Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
Whereas where I work, that would sometimes be useful information. I'm working with a lot of people from around the world, with first names that often don't provide me with obvious gender identification, so they've just saved me the embarrassment of referring to someone as him rather than her.
While it is possible to avoid using any gendered pronouns in English, it becomes very awkward.
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Of course. It all depends on why it's tacked on there. In many cases it's an unconscious sexism/warning kind of thing. I'm not even saying only men do it. In the computer industry it was pretty common for a guy to say things like that about any female engineer. Oh--she's a woman and she's a pretty good engineer. As if...well, EVEN THOUGH she's a woman, she's actually a good engineer. It's part and parcel.
As an aside, I always found it interesting that the worst culprits of sexism (the ones who tended to make SNIDE comments, not just unconscious ones) were often just plain assholes to everyone, taking opportunity to put anyone down when they got a chance.