i take less issue with him using gendered pronouns by default than i do with him being overly dismissive of someone trying to adjust the language to be more inclusive.
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Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 3 hours agoI think that kinda weird and bad statement from the ladybird lead makes way more sense when you realize that his first language is german.
German, like other gendered languages, uses the male gender for an unknown person, using a genderless pronoun like “they” in german is a deliberate political stance that would prompt debate and is unusual and, frankly, weird.
Given that he apologized and changed it to they later, and no other incident of the sort happened since, I personally am willing to give him the benifit of the doubt.
Quill7513@slrpnk.net 3 hours ago
4am@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
Just remember that from his perspective, you are arguing against grammatical rules that are at the core of his communication experience due to his first language being German.‘so perhaps his initial reaction was confusion because he didn’t understand the angle - he thought he was being inclusive? Maybe?
I dunno I’m probably playin devil’s advocate without all the information here; I’ve just been resisting making jokes connecting grammatical pedantry to Germany the whole time.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 1 hour ago
If it’s written in German, I’d agree. In English, no he is just wrong. But perhaps is English just sucks, I don’t know and I don’t care to find out.
Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
Pretty much yeah, he thought he was already being inclusive, and I don’t blame him for doubling down initially given how awful that github thread was
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
It’s actually a very contentious grammatical issue in Germany from what I have been told by a German friend. That there is definitely a contingency of people pushing for more gender neutral language and a large amount of pushback from those who think the entire idea is absurd because of how gendered the language is.
I can see a bit of both sides of the argument. It’s important to make people feel welcomed and not like being a male is the default for everything. On the other hand, language evolves often very slowly and you can’t just force people to change the language entirely overnight. It does sound like much of the pushback is less political in nature and more grammatical as adding neutral phrases to a gendered language becomes quickly a complex task with complex new words. However, some of the pushback is also political in nature, so it’s hard to gauge whether the Ladybird situation was truly political or more grammatical at it’s core.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
You might be right.
warm@kbin.earth 27 minutes ago
It was pointed out and could have been corrected easily, nobody was accusing them of doing it intentionally. Instead they doubled down, which then did show their views and caused the controversy.