Being a complete geek, I read a lot of code and documentation for fun. Yes, I said for fun. Most of the time these docs are written by men and they are rather dry and use words like ‘he’, ‘his’ and ‘him’ on all the pages. Today, while reading through some WordPress docs, imagine my surprise as I read the following:
Woohoo! Acknowledgement that women can be authors, designers and geeks, too! Kudos to WordPress. :)
17 comments
Amy Stephen
Indeed!
Paula The Surf Mom
Hey I wrote my whole template how come Blogger is not saying what a great job I did.
gretchen
Hmmm… Maybe Blogger is written and maintained by men? :-? I dunno. Seriously, tho, I do know that WordPress has several women developers and I have been more than pleased with the way things have turned out since I switched over to it. Just seems so intuitive which makes me think there are more women than men involved. ;)
gretchen
=)) Well, it wouldn’t be the first time…I have Issues With Authority. :d
Scott Carpenter
Holy cow, it’s good that Amy pointed me this way. We can’t have this kind of subversive talk. I’m going to have to report you to “The Man.”
Seriously, I’d love it if English had a neutral form to help resolve this problem.
daphne
it’s great that we women have some ‘standing’ really. besides ships, countries… XD
Stephanie
Oh, sure, they’re blaming theme problems on women! Typical!
Just kidding. Nice to see them mixing things up a little.
Amy Stephen
Crap. Did Scott follow me here? lol! If he doesn’t behave, Gretchen, we can always tell his big sister, Stacy!
Stacy
I’ll definitely take care of Scott if he becomes a problem! I like your site, Gretchen. I’ve subscribed to the feed, and I look forward to reading more.
gretchen
Cool – thanks, Stacy. :d
And Scott… Bring it on! >:/
Dana
How come every time someone uses a female pronoun, some GUY comes along proclaiming that what we need is a neutral pronoun?
We *do* have a neutral pronoun. “It.”
Personally I wouldn’t mind seeing the pendulum swinging back the other way and seeing “she” and “her” used to represent everybody. If guys can represent the whole species, surely the gender that actually bears the children can too.
(Actually, it used to be grammatically correct to use “they” as a singular neutral pronoun. Even Shakespeare did it. For some reason, at the beginning of the 20th or thereabouts, it was decided this was improper usage. But I’ve started using it again here and there just to be obnoxious.)
Scott Carpenter
What do the rest of you think about Dana’s comment? Does it have a point? I can tell it feels strongly about this, so I’d best watch my step.
gretchen
Dana – I use “they” and “their” a lot when I speak, but I know it’s not grammatically correct to use it when I write. I wish it wasn’t such a big deal.
8-|
Scott – you like to live dangerously, don’t you? ;)
Amy Stephen
Scott certainly does! lol! Hey Stacy!
Scott Carpenter
It’s the voices in my head. They tell me to say these things. (The weird thing is, it always seems to be the FEMALE voices.) :-)
gretchen
Really? What else are they telling you? :-?
Scott Carpenter
:-)
I have a coworker who likes to say, “Don’t worry, the voices are telling me *not* to kill you.” I’m not sure what it says about me that I always find that humorous.