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[Vector]

Well, again. Would a Swiss Gandhi or female Hitler be similarly catastrophic? What about a violent Gandhi or an uncharismatic Hitler?

It's really not the same thing.  It's not like they have a hard time getting "GANDHI WAS INDIAN" or "HITLER WAS MALE" into the history books.

[Graknorke]

Well, again. Would a Swiss Gandhi or female Hitler be similarly catastrophic? What about a violent Gandhi or an uncharismatic Hitler?

It's really not the same thing.  It's not like they have a hard time getting "GANDHI WAS INDIAN" or "HITLER WAS MALE" into the history books.

I have seen far more in history books about Turing being gay than I have Hitler being male.

[Ogdibus]

Have you read a history book that mentions Hitler without mentioning his sex?

[Graknorke]

Have you read a history book that mentions Hitler without mentioning his sex?

It doesn't draw attention to it.
Never mentioning Hitler's sex would be impossible, given that I am an English speaker and so read books that are in English.

[MadMalkavian]

My ISP is implementing data caps, which means I get to spend a few hours today researching my alternatives and likely am going to wind up paying more to transfer to a different service, even if it also has data caps, solely as my only way of saying, "This is not okay, Mediacom."

EDIT: Yep, the only competition has a lower data cap.

Data caps are kind of why I was resistant to getting AT&T uVerse but then I realized I'm never going to use 250GB of bandwidth in a month, even with occasional bouts of piracy and online gaming. If you live in the United States and are willing to look past their faults in poor customer service then I recommend giving AT&T a shot.

I've had pretty bad experiences with AT&T. In addition to crappy customer service and tacking on $400 in non-refundable "installation fees" because of a lackluster credit check, the proprietary AT&T router they force on you is pretty bad, and always gave me issues with Port Forwarding to host servers, etc. That, combined with fairly regular internet outages and slowdowns (despite being the only U-Verse customers in our complex, which left us with a dedicated fiber optic line all to ourselves), and the ways they kept trying to screw me over with phone service has lead me to not do business with them since.

They seem to really love hidden fees, and unless you have a pretty solid credit history, they're very unwilling to work with you. So for folks who don't do Credit Cards (like me), they're not liable to treat you very well fiscally either.

I don't have those problems with AT&T so I don't know what to tell you. You might just be unlucky.

Have you read a history book that mentions Hitler without mentioning his sex?

It doesn't draw attention to it.
Never mentioning Hitler's sex would be impossible, given that I am an English speaker and so read books that are in English.

You can render just about any individual's gender ambiguous with a liberal use of the words they, them and their. I say this with being both an English speaker and someone who reads books in English.

[ggamer]

HOLY JESUS HORATIO DICKS

FUCKING MICROSOFT

So I get home from alabama today and my friends are like "bro get skype so we can talk on league together"

well skype requires windows xp sevice pack three but when I download

DOHOHOHOHO GUESS WHO GOT FUCKED OVER BY A BOOTLOOP

IS THIS BECAUSE I PIRATED HALO CE

IS THIS SOME SORT OF REVENGE BECAUSE I DIDN'T USE YOUR SHITTY GAME SERVICE

[Graknorke]

You can render just about any individual's gender ambiguous with a liberal use of the words they, them and their. I say this with being both an English speaker and someone who reads books in English.

While still being comfortable to read?
There's a difference between actively mentioning something, and not going out of your way to avoid mentioning something.

[Frumple]

You can write something in english that's gender ambiguous and still fairly comfortable to read, yeah. Some of the stuff you have to do to do it reads a little awkwardly when you're first seeing it, but the sensibilities adjust. They/them/their, using the proper name, using titles, stuff like "person in question", etc., so forth, so on. Th'language isn't entirely geared for gender neutral (we really need a gender neutral pronoun that doesn't dehumanize/objectify) and there's still some language shift going on regarding that, but english is definitely one of the easier languages to completely omit gender from. One of the comparatively few, honestly. Lot of stuff has gender built right into the words/grammar/etc. (which can actually make things awkward at times when you've got something like folks doing something that was gender locked when the word first came around, ferex).

