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 Sigvatr wrote:
And what is actually used?

Thanks.

Well apparently:
GW use he.
MTG use he or she.
Soda Pop use she.
And Yodhrin uses they.

Personally I don't feel excluded, because you have to be aware that it IS mostly male orientated. So why take offence? It would be silly to really, its just the way it is.

Smacks has now spent more time thinking about this then most people will in their lifetime.

My GF told me once that your language is like your grandma: she may have almost lost her mind, she may be full of inconsistancies, but you still love and respect her, so why do you try to disfigure and curbstomp her to make her follow the latest shiny trend?

French is a romance language, we don't have a neutral gender. Every word has one gender. Period. My GF would rather use the masculine as a neutral than butcher her languages (she's french-italian).

So, yeah, travail (work) is masculine, corvée (chore) is feminine. But it's somehow mitigated by the vacances (holidays), that are feminine. Incident and accident are masculine. Once a girl gets involved, you can use the feminine to qualify that as a catastrophe. The man tries to fix that, and it evolves into a cataclysme. He finally let the girl have it her way until it's an apocalypse.
However, massacre, crime and génocide are all masculine.
OTOH, délice (delight) and amour (love) are masculine if singular, feminine if plural. Because these are beautiful words, and they build a better world. Just like women (except Mrs Thatcher).
By the way, vagin and uterus are masculine, bite and couilles (slang terms for dick and balls) are feminine. Go figure.

Back on topic, my love doesn't really care about the wording of game (or technical) books. But can be really pissed off by inelegant and convoluted wording caused by that gender-equity thing.
Unsollicited attention at the LGS is way more annoying. That's why we don't play in this kind of places anymore.

I can't see any problem with using "They". Some people may have a problem with the grammar, but, simply, they are wrong. It is not a clear grammatical rule that "they" is wrong for a singular pro-noun. "They" should be the preference.

In second place, "He" or "He or She". Both have issues, the first being that some people don't feel that "He" can be gender neutral, and "He or She" makes things difficult to read.

In third place, "She". Yes, it may be "fighting the norm" but it sticks out. The assumption for most people when there is no other context for gender is that "He" is to some extent gender neutral, as it has only been about 40 years that it has been anything but that as the case, but "She" is nothing but a feminine pronoun, thereby exclusionary.

Way way way down at the bottom is randomly switching between male and female. It makes things very confusing, looks a complete mess and far too often editors get confused and swap at the wrong time. As someone with dyslexia I find the random swapping between paragraphs to make it difficult to follow who they are talking about. Take for example the 3.5 D&D rule book. It runs through PC creation, a single process, and switches all over the place. This brakes the flow and makes it difficult to follow if they are talking about the same process still or not, as they switch genders, and therefor people, on a regular basis.

Because smelly gamers are barely human, why not use it?

You can also use "player".

Pronouns are nice - but it isn't shortening the word so much.

I think it would be better to fix other issues that make women feel marginalised in the hobby (for example, sexualised sculpts, dodgy fluff, lack of marketing towards them, attitudes within some gaming communities) first. I think you'd find that if more women were playing the games in the first place they'd be willing to overlook the use of male pronouns.

Litcheur wrote:
My GF told me once that your language is like your grandma.

My grandma is dead :(

 Smacks wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
A few of the more conservative linguists claim it is grammatically incorrect yes, but personally I think they're hidebound numpties.

Just because something sounds okay to you doesn't mean it sounds okay to everyone. Lots of people do use casual grammar when they are talking. It's common to hear people say things like "It weren't me" and "I done that" or use "me" when they mean "I". From my perspective, someone saying "Me and jack went to the shop" sounds just as grating as "Me went to the shop" which is clearly dense caveman speak.

You would never say "Jack picked up their piece so they could move it" (I hope), Unless "they" is some 3rd group unmentioned.

Why wouldn't I say that? Maybe the convention for Scottish Standard English is different than whatever you learned, but I was taught in school that it's perfectly acceptable to use they/their/they're in the singular as well as the plural.

So why say "A player picked up their piece"? It's just wrong, and it sounds wrong. It's okay to say things like that in casual speech, but please not formal writing. There is no excuse for that other than ignorance. Call people numpties all you want.

