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Can we make the wording in speculative profiles gender neutral?

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Some of the Physics Overflow profiles has the description:

(This user is not yet participating on PhysicsOverflow, but we hope he will)

If I was female, I'd find this extremely alienating and would prefer something like:

(This user is not yet participating on PhysicsOverflow, but we hope they will)

asked Aug 10, 2014 in Discussion by physicsnewbie (-20 points) [ no revision ]

We hope "they" will sounds a bit strange to me (as if there were several people behind one account/user). I would rather say we hope "he/she" will, if anything.

I am not a native English speaker, but I always thought that the "he" is related to the word "user" (which is rather masculin ?) which is just a neutral person that can be male or female ...

So it seems not that important to me.

commented Aug 10, 2014 by Dilaton (6,240 points) [ no revision ]

As a native speaker, 'they' is commonly used to refer to singular subjects today, and there is no universal agreement on whether or not this is good grammar. But to a native speaker, it makes sense:http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/he-or-she-versus-they

commented Aug 10, 2014 by physicsnewbie (-20 points) [ no revision ]

Good idea. I remember it used to be "they" in the past. @Dilaton I'm pretty sure non-gendered nouns don't have genders in English.

commented Aug 10, 2014 by dimension10 (1,985 points) [ no revision ]

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