Tech behemoths, full of privileged people on top, use the false pretense of respecting pronouns or other minority demands, to actually oust people that care about such issues in the first place?

This isn't about validation or inclusion, if it was, it'd have been over years ago. We're deep in malingering territory now.

1. Creating a divisive persona / Integration

Their bio may mention their membership in an off topic, but sensitive, divisive and prickly issue. The goal is to draw attention to the sensitive issue in the next phases.

They join the group, sometimes not even in the actual working parts of it, but after party social/meta scenes.

2. Exposure and Hijacking

They will tend to put themselves into conversation, conferences, etc. in preparation and in compulsion recreate the issue. The goal is to shift people focused diligently to shift their attention to being a caregiver not for their project or teammates, but to them.

3. Special VIP treatment

Then they get a big smirk when people when management get tongue tied trying to navigate it gracefully. We've seen many surprising public concessions to these types, sometimes based off very flimsy reasons. Which tends to really annoy people who just want to work.

Passerbys also unwittingly aid their endeavors, mistakenly believing they're helping someone disenfranchised and in need.

4. Consolidating (destruction)

When they get the thumbs up on being VIP, they can now consolidate their gains and show what the world is like when only their feelings are cared for.

Cancel culture, trying to ruin people's careers, get them banned, getting in fights with their bosses and chain of command etc. This way they can solidify their need for special treatment.

It's a continual loop of positive reinforcement for them. Since people in power and passerby always cave to them, unwittingly creating more division in an already annoyed community.

5. Preservation / Preemption

To draw the sting of critics, they beat them to the punch by calling them entitled and privileged. Further accuse critics can't grasp and judge their unique plight and never can. Demonstrating evidence of hypocrisy simply validates their presupposition they're underdogs being hounded. So they can repeat and get more concessions and attention.

Other facets: My original theory is it was validation based. It maybe play a role, it's a multi-faceted thing, such as feeling ashamed of their activity some how and want to "come out" in public. But if it was just that, wouldn't they get it off their chest and just over it?

That desire to maintain some precious perfect garden of facts drove me to leave and never look back. Glad I did.

In one of the episodes, a historian talks about the simplicity of the values of the soldiers in that war. He marvels at how they were willing to march a mile and a half across an open field against a fortified enemy position. Think of the Union soldiers at Fredericksburg or the Confederate soldiers under Hood at Franklin. The historian also talks about how, were he in that situation, he feels like his response might have been "Sir, I don't believe that's a good idea sir" but how they bore it year after year and slaughter after slaughter.

Someone misgendering another person is a cruelty, just like any bully teasing a vulnerable person. There have always been cruel people though.

Juxtaposing that example of historical resilience against the increasingly baroque etiquette we require to insulate ourselves from experiencing garden variety cruelty, there's an incongruency that bothers me. Why could they bear that but we cannot bear this?

Things change.

The problem is that my threshold for this BS has become so low that I'm basically rolling my eyes every time I see it on TV, press or anywhere else. It looks like the media is really pushing for it, be it because of profits or some conspiracy-agenda. Sometimes it causes me anger to see how people is completely distracted from very deep problems that we have to face, be my country or the whole humanity.

I even lost contact with some lefty "friends" and acquaintances because of my stances on this, which I found very sad. It made me avoid to talk about politics, which was something I talked with everyone in the past.

Ideological extremism is everywhere, but this particular strain of it is mostly concentrated in the Western world, particularly America, Canada, Sweden, and Germany.

I'm going to not argue that all Slavic people are homophobic (that would be completely impossible to back up with facts). A more reasonable claim would be perhaps that people in Slavic countries today are more homophobic on average than e.g. an OECD or EU average. Not sure if such surveys exist, however - so that would have to be a guess and subjective at this point.

E.g.: "The worst countries to be gay" (Italy + Eastern europe) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-15-worst...

https://www.dw.com/en/homophobia-in-poland-still-deeply-entr...

On the other hand:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/04/debunking-ster...

In Slavic countries generally, who you have sex with is your own business. It's private. Nobody wants to know.