It's wrong according to you, and it sounds wrong to your ear; in this case to mine it sounds right because it makes more sense when the objective is to refer to a nonspecific person without being mindlessly sexist, albeit in a minor way, to use the only nonspecific third person personal pronoun English has. It is not my fault English doesn't have an "official" way to deal with this issue, and the ludicrous and artificial barrier people like yourself place between "formal writing" and the language as it is actually spoken is base snobbery, no different than when only people with "proper" accents were allowed on TV & radio, because it was "just wrong" to have an accent or a dialect. The kind of attitude you're displaying is the same one that led to my parents getting belted in school because they grew up speaking a hybrid of Scots and English, and saying "hoose" instead of "house" was "just wrong".

So today on Dakka we have a Prescriptivist arguing against several Descriptivists about the use of "Their and they're" as pronouns. On a thread about the equality of women in wargames.

Hmm.

"Player A has a Militant unit. They move it three inches over the difficult terrain."

Seems fine to me.

He is more or less the default pronoun of the English language. Anytime a sentence needs an unspecified person the default pronoun of the average English speaker, men and women, is he.


There's worse pronouns you could use to refer to women. "It" springs to mind :p

Why would they use she in the rules when 99% of the players are males? I can't think of one female player in my local group. I go to a GW and an FLGS on a regular basis and out of the 100~ people I've seen gaming there, every one was male. I've seen a couple guys stop in with their gf to buy something or get a game but have yet to see a female playing a war game. There's a difference between being sexist and being realistic, a line the progressives don't seem to know exists. I don't see how using the word "he" in a rule book discriminates against women. Maybe if more women played the game, they would find a different word to use.

 Deadshot wrote:
He is more or less the default pronoun of the English language. Anytime a sentence needs an unspecified person the default pronoun of the average English speaker, men and women, is he.


There's worse pronouns you could use to refer to women. "It" springs to mind :p

Was never taught that in school. Is this something new? For me if you don't know the gender because it could be male or female it is always "they", "theirs". Only time I ever knew a "masculine" name applies is Man, as in Mankind. Other than that, you never do it.

Just like on Dakka or else where on the forum, a lot of people say "Hey guys what do you think of this?". So is "guys" gender specific or should that apply to everyone as well?

I wonder if it's a regional difference - both "he" and "they" are used as gender neutral terms, but I see "he" used a lot more than "they".

I've always used "guys" as a gender neutral term. I've come under fire for it from my friends before, and it's an awkward thing to try to explain

So really, the answer is both. Context makes a big difference in which one applies.

Davor wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
He is more or less the default pronoun of the English language. Anytime a sentence needs an unspecified person the default pronoun of the average English speaker, men and women, is he.


There's worse pronouns you could use to refer to women. "It" springs to mind :p

Was never taught that in school. Is this something new? For me if you don't know the gender because it could be male or female it is always "they", "theirs". Only time I ever knew a "masculine" name applies is Man, as in Mankind. Other than that, you never do it.

Just like on Dakka or else where on the forum, a lot of people say "Hey guys what do you think of this?". So is "guys" gender specific or should that apply to everyone as well?

Its not "taught" but its obvious when in real life situations. In a conversation about a random person pr made up person its always "he." Even when giving him a name its a masculine name. Joe Bloggs is the one we use. Others include John Doe, John Smith, and other generic names. All masculine.

I tend to view "hey guys" as a friendly, non-sexist way of wording things. If the crowd was mostly females you would use "Ladies" and mostly men you would use "Lads," "fella's" or "genlemen" depending on your social class and area of upbringing. Guys is generic.

 Deadshot wrote:

Davor wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
He is more or less the default pronoun of the English language. Anytime a sentence needs an unspecified person the default pronoun of the average English speaker, men and women, is he.


There's worse pronouns you could use to refer to women. "It" springs to mind :p

Was never taught that in school. Is this something new? For me if you don't know the gender because it could be male or female it is always "they", "theirs". Only time I ever knew a "masculine" name applies is Man, as in Mankind. Other than that, you never do it.

Just like on Dakka or else where on the forum, a lot of people say "Hey guys what do you think of this?". So is "guys" gender specific or should that apply to everyone as well?

Its not "taught" but its obvious when in real life situations.

Actually, it is taught. That's why it sticks as a social convention. And that's disregarding the use of common nouns such as Policeman (vs policewoman), Host (vs hostess), and so on. I can't help but feel that we've deviated from the topic though.

 Yodhrin wrote:
the ludicrous and artificial barrier people like yourself place between "formal writing" and the language as it is actually spoken is base snobbery, no different than when only people with "proper" accents were allowed on TV & radio, because it was "just wrong" to have an accent or a dialect. The kind of attitude you're displaying is the same one that led to my parents getting belted in school because they grew up speaking a hybrid of Scots and English, and saying "hoose" instead of "house" was "just wrong".

