Scroll to the bottom of the CHI 2006 sponsor list. How sad. Not only is VMware the only “friend of CHI”, but they don’t have our company logo and don’t even give us a hyperlink!
From the CHI 2006 submission guidelines (PDF):
Be careful with the use of gender-specific pronouns (he, she) and other gender-specific words (chairman, manpower, man-months). Use inclusive language (e.g., she or he, they, chair, staff, staff-hours, person-years) that is gender-neutral. If necessary, you may be able to use “he” and “she” in alternating sentences, so that the two genders occur equally often.
Sigh. Not that I don’t believe in gender equality, but alternating genders across sentences is supremely stupid, unless your goal is to ruin otherwise perfectly good sentence and paragraph flow (and comprehensibility). You’d think an organization trying to improve human interaction would have better sense. Or maybe some people purposely want to disrupt readability so they can draw attention to themselves: “Hey, look at us, we aren’t sexist! Aren’t we great?”
I have a better idea: Okay, English doesn’t have neutered word forms, but we can make some up. Better yet, let’s make up some transgendered words.
- he/she: ’e
- him/her: herm (which could double as an abbreviation for “hermaphrodite”)
- his/hers: herms