I've had some frustration that "they" has become the "neutral" pronoun, when earlier I felt more personally identified with pronouns that still disambiguated plural and singular more clearly, but a friend pointed out that if referring to an unidentified singular person, "they" is perfectly grammatical (i.e. "did someone deliver the mail?" "Yes, they did."). I am concerned that so much of the focus is placed on the problem of the word, without acknowledging the more fundamental question of willingness to consider if gendered pronouns are necessary.

What seems problematic for me is trying to strike a balance between personal identity and "correct" speech. Most of the time, "making sure" that a gender is assigned in speech doesn't feel relevant to actually understanding general meaning. I appreciate language that better avoids pronouns rather than uses them as a means to add clarity. It feels to me that is possible to respect gender identity without requiring language to be gendered in a general way. At the same time, I've myself tried to take gender out of my speech and I fall constantly.

Fundamentally, it feels like a cultural moment where it feels like we're focusing on very black and white ideas and feeling that others are "not listening," or on the other hand, "forcing me to do something I feel uncomfortable about and lying in wait for me to make a mistake." When there's a possiblity for openness, there's also the possibility of vulnerability, whereas in a cultural context, it seems like we're moving towards walls and fortification, which makes me pretty sad and concerned that there's not space for nuance.

Seems like an age old tale of management assessing a situations potential liability as high, and promptly responding with a zero tolerance policy and throwing someone under the bus to protect themselves.

However, as near as I can tell from piecing together the different leaks, it turns out a core issue was that Monica Cellio refused to use the singular "they" construction, including when she knew that was someone's preferred pronoun.

In my view she is 1) objectively grammatically wrong and 2) just being needlessly rude. And ultimately, I can't bring myself to support this position at all. If you lost your moderator role because of a refusal to use a widely used and accepted English construction, even though you knew this refusal would hurt people, then uh, I hope you're happy with your life choices, but I have no sympathy for you.

If you are from another socioeconomic stratum (or somewhere else in the capital quadrant), you might never learn a certain language, that provides a common ground. There are unspeakable things, I can think of, that I would never ever bring up in a conversation with a random person.

These exclusions and inclusion have already been there, it seems like some fights are more naked now, uncovered, harsh and sometimes meaningless to someone not involved.

I was a top SO contributor and very much enjoyed the site - and still enjoy finding answers. I fear, I will be policed at some point for something - but maybe not, because I am usually agreeable - but who knows: only time will tell.

Edit: I am usually not that impartial, but there is a discourse (where this particular thread might belong to), where I am not able to take sides - because my gut feeling says: you cannot shift the responsibility you have, when you interact with another person, to some abstract law, entity, or something else - it has to be you, to show respect and to allow for a common room for everyone - which does not mean, that the room is just there of one.

Now this seems absurd but dare you call me out on it and tell me I'm not actually who I am? Are we all entitled to commanding everyone's use of the language by constructing and dictating pronoun usage?

I've had an easy time with gender issues in my life because I'm pretty carefree and accommodating. But I'm trying to understand where it goes from here.

I don't see how we can go past he/she/they because it opens the floodgates to an infinite number of more pronouns, does it not? How does any group get to decide which new pronouns have enough subscribers to be added to the official list?

It feels like in a gender fluid model, pronouns just don't work. "He" and "she" are legacy and "they" is the catch all. So I kind of get this idea of just not using them anymore. But does that feel manifestly absurd to anyone else?

This is also why I enjoy the internet so much. Gender doesn't matter and I have mastered picturing everyone as a cat on a keyboard.

It is all about how StackExchange Inc. is managing the StackExchange network; and the liberties it allows itself vis-a-vis individual moderators and the community at large.

The fiasco is that the answers to these two questions are really bad.

But all of the above is why I feel that it is unwise to engage with these types of communities or at least that you need to be very selective when you do. It's either a dictatorship or mob rule and if you buy into these communities as part of your identity with out being sure your values are aligned with it's, you're bound to end up frustrated.

"%pronoun% was a legend in %possessive-pronoun%'s own mind."

Just another markup feature. Let people enter their pronouns in their profiles, and simply substitute them as needed. This at least relieves the burden of knowing the intimate preferences of strangers. Use something neutral, like xe, and xer, for the default, and let users choose their own defaults.

But if this is about something other than sparing people's feelings then this wouldn't help.

