Hi,

On Tue, 25 May 2021, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Personally I don't care whether someone submits a patch where their
> > commit message discusses an example of "he", "she", "they", "it" or
> > whatever. It's just meant as an example, and not some statement about
> > what the gender (or lack thereof) of such a user *should* be.
> >
> > It's immediately obvious what the author meant in this case, and that
> > the particular wording is arbitrary. For the purposes of discussing the
> > contribution it matters whether it's unclear or ambiguous, which it's
> > not.
>
> Nicely put.  Thanks.

_Personally_ I don't care either. Because I am exactly in that group of
young, Caucasian male developers that are so highly overrepresented in our
community already. I will never have a problem thinking that I don't
belong here. I never had that problem.

And I believe that you, Ævar, are very much in the same boat. You will
never feel as if you don't belong in tech. You're Caucasian, male, and
like me, come with an abundance of confidence.

Now, let's go for a little thought experiment. Let's pretend for a moment
that we lacked that confidence. That we were trying to enter a community
with almost no male members at all. Where an email thread was going on
about inviting us to join, using no male pronouns, or putting them last.
And remember: no confidence, no representation. Now, would you dare
chiming in, offering myself as a target? I know I wouldn't. Yet that's
exactly the atmosphere we're fostering here.

What you say, matters. _How_ you say it, matters.

In other words, I think that the _personal_ opinions of everybody who
spoke up in this mail thread (you might have noticed that all of us are
male, you could even call it a "male thread") are not the problem we are
discussing. Personal opinions are kind of missing the point here. By a
mile. And then some.

The actual point is that we want to avoid giving the impression that
only people who feel included by the pronoun "he" are invited. That we
only really care about male users and developers, and pay only scant
tribute to the rest.

And yes, even "he/she", or "(s)he" would give that impression, by
emphasizing a priority order. And "they" simply would not do that. And if
it makes a few male readers slightly uncomfortable, it might present a
fine opportunity to exercise some empathy with those who feel
uncomfortable and excluded all the time.

Thank you,
Johannes