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Trans individuals and other marginalized people often spend a lot of time online as a kind of safe haven from difficult personal circumstances.

People online can be horrible asshats to a degree they wouldn't dare be in person.

These two facts tend to collide and go bad places.

(This comment is only describing the problem space, not taking sides in an argument.)



As other comments here already described, the gender of the person writing questions or answers on SO shouldn't matter at all. If you really want to avoid all issues with this, just randomize usernames for every topic and mandate gender neutral language. There is no need to use gendered pronouns in the Q/A format.


Indeed most writing which demands clarity and precision (legal documents, regulations, military reports, etc.) intentionally avoid ALL pronouns.

In a military report, the enemy isn’t ever referred to as “they” because that pronoun could also be understood to refer to another friendly unit or allied government force depending on ambiguous word order or mistranslation. Instead a term like OPFOR or similar is used consistently instead of a pronoun.

This is what sites like SE should use as a standard: precise and pronoun-free language for both questions and answers.




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