Firing someone, even from a volunteer position, over that specific argument seems like a severe overreaction. Assuming we got the whole story, of course.

Internet drama. Tempest in a teapot.

What if my preferred pronoun is "lordmasterofall"? Can I call on the full force of the law to demand its use?

I've always found the concept of preferred gender pronouns to be problematic from a pure technical perspective. But I was so afraid of the stigma I haven't really written about it. Recent events made me finally publish this last night:

https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/preferred-g...

The summary: pronouns reduce cognitive load, because you can refer to someone by a broad category. With custom pronouns, you now create a way to offend someone in the base language.

And what are we worried about? Pronoun use and codes of conduct on software Q&A websites.

Give. Me. A. Break.

Almost 2,000 words on it, no less. Talk about 15 minutes of my life I'll never have back.

I'm trying to think if there's something dumber to argue about than this, but right now I can't.

Not sure how the world will continue to spin on its axis what with the bloodbath of moderators on StackExchange but somehow the universe will find a way to carry on.

And yet you had decided to waste more precious minutes to write that comment.

It would be "sure, but mind you that I have no clue how to talk about you in non-English languages". And in some languages it's more than just the pronouns - for example, in some languages verbs may be declined according to a grammatical gender (a concept that almost doesn't exist in modern English and not really inferable from just "xir").

If we apply that to the original problems you brought up, we see that your argument is indeed specious.

Women face real harassment in the tech every day, I see it firsthand.

If you're LGBTQ it's even worse.

But you know what? Let's not focus our energy on solving those kind of real-world problems. You're right. Definitely let's spend weeks writing long-winded blog posts arguing about pronouns.

You've demonstrably made the world a better place.

It's sad that you don't think dehumanizing behavior is a problem worth confronting.

> So, please, keep setting back the cause of minorities and those discriminated against by making pronouns the hill on which to die on.

So please, tell us how we can move forward if people won't even treat them with basic respect.

> Way to fight for the oppressed! If we had 10,000x of you maybe all rights for the discriminated would be repealed, no?

Your sarcasm is sad and pathetic, much like your argument.

Of course, you'd only level up the problem, from being a domestic issue to being a global issue. Next up: those damn bugs from Klendathu are threatening earth, we need to stand together against them. A planetary threat (with a face, climate change won't work) will bring together pretty much everybody.

Life is hard for everyone, at least at times. When we can do something painless to avoid giving someone a bad day even if its an act that would be meaningless to us, why shouldn't we?

Admitting that doesn't mean we're also required to accommodate when it's actually a problem, or that we're awful people if we don't know, forget, or make a mistake. It doesn't mean that we agree with or endorse their quirks... it's just a simple act of kindness and respect.

It's also efficient, because there is almost always something better to get done than navigate some other person's emotional minefield that we avoidably upset.

Since internet forums were a thing? Actually, since law was a thing? There's always a human in the loop, and the human is always making a judgement call. In some cases there's a lot at stake, at other times there's very little. But ultimately people look at the guidelines, look at the history, and make a decision with the best info they have.

> More importantly though, without a clear policy on the first part, then writing something which presents any way in which someone can “gently correct you” may already be a violation of the code of conduct, or could selectively be treated as such, with no hard guidelines by which someone could defend themselves as having made an honest mistake.

You are arguing a problem that doesn't exist in practice. I use singular they. I sometimes include it my profiles online, in other places I don't. If someone gets it wrong and it bothers me I'll say, "Hey, no big deal, but I use singular they."

I get one of two outcomes -- either a bunch of downvotes and insults, or a "Whoops, my bad" response.

And we all move on.

Also, many moderators resigned over recent events (mostly non-LGBTQ+), for a plethora of specific justifications.

Pronouns in any form will make a conversation more confusing if there's no context. If you want to be absolutely clear in your communications, you'd get rid of all pronouns completely. "I talked with Bob. Bob helped me out with this problem. I want to thank Bob for Bob's help. Bob can we talk after this meeting?"

I sometimes find myself using "on the other hand" to contrast three or more view points, and end up saying "on the other hand" twice. Occasionally, I'll use "on one hand...on the other hand...on another hand/on a third hand".

I remember (from a psychology book, actually) that the reasoning is: what you say impacts what you think.

