This happens in Italian, for instance: “persone” (people) Is feminine.
It’s not unlikely the poster is a non native speaker and is used to having a feminine gendered noun for the word person in their native tongue.
Engywuck@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
squaresinger@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Same in German: “die Person” is feminine.
shneancy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
or just likes reminding people in an effective way how strange it is that the “default” pronoun is “he”
ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Its not any weirder than pretty much any other language. In many Latin languages the default is feminine rather than masculine. Referring to a group of mixed gendered people in Spanish would be default feminine. Theres literally nothing inherently incorrect about either one having a default. I would imagine most native Spanish speakers would view someone as stupid for intentionally making something masculine over feminine just to prove a point of any kind.
Seeing English having a masculine default is patriarchal in some way is just nonsense. Latin countries are no less patriarchal despite having a completely different kinds of genderization in language. I studied a great deal of feminism and gender theory in college but this is one place where I dont see the logic at all. Overall tho I could care less if people want to write whatever pronoun they want there. To me, having it be gendered is a very outdated method of writing and they sounds far more modern. Saying he where you could say they just sounds like old timey Atlantic accent speech
squaresinger@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s kinda weird in general that most languages have gramatical markers for gender.
We don’t have a separate pronoun and separate word endings for e.g. young vs old, for poor vs rich, for educated vs unlearned and so on.
Many languages don’t even have a neutral form (like “they” in english), thus forcing you to mark the gender of the person you are talking about gramatically.
Like, for example, why would I care whether the baker making my bread is male or female? I care that they are a baker and know how to make good bread. Otherwise they don’t even have to be human for all I care.
TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The default pronoun is they though, not he. I would have put the exact same comment if they’d used he.