Update inclusive terminology guidance

[LJWatson]

Section 11.11 Inclusive terminology recommends that they/them/their's are used as alternatives to he/him/his and she/her/hers.

Instead of suggesting that one set of pronouns is better than another, it would be good if the manual could recommend using a mixture of preferred pronouns - both in the prose of the specification, and in any personas/use cases.

This guidance could be extended to include people with disabilities, from different ethnicities, and so on.

[tabatkins]

I would strongly prefer not using a mixture of gendered pronouns. That practice has always struck me as an extremely odd way to "balance" genders, and seems fully obsoleted by just not mentioning gender at all and using "they" for everything. Individual people can prefer a gendered pronoun for themselves, but when talking in the abstract it's ideal to just not bring gender into the equation at all.

(The one case I still find value in gendered pronouns is when referring to a 2-person scenario, where they can be helpful in distinguishing the two parties without awkward grammatical constructions or constantly repeating proper names. I'd be happy to see that suggested in the style guide.)

[tobie]

I would strongly prefer not using a mixture of gendered pronouns.

My initial inclination was the same as yours, however, given the historical context of repetitive erasure of women’s contributions across the board, relying strictly on the neutral here might accidentally create even more erasure.

What if these guidelines centered more on expressing intentions rather than being prescriptive about rules? Just a thought; this is a complex problem.

[tabatkins]

"He or she" explicitly contributes to the erasure of nonbinary individuals (such as myself). Being genderless in language includes everyone.

[tobie]

Oh yeah, “he or she” is awful. I’m certainly not advocating for that.