[OTR-users] Discussion of the use of "his" as a gender-neutral pronoun in an unlikely place

[Kat Hanna]

Okay, I'll jump in.

I think language is important. Important to how we see the world around
us and to how we see ourselves in the world. The fact that my first
programming textbook sometimes used feminine pronouns made me feel
engaged and included in a way that most science and technology textbooks
had never done. That made a difference in my ability to see myself as
potentially successful in the field.

I favor changing constructions into gender-neutral forms when possible,
alternating the use of "she" and "he" when it isn't confusing to the
reader, and using "she or he" or "he/she" where appropriate. (In fact,
in cryptography this problem is often solved by the fact that our cast
of characters is of mixed sex.)  I am also one of those pedants about
subject-verb agreement that will not accept the so-called "singular
their".

Security software documentation often has a higher precision requirement
than that of other software. And while I'm not willing to put words into
Ian's mouth, I think he considered this particular example carefully.
It's not okay, as pretty much everyone has suggested, to substitute a
passive construction: the very point of the alert is that your buddy has
closed her/his end of the connection, *but yours is still open*.

I think that these sorts of alerts should use some form of the she/he
variety. I think other general uses of "he" in the README should be
examined to determine some reasonable alternative. And I volunteer to
do this editing after my semester ends.

[For the record, up until this point no member of the OTR dev team
had been involved in this discussion.]

Cheers.

 -Kat