Firstly, I think you need to take a step back. Calling me a base snob, and likening me to people who discriminated against and beat your parents, is just being hurtful. It isn't going to help move the conversation forward. No one struggled more with English than I did. I grew up with quite severe dyslexia, and never learned to read or write properly at school. It was incredibly frustrating, and something I struggled with my whole life. In the end, however, I taught myself and improved because I want people to take me seriously.

There is a reason to do things properly and put care into formal writing, and it is not just to be a difficult snob. It is out of consideration for the reader. Having our ideas read by other people is a privilege. They do not know who we are, or what adversity we have faced in our lives. They can only judge us based on our ideas and how we convey those ideas. If readers do us the courtesy of taking time out of their lives to hear our thoughts, then we should not repay that courtesy by hampering them. Littering our writing with broken grammar and spelling mistakes does nothing but trip the very people we want to reach out to. It is the equivalent of piling overturned chairs in the doorway of your own shop to thwart customers. You can complain all you want that people are "fussy" and "snobby" for not wanting to tear their trousers: clambering over your barricade to see what other badly thought out surprises you have in store. Ultimately, the onus is on you to make things as easy and accessible as possible for people; otherwise they will just look somewhere else.

So I have no sympathy for adults who refuse to use basic grammar. It only takes a few hours to read up and learn the differences between words, such as: there, their and they're; witch, which; its, it's; or your and you're. In return for a lifetime of people not thinking you're an idiot. Honestly, if someone doesn't care enough about their own ideas to express them properly, then why should I care about them? If someone doesn't put care into their writing, then how can I trust them to put care into their thinking?

Going back to the original topic, "their" is ungrammatical because it switches tenses. I will agree with you that it often sounds good and idiomatic. Probably because the definite: "A person lost their hat", sounds very like the indefinite: "Someone lost their hat". You are right that it is not for me to say what is right and wrong. Languages change and evolve. The word you (ye) used to be the plural form of thou. Obviously that shifted, which is a shame because it would sometimes be useful to distinguish between the definite and indefinite forms: "you shouldn't smoke" is ambiguous. Obviously we need to strike some balance between mindless rigidity and erosion of the language. I think 'they and their' are perfectly acceptable in speech, and often acceptable in writing, but if they are overused then you get into nonsense phrases such as:

"My friend said they would come by theirselves. They will ride on their bicycle. They said they might bring their spouse, they have a bicycle too."

I hope you can see that when repeated too much, it becomes almost as unwieldy as 'he or she', and has introduced ambiguity. I don't think it is the ideal solution. I will agree with you that it is usually acceptably unnoticeable, but forgive me if I'm not racing to call it "correct" (in the conventional sense). I don't think there is a right answer to this. It is just one of the quirks of English. I would suggest restructuring sentences to avoid it, and using discretion.

Yeah, while learning English and Latin I find it weird that pronouns have genders. In Filipino all pronouns are gender neutral.

Writing rules involves a level of word economy (saving word count/page space - and yes, that's exceptionally important) and also a requires a high level of technical accuracy. Simply using "he" (or "she") covers this completely, reduces ambiguity, and saves space ("he" is a very short word). Player just adds more words (specifically the repetition of "the"). They/Their introduces plurals where they should be none (and I'm exceptionally guilty of doing this in my stuff) and just makes things more messy and ambiguous.

So take it from someone who does this semi-professionally: The use of he isn't about some inherent gender bias or sexist agenda, or due to whatever nonsense people conjure up whenever they talk about that increasingly stupid concept of "preferred pronouns". It's about accuracy and brevity.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Smacks has now spent more time thinking about this then most people will in their lifetime.

Yes, and this is a problem. People should think about this kind of thing instead of just accepting it without question.

Toofast wrote:
Why would they use she in the rules when 99% of the players are males? I can't think of one female player in my local group. I go to a GW and an FLGS on a regular basis and out of the 100~ people I've seen gaming there, every one was male. I've seen a couple guys stop in with their gf to buy something or get a game but have yet to see a female playing a war game. There's a difference between being sexist and being realistic, a line the progressives don't seem to know exists. I don't see how using the word "he" in a rule book discriminates against women. Maybe if more women played the game, they would find a different word to use.

