Twitter banning "gendered pronouns"

[JetsetJetlaggedJaded]

Long time lurker to this board but this is the first time I'm saying anything - apologies if there is already a thread about it - I had a quick look and couldn't see anything

It seems that the powers that be at Twitter HQ have decided that "gendered pronouns" (eg. His/him she/her) are no longer considered "inclusive language" and they're working on ways to replace them with they/them

When I saw this, (despite knowing that twitter is an absolute cess pit of misogyny against women who want to protect their sex-based rights), my jaw dropped. I mean... I'm lost for words to be honest.

Putting aside any GC arguments (of which there are many), how will certain tweets, with their limited characters, even be coherent if restricted to using they/them. It's so Orwellian! I just feel like my insides are on fire!

Anyway - I just thought you might want to know.

Mrs Jetset aka SHE because I'm a f*cking woman (- and doesn't my battered, post- pregnancy and childbirth body know it!)

twitter.com/twittereng/status/1278733303508418560?s=21

I've read through that twice... and still can't work out wtf they think they are doing!

i'm not english speaker and i'm curious...
how can make any sentence without those?

is that possible?

This is the engineering department (@TwitterEng) talking about changes they'll make to their source code. It has nothing to do with the content of tweets themselves.

This isn't about banning the pronouns from the platform. It has no effect on anyone who doesn't work for Twitter.

Rather, this is by Twitter Engineering and is a move to change the language they use in their computer code.

So, if there's anywhere where they might previously have used a masculine pronoun in the traditional way to stand in for either gender, they want that to change to "they". E.g. "Someone must have dropped his phone" > "Someone must have dropped their phone". Or "If someone is elected President of the US, he has certain responsibilities" > "they have certain responsibilities".

Now, some of the suggestions by Twitter Engineering are just stupid (if the term "sanity check" offends insane people, why wouldn't their suggested alternative "coherence check" offend incoherent people?) but it's actually a good suggestion to avoid the use of "he" as a generic pronoun referring to an individual of either sex.

Oh for a mo I thought this would be the end of the smug he/him she/her twitter bios.

Head
Wall

Bang.

Hmmm it's not just about gendered language though is it? And it seems to be more twitter developers than twitter the platform, due to the discussion of terms such as blacklist/whitelist and master/slave. It looks like workplace communication rather than social media.

Glad I’m not on twitter

Yes... this is actually in general a positive move that many people in coding environments are trying to adopt. The use of male pronouns as the default used to be widespread and - especially in a male-dominated sphere - is definitely something best avoided. Similarly, documentation should always be written neutrally - it's easy enough to do in perfectly sensible grammatical ways.

I write scientific software and am pleased my colleagues have shown some awareness that male defaults are outdated.

This isn't about policing users' language.

I got that it was in house. I just can't work out how they can collate those terms and not be thinking "Oh oh! Newspeak" every time they add one

Even more glad that I’m not a computer programmer, I think my head would explode

Your thread title is massively misleading, this is about changing default male pronouns to neutral where they’re talking about either sex.

I'm not sure if my company has written guidelines or if it's simply understood that you shouldn't be sexist. In a way what I find concerning about this is that the twitter engineering people actually need to be told some of this.

Having said that, I'm not sure I shall bother expunging my uses of the term 'sanity check' referring to code.

I remember when a couple of schools got overexcited about racist language and said we can't say blackboard. It was picked up on and then you had people saying "blackboard is illegal? That's bloody stupid" but it wasn't a widespread idea. Just a couple of well meaning but not too bright individuals.

And now Twitter will stop using blacklist for the same reason.

They couldn't fall any further in my estimation anyway.

And now Twitter will stop using blacklist for the same reason.

It's not exactly the same thing. 'Blackboard' and 'whiteboard' are simply literal descriptions of the colour of an object. 'Blacklist' and 'whitelist' have an implicit connotation of black=bad, white=good.

Is Tinder run/policed/owned by the trans movement?

Lately everything I read or hear about them is anti men/women and pro extreme trans and trans promotion.

What about 'grey zone', then, to denote something the status of which is uncertain? Is that racist because of the suggestion that it lies between white/good and black/bad?

Black people are no more ⚫️ than white people are⚪️

The company I work for recently moved away from the term "blacklist". A number of companies have done so, and also organisations like the National Cybersecurity Centre have done so.
While I personally wouldn't have been inclined to replace the term "blacklist", if it's bothering other people then I can't say that I feel strongly enough to protest against the adoption of a different term.

However, in the world of computers there's one area in which afaik sexed language still pertains. And yes, sexed not 'gendered', and hardware not software. Male and female connectors, which no one ever needs to have explained or gets confused about IME.

While I personally wouldn't have been inclined to replace the term "blacklist", if it's bothering other people then I can't say that I feel strongly enough to protest against the adoption of a different term.

Yes - I can see why using black and white to mean bad and good is problematic, and as there's other cleared terms it's a bit weird to defend this sort of construct. (Whereas complaining about the use of words for colours being used for coloured objects is ludicrous and I suspect largely apocryphal)

'Clearer' terms, not 'cleared' terms.

'Clearer' terms, not 'cleared' terms.

I saw that!

Yes it's just an internal company thing. But what was exceptionally bizarre, to me, is that the Twitter employee who has been spearheading this calls himself "negroengineer" on Twitter.

The official Tweet from Twitter HQ about this linked to one of his tweets - it cut off part of the URL. I thought I was having a stroke for a moment, reading an official company tweet about diversity and inclusive language that proceeded to link to a URL with the word "negro" in it.

And it really made me wonder about someone who is spearheading a movement to ban the word "blacklist" but apparently gives no thoughts to how his colleagues might feel about his professional handle. I mean, I totally get reclaiming the word and everything, but is he sure all his black colleagues want to reclaim it? If some of them don't, isn't he rubbing their faces in insensitive language much worse than "blacklist?"

Anyway I'm a white person so what the fuck do I know, perhaps this is all fine, but wow that Twitter HQ Tweet was jarring.

'They' are twats.

Don’t change it to “list of colour.”