You want to compare two viewpoints. But you arrogantly think that these are the only 2 viewpoints that can possibly exist.

If you keep using "on the other hand", you will be inclined to see things as black and white.

It's a valid argument, though one might wonder how much wording impacts our internal mind.

Is this a reference to something? I've seen wording similar to this somewhere recently.

Clarification of rules, even to the point where they may seem redundant, is completely fine and often important. This is such a weird hill for them to die on.

* Singular “they” can be the correct pronoun for some people, especially enbies.

* Monica does not want to use singular they for grammatical/stylistic reasons – when talking about persons of unspecified gender, alternative constructions are available.

* SE's CoC clarification supposedly says you must use the correct pronoun if it is known, including singular they. Constructions that intentionally avoid pronouns would then be ruled out.

* This is not a ban on the use of singular they.

Of course, SE's new CoC or new interpretation is still not public, so its actual contents are unknown.

But it's not that hard of a transition to make either. It might seem awkward for a bit, but it settles in pretty quickly.

The latter is, generally, a leftist thing. The political left is concerned with egalitarianism, often to the extent that they believe specific and deliberate actions should be taken to reduce inequality. See also: social justice. The identity politicking we're discussing here is predicated on the idea that there are marginalized groups, i.e. folks who do not comfortably fit into the established gender binary and/or gender-sex clustering, and that people outside those groups should change their behavior to reduce that marginalization.

I've seen folks object to LGB, or LGBT as exclusionary for sure though.

The way this decision and surrounding information about the new CoC can be read, is that it's no longer about avoiding misgendering people. It's about having to pay fealty. Writing around gendered pronouns means weaseling out of having to make a stand on the issue, which labels you as the enemy.

Mike has a team member that keeps referring to him as 'Mikey'. Mike doesn't like this, because he feels it's demeaning and rude. He insists on being called Mike, but his teammate refuses.

If his manager gets involved and tells said team member to cut it out, is that punishing someone for wrongthink? Do you think it's acceptable to repeatedly call someone a name that they don't like?

One can use it at any time.

As for the erroneous judgment stemming from analysis (like doing a word count for taboo words), would analysis arising from drastically less historical data be any more impressive?

I am not trying to be inflammatory, I am genuinely confused as to why this would upset anyone. I don't look up the pronouns of every single person I respond to on the internet.

And yeah, many discords and forums I'm a part of include pronouns in usernames, fields below the name, in hovercards, or in profiles. In the rare occasion you need to reference someone's pronouns, it takes ~3 seconds to look up.

It's genuinely pretty rare to refer to another poster using a pronoun. Often you'll see, "the parent commenter" or "the op", etc.

Open up your comment history and look through it -- how often do you use a pronoun? Specifically to refer to another commenter (and not about a person referenced in an article)? I'm guessing very, very infrequently...

It’s no more rude than having baby pictures or a wedding ring or a cross around your neck. These are all examples of intimate disclosure which have little or nothing to do with some idealized cold professional relations. People wear their identity in many ways and the rest of society is perfectly okay with it.

But what if you can’t? Or there aren’t enough context clues to determine this? For example, my username contains my name in it; do you have any idea what my gender is? Or what I’d I had a “gendered” name but actually had a different identity personally?

But really the problem is that gender comes up in conversation a lot more than orientation. You can get a lot further in a conversation without the latter than the former, so some people see it fit to frontload that information.

Instead, they critique and criticize it.

For instance, here is a book review from verso

> "...argues that identity politics is not synonymous with anti-racism, but instead amounts to the neutralization of its movements. It marks a retreat from the crucial passage of identity to solidarity, and from individual recognition to the collective struggle against an oppressive social structures"

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-*%20identity

People who see identity politics in action on news sites indeed call it leftism, along with fascism, liberalism, racism, and socialism. These people are just flinging words around however, they don't draw a distinction between any of those things. They're using those words as a form of profanity, purely emotive.

> "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

Military titles are very important, and enforced within the military rank system. (Consider a private referring directly to a colonel as "Sherman" instead of "Colonel Potter".)

Some very common titles are "Mr.", "Ms", "Mrs.", and "Miss".

Some job titles are protected, like "engineer" - in several states only a certified professional engineer can have the job title "Engineer".