Have you ever thought that you might have at least some of your cause and effect backwards? That women might be driven away by "women don't play this" attitudes like yours?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So take it from someone who does this semi-professionally: The use of he isn't about some inherent gender bias or sexist agenda, or due to whatever nonsense people conjure up whenever they talk about that increasingly stupid concept of "preferred pronouns". It's about accuracy and brevity.

This would be a much more compelling argument if we weren't talking about a hobby in which wasted text is incredibly common. "Accuracy and brevity" isn't even close to an accurate description of the 40k rules, so why is it suddenly important in this one specific case? I'd certainly be happy if more game authors started making clear writing a priority, but that seems to be a fairly rare attitude (and a nonexistent one at GW).

(And of course my preferred method of mixing male and female pronouns in different sections doesn't add any extra length or complexity.)

It makes things more complicated, but I'm not going to argue with Peregrine because I've never seen you back down on anything ever and I simply don't have the stamina.

I'll simply end with this:

Concentrate your efforts on things that matter. Preferred pronouns are not one of these things. They are an afterthought. They are something not worth getting up in arms about.

2 pages of discussion and you're all still arguing over how pronouns alienate girls? I'm with HBMC on this, argue about the things that matter, not trivial and petty points about grammar.

I read the title and expected discussion on how to make girls feel more welcome. A code of conduct for horny neckbeards,
air fresheners and air conditioning for GW stores, that sort of thing.. Instead, it's a debate about grammar an d semantics.

 Peregrine wrote:

This would be a much more compelling argument if we weren't talking about a hobby in which wasted text is incredibly common. "Accuracy and brevity" isn't even close to an accurate description of the 40k rules, so why is it suddenly important in this one specific case? I'd certainly be happy if more game authors started making clear writing a priority, but that seems to be a fairly rare attitude (and a nonexistent one at GW).

40K is only one rule book out of thousands, and yes, it's a rambling mess, but that doesn't mean others don't aim for accuracy and brevity.

White knights gonna white knight.

Yesterday I read some political commentary about a new social reform in my country that negatively impacts the lower classes. The author used all female pronouns throughout, and explained at the end that this was a deliberate attack at the disparity between male and female power in out society.

At no point did it occur to her that the social reform she was railing against was instituted by a government led by a female prime minister


As for the gaming part, D&D uses "she" for the Dungeon Master and "he" for the players. This actually makes the text more efficient as the pronouns also carry information about which type of participant the rule is aimed at.

Deploy the grammar nazis

Seriously, I'm also with H.B.M.C. There are 1000 other more important things to fix first. Then we can get to discussing if it's even an issue.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Seriously, I'm also with H.B.M.C. There are 1000 other more important things to fix first. Then we can get to discussing if it's even an issue.

One problem existing does not excuse another, and it's not like we have to fix all problems consecutively in descending order of importance (if we could even agree on the order). As for discussing if it's an issue: it was a subject raised by the OP. This is a discussion board. This is in fact the correct time and place to discuss it.

My Give-A-Damn on gender pronoun usage in rulebooks is nonexistent.

A more apt topic of conversation is poor manners in FLGS of mouth-breathers towards females, oppressive BO from the unwashed, and hours-long, profanity-laced tirades from neck-beards on why so-and-so MtG card is 0.0001% better than his old card (any game, really. Not picking on MtG). Correct that gak if you want to get more females in the stores.

Honestly I really don't like this overly PC insistence on gender neutral pronouns in a hobby that, lets be honest, is overwhelmingly male dominated.

*EDIT*

That's not to say I don't welcome female gamers. I do. All should be welcome, but that's no reason to ignore the reality that the hobby is male dominated and I don't think it's good for cohesion when the majority a community is forced to adapt itself for a minority, it should always be on the minority to adapt to the community. The end result of such Minority influence is usually resentment. That's as true for gaming as it is for anything else.

 Peregrine wrote:


The issue isn't that sometimes the player is referred to by the wrong pronoun, it's when they are exclusively male pronouns. You could read the entire rulebook to 40k and never get even the slightest hint that women ever play the game. Other games avoid this problem in various ways. Some say "his or her" (MTG cards, for example), but my personal favorite is switching randomly between male and female pronouns for each section of rules. This provides gender neutrality, but avoids the awkward "is this really allowed" problems with using "they" as a singular pronoun.

You could read the entire 40K rule book and never get the slightest hint on what the actual rules are as well. I am less concerned about pronoun gender and more concerned about a tight rule set. Every female I have ever played with has expressed the same opinion.