimes just change it, so long as it doesn't affect the meaning or context of what I'm saying. I prefer that to a weird use of "they".

It is annoying.

Being weird about the sex of the child doesn’t make a massively specific story any less ‘outing’. And most situations are less unique than people might like to think.

Agree that the vagueness about hobbies is even worse. Yes. It’s cycling. Or golf.

People change details such as age and gender as well as being non specific. Agree with @Acatdance that it can also stop preconceptions.

Child may also identify as non-binary.

So true 🤣

My favourites are the ones where the child changes gender multiple times during the same post.

I notice this a lot too OP. I do think people are trying to avoid outing details in some cases, but in generally I think sex is the least of their worries.

Sometimes it might be trying to avoid a response that assumes certain types of sex stereotypes.

But I also think that a lot of people now use the singular "they" almost all of the time. Often without noticing it too, they aren't doing it on purpose.

Hobbies is cycling. Always cycling

It drives me mad OP, I've literally just read another thread like that and as you say, all the minute details are often completely outing anyway, so why do they bend over backwards to post 'they', 'them' etc

It's quite distracting, especially if the opening post is a long one.

Why does it matter to you ?