[quinnr]

Do you ever have one of those conversations that you know you have to have so you work yourself up, since person you are speaking to is going to make a big deal out of it, and finally you actually do it and it's not to bad? While, I just had one of those, except the person I was trying to have a serious conversation with (in the middle of a serious conversation about other things) completely blew it off, acted like I wasn't serious about it, and pretty much didn't respond to anything I had to say. Seriously, not cool. I know I probably should be more frustrated at myself because I suck at pushing things at people but really my mother should know that if I am talking about this I am being serious and well-researched, I didn't just come up with this on a whim. She only hears what she wants to hear and I know she's just trying to do what's best for me but this is obnoxious, I'm just doing this application with or without her guidance, maybe then people will realize I'm being serious.

TL;DR: I really hate talking to people, and hate it more when I'm trying to be serious and people completely ignore that fact. I want to bash my head in a wall right now and I don't know why because this isn't something I should be overreacting about I'll just bring it up again tomorrow, and the day after that.

You can render just about any individual's gender ambiguous with a liberal use of the words they, them and their. I say this with being both an English speaker and someone who reads books in English.

While still being comfortable to read?
There's a difference between actively mentioning something, and not going out of your way to avoid mentioning something.

Personally, I think that the gender-neutral, singular "they" works just fine in any conversation without sounding awkward. "Graknorke is good at math; They have been taking classes for many years." sounds fine to my ears. Wikipedia has a whole page on it, now. I've been using it to speak about my friends for a while, and nobody has even pointed out anything.

[Frumple]

... if you can get in, bugs can get in a lot easier, GO. They're much smaller than you are.

[Ogdibus]

@ the Turing's sexuality/persecution and Hitler's sex conversation:

It's also not correct English, so it might be hard to get a publisher that won't edit the pronouns.  There are languages where this is possible, but I suspect that the gender of historical figures is revealed, and considered relevant information in any media that presents information about them.  Any exception would probably be intentional.   

The trend with sexual/romantic relationships is similar.  The people that record history will tell us anything that doesn't hurt the characterization that they are trying to present, and have demonstrated that they are willing to conceal anything that will contradict it.  This case is an example.  It's also reasonable to suspect that bigotry is the motive.

[quinnr]

... if you can get in, bugs can get in a lot easier, GO. They're much smaller than you are.

I can't without opening my door. Door. The thing inside a door frame designed to stop things getting in and out.

Then they were probably crawling on you as you entered! Build an airlock/decontamination station leading to the hallway outside your room.

[Vattic]

It's also not correct English, so it might be hard to get a publisher that won't edit the pronouns.

Using singular "they" is controversial, but has a long history of use in both print and speech. It's come in and out of favour a couple of times.

[Flying Dice]

It's also not correct English, so it might be hard to get a publisher that won't edit the pronouns.

Using singular "they" is controversial, but has a long history of use in both print and speech. It's come in and out of favour a couple of times.

It's also bloody useful, for a variety of reasons. I honestly can't think of a reason to consider it "bad" English that doesn't boil down to pedantry.

[EnigmaticHat]

It's also not correct English, so it might be hard to get a publisher that won't edit the pronouns.

Using singular "they" is controversial, but has a long history of use in both print and speech. It's come in and out of favour a couple of times.

It's also bloody useful, for a variety of reasons. I honestly can't think of a reason to consider it "bad" English that doesn't boil down to pedantry.

I wouldn't call it bad English, but I would call it bad writing to repeatedly use "they" in the place of singular pronouns.  "They" is already a very common word used to refer to groups of people, inanimate objects, concepts, animals, and individual organizations, and it isn't evident from usage alone what its referring too.  If it is also used for individual people it becomes a painfully ambiguous pronoun.

Look at this:
"As the ninjas chased Alex across the street, he dropped the marbles of power.  They rolled into a sewer grate as he ran for his life."
"As the ninjas chased Alex across the street, they dropped the marbles of power.  They rolled into a sewer grate as they ran for their life.

Weird example aside, its not a straight substitution.  To use "they" that way you have to either carefully arrange every sentence to not create ambiguity, or use pronouns far less than normal.  Either way it would create awkwardness in your writing.  I'm ok with the concept of gender neutral pronouns but English only has bad choices imo.