2. Even if that sentence is unambiguous, it is not hard to come up with sentences that are ambiguous.

3. Colloquially people do all sorts of imprecise and grammatically inadvisable things like "Give 'em a hand." That does not mean the phrasing makes sense for formal, professional, or technical writing.

4. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If people are confused by singular "them" (they are, but someone please do a proper study to confirm empirically), the construct is confusing.

5. If an author feels it is ambiguous in some cases, how do we accommodate that without branding the author insensitive or even hateful? It seems also unwelcoming to not leave room for agency in grammatical decisions.

The only thing that seems relative new here is usage to refer to a specific known individual, of known gender. Historically singular they was used definite but unknown individuals, or at least individuals of unknown gender.

In any case, "They is" is wrong for singular, just like "you is".

"You" always takes "are", for both singular and plural "you". Indeed singular "you" differs from plural "you" only in the reflexive: yourself/yourselves.

Singular "They" is exactly the same. It uses "are" and differs only in the reflexive: themself/themselves. The only difference here is that the plural reflexive can be used for the singular, and indeed that has been standard for several hundred years, but feels extremely awkward with respect to a known specific individual.

Fun fact: "themself" actually predates "themselves", and was originally used for both singular and plural they, although around 1450 "themselves" became standard for plural, with "themself" remaining standard for singular. But eventually "themself" almost completely died out.

Of course maybe the real answer is to ask her what she'd prefer?

The moderator (whom you are ironically misgendering) was not attempting to burn political capital, and was never told they were doing anything against the rules by offering their opinion on a topic of discussion.

In case you've been living under a rock, this has already happened. Organizations are routinely boycotted, denied business, harassed out of existence and deplatformed by providers for "exploring" cultural spaces and for allowing others to do that without enforcing certain cultural norms in aggressive enough manner. It's not something theoretical, it's what has already happened many times. People fired, sites shut down, services denied, etc. And yet, the occasion where you decide to raise your voice is when somebody complains about being excluded from the community for mere discussing the rules - and falsely accused in violating those rules with no evidence whatsoever? This is where you wake up and start protesting about narrowing the exploration of cultural space - when somebody who dares to question whether it should be narrowed as harshly as it is done is immediately fired and libelously accused?

Somehow it sounds to me as if either you are not completely informed or your "let the thousands flowers bloom" sentiment is less than genuine and of more tactical nature.

Their culture is stupid and alienating to many intelligent people.

The drama isn't that any party acted or is alleged to have acted illegally.

Stack Overflow derives huge value from, in part, free moderation by volunteers; part of continuing to extract that free labor means maintaining positive relationships.

This. Also, if you have a legal dispute with someone, hire a lawyer and STFU. Do not go ranting on HN - that really screws stuff up for whoever has to be your advocate.

We weren't taught that singular "they" was acceptable.

This would mean my whole country (I'm from SEA) was taught the wrong thing.

----

I've googled a little. For example, this article recommends we avoid using singular "they" (https://www.compellingconversations.com/is-singular-they-ok-...).

Quote:

"Context clearly matters. If you are training English students for the TOEFL or IELTS exams, you should emphasize that using “they” for a singular pronoun will cost students points. Hence, it must be avoided on standardized exams. Yet – like many American advertisers and recent Presidents (Obama, Trump, Clinton) – I find the use comfortable and legitimate."

TOEFL/IELTS really needs to publish official guidelines on these new words.

What puzzles me greatly is how differently things are developing online vs in meatspace. Maybe it's just an urban vs rural dynamic.

But, her main complaint is how Stack Overflow treated her. I've known her for 25 years via a hobby, and she's an extremely well-reasoned person.

It's irresponsible to trot out this sort of vague common-sense rhetoric (most of which I agree with, of course) to justify inventing an offense, or blowing something small way out of proportion, and on that basis piling on in public social media to paint the accused with the brush of transphobia or racism or whatever it may be.

However, I've seen a steadily rising trend of weaponized fragility and crusading on this particular topic, along with a particularly virulent group which uses this as a tool to force compliance and control. It's bad enough that while I can observe my personal opinion of the T side sliding towards the negative through frequent contact and exposure with that sort.

Why would using the wrong one be harmful to anybody?

