Male or Female -- what is your guess???

this is american english! ------ "hey you"

It.
"It" is a fair and nuetral word, which properly conceals the persons identity, as intended.


They.
The plural of "it" may be used when you suspect "it" may actually be a group of Homeland Security officers or a pod of web-enabled Orca's. This word also usefully conceals ones numbers, as "they" may actually indicate a single individual. An excellent diversionally strategy, similar to stating "we neither admit nor deny that we are a multinational corporation profiling your internet usage".


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The great thing about the internet is that no one can tell you're actually a cat.

That "we" sounds a little regal, dontcha' think?

I generally go with the screen name and forget the pronoun.

btw i think it can now be revealed that Roger is ambidextrous so there is no need to be vague in reference.

Are we discussing people? I thought we discussed issues? Issues don't have gender.

I think the question is what pronoun to use when referring to another poster when we're not sure of the gender. I get around this by using the user name...

Too bad you can't just point and say "That person over their of ambiguous sexual identity." (But since that person seems to be me a lot of the time, I guess it's just as well.)

Yeah, dys, and at some colleges, female students can be required to show their thesis to the professor, on demand.

"Hey you." works for me. c.i.

To the people who suggest using the screen name instead of a pronoun, please listen to this.

When Catkin said that Catkin was unable to obtain the documents, Catkin was not particularly clear as to why Catkin could not obtain them. Also, Catkin indicated that Catkin would not be willing to resort to legal means to obtain them because Catkin had a previous bad experience with lawyers -- so Catkin's statement that Catkin had done everything in Catkin's power to obtain them is incorrect.

Don't you folks think using a personal pronoun would make that easier to read?

There is a real problem here. What convention should we use when we do not know the gender of a person to whom we are addressing a reply.

Or something like that.

"He" is always acceptable in the English language. c.i.

my dirty little secret? i refer to those of the ambiguous gender (and that does NOT include peppermintpatiodawg) as errrrrrr
s h i t .

it was something i came up with when i was typing papers for, well never mind for ... she/he/it became cumbersome and danged annoying, so i just typed s h i t, and then did one of those word replacement things on the word processor.

sooooooo, i see avatarX - don't know what to refer to the attached human as? call 'em she/he/it.

:wink: Dang, that's so simple
They must have really liked that! :-D

It's s/h/e/it.

I always do the he/she thing when I don't know.

Beth, didn't you ever sit bolt upright just before going to sleep thinking you had maybe forgotten to do that word replacement?

Smegging well ISN'T!!!!

Er - I don't find it a problem - I don't quite know what I do, but it seems to work fine.

Probably use a combination of the name, s/he, and they/their.

Nobody's ire seems to have been aroused yet, and if it is, I will deal the ire when and/or if they announce it.

See?

roger!
i never did worry about it.
now i am worrying.


of course it works really well these days. all the young people at work are referring to each other as being 'the ****'. i was just ahead of the wave.