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It's frustrating that I frequently get comments on my site from people who are mad about the use of "they" instead of he or she to describe unknown individuals.
The reason I use "they" in these cases has everything to do with the fact that I've been wrong on gender assumptions previously, and that attempting to divine someone's orientations from what they say or post is a fool's errand.
More to the point, a surprising (to me, anyway) number of English-speaking cybercriminals are born with one gender but identify with another. Some are transitioning to another gender, and some have already taken that step.
Also, for the kind of investigations I do, someone's gender is usually the least useful or interesting aspect of who they are in real life, because they are often involved in some crazy illegal stuff.
@hvangalen@mastodon.nl@briankrebs It boggles my mind why and how anyone could even take offense by the word 'they' used in such a way. It's been used like that for literally hundreds of years.
@hvangalen @briankrebs In fact, the pronoun “they” has been used to refer to a single person since before the pronoun “you” was used to refer to a single person.
@bob_zim Yep! Although language of course evolves et cetera et cetera, it is funny (well, not really "funny" funny, rather intriguingly silly) what a person can get upset about without any historical regard about the language they use.
@hvangalen @bob_zim @briankrebs My guess would be these are not people accustomed to reading history or taking in facts. Makes me wonder what they were doing at Mr Krebs Web site. I'm confused by that. What are they doing reading about APTs of they can't understand pronouns?
ashtime@hvangalen @briankrebs Usually the most offended cranks are not capable to muster the only language they speak. Their heads would explode if they would only knew how in some other languages things work so differently.