I have a colleague and I don’t know if they’re male or female. Not that it’s relevant, I’m just curious.

Note, I have only seen them in Zoom meetings. Never met them IRL.

So what? 🤔
Not like you're going to engage in a sexual relationship with them

@iiii You'll enter a minefield whenever you talk not with, but about that person. He/she said... might be wrong. They said... makes you look stupid.

@Fast-Nop <username> said 😂

Additional minefield if your language uses gendered verbs and other words

@iiii Yeah, sure, but when you repeat that in every sentence, you'll also look stupid.

Also, doesn't the name reflect the gender in most cases? 🤔

@Fast-Nop I lack that :lag: emoji here 😁

@iiii I can't discern e.g. Chinese given from family names except from the word order - and I failed even on that when one guy had it the other way around to make it "easier" for Westeners, which obviously instead confused me.

@Fast-Nop indians have called me by the last name because of different name orders in different cultures.

@iiii yes it does. Unfortunately, in this case, their name is not Western or popular so I can’t infer the gender from it.

@iiii depending on ur language it could be relevant, for example the word you / your in arabic are different for each gender. so you cant even say how are you to someone whos gender is unknown to you

@sleek I know. I'm a Russian speaker. Gendered words are everywhere

@Fast-Nop using they is way less stupid than assuming and getting wrong

@darksideofyay We dunz use they. We no wanna look stoopid. We not happy widdem shit.

@Fast-Nop you do know singular they is grammatically correct and people use it all the time right?

you could just ask their pronouns 🤷 it's the polite option

@darksideofyay And I'll still refuse to refer to people in plural. There is a proper singular non-binary word: "it".

@Fast-Nop it is for objects and animals, it's rude af to call someone a "it". they is literally the most appropriate by definition

@darksideofyay It's also rude to expect people to call you in plural just for attention whoring and stirring up shit.

@Fast-Nop it's not plural, and singular they is not a neologism. even if it was, languages change with need and grammatics only exist to guarantee people can understand each other. if you understand what we mean, it's working, so stop being whiny

Pat vibes.

don't talk to or about them. Pretend they don't exist and that their part of the work is just magically getting done somehow

@aaronswartz You're a real rebel, young lad. I bet you steal candies from kids and pull the doors with the "push" sign

We had people like that too.

We later call him with 'robot'. I got called 'default player' because I always used the default one.

Don't focus on this or that. Make it funny and everything will be fine.

*rolls eyes*

@darksideofyay I actually used grammatical incorrectness as argument for not using they until I discovered it was! I was baffled. It works in EN, but is challenging in other languages which do not have an equivalent. Never had the opportunity to offend someone due to accidentally using an incorrect pronoun.. guess 99.9% of Belgians conform to traditional gender identity

@webketje here in brazil we speak portuguese and everything is gendered in a binary, even inanimate objects. it's pointless and kinda dumb. in recent years there has been some discussions on how to address gnc people, but we haven't agreed to a standard yet. chair is feminine tho