Why do people post in this style?

[Namechangeforthiss]

I’ve noticed that a lot of posters (about a whole range of topics) will go to great lengths to conceal whether their child is male or female in a post (where it’s of no consequence at all). Whole paragraphs of ‘they’ rather than he/she. Just curious as to why!

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

I find these posts very annoying to read.

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

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.

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.

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

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

@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.

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.

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.