You can call me a she but it just would mean that you'd be wrong. It would harm your public image more than mine since there would be no harm to mine. None of my self-worth or my worth to other people relies on people believing me being any specific gender.

And if you build your worth on your gender should I really be interested? It was your choice. You could have chosen otherwise. Any harm you might feel when someone misgenders you is self inflicted.

(I know "fascism" is the wrong word here, but what's the correct word for "fascism-like, but with $random-issue instead of nationality, and without the far-right"? We need that word.)

It's just a meme that spreads through its appeal to a certain type of person.

By comparison, in the Nordic countries, children often refer to adults by their first name, as well as college students to their professors.

To an Icelandic person, the US is big on honorifics.

But to get back to Barrin92's statement, "addressing someone with their preferred pronoun seems as simple to me as addressing someone with their proper name and title." We see that people do tend follow honorifics, even when there is no legal obligation. We also know some people do complain - loudly - when using the wrong honorifics. And we know there was a whole social movement in the 1970s to use "Ms" for women who didn't think that knowing her marital status was important.

Barrin92's statement doesn't depend on being "big on honorifics" only that honorifics are recognized as being important enough that most people follow the conventions.

An "involuntary imbalance of power" describes Stack Overflow, yes?

It's very convenient for me that you happened to pick "Esq." as an example, since that happens to be a protected term in some US jurisdictions. The Wikipedia link for 'Esquire' points to https://web.archive.org/web/20110530134510/http://www.abajou... :

> But some jurisdictions have reservations about the use of Esq. The Ohio Supreme Court’s Board of Commis­sioners on Grievances and Discipline, for example, prohibited a lawyer who was not licensed to practice law in the state from appending Esq. to his signature on business correspondence because it was deemed to connote licensure in Ohio. Ohio S. Ct. Opinion 91-24 (1991).

That would seem to undermine your argument.

Similarly, titles like "Engineer" and "attorney-at-law" and others are also protected. False use of these titles can be illegal.

Miss Manners was strongly of the opinion that you should call people what they wished to be called. In her era, the controversy was about Miss vs. Mrs. vs. Ms.

So let's speak frankly for a tick. Is it that you have such a low opinion of your readers that you think that "oh, it's a well-known and self-admitted regressive's free speech in question, not that he hates trans people and has a vested interest in catering to those who hate trans people" is an actual argument? Or are you a dupe who genuinely buys it as if it were true?

Of course, my question is rhetorical. Not attempting to other trans people? Don't insult the people reading your comments like that. Shapiro's entire schtick is othering anyone who the GOP doesn't have in their pocket. His entire ethos, hell his entire telos, is to maximally hurt and control those who are not white, straight, preferably-Christian men (and them too, so long as they are poor).It has nothing to do with "free speech" except insofar as "free speech" can be perverted to "freedom to abuse others while remaining beyond their reach." That's what he gets out of bed in the morning for.

I think it's important to recognize that most of us fall into one of two buckets that are considered "normal" wrt. our sex and gender. If you don't fall into one of those two buckets, you are going to feel tension externally, in the ways other people interact with you, and internally insofar as you've internalized societal sex/gender norms, which is hard to avoid doing when you've lived in society your whole life.

So really it is not so much about looking for a problem ("I've decided to hang my identity on my gender") as it is about having to solve a problem that most people (including you) don't have ("I'm in the wrong body"). It's a distressing problem to have, and not an easy one to solve.

Which correlates with what I've observed: they're all young. I don't think I've seen a social justice activist older than 30-35. I wonder why that may be?

> It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple decades. Especially in light of the surprises that climate change may bring. Such as perhaps millions of immigrants coming north as drought reduces agricultural productivity.

Interesting, yes, but it's the flavor of "interesting" that scares the hell out of me. Dealing with climate issues requires cooperation, and it seems that in spite of all the social and technological advancements we've made, we're at historical low point of humanity's ability to coordinate.

English doesn't really have an entity that dictates "rules". The guidelines vary between dialects, so I can only speak about American English...

You can read the Oxford Style Manual or The Chicago Manual of Style for reference, but sometimes people disagree. Previously people looked at Strunk & White's Elements of Style, etc.

---

On this particular issue, "they" is fine as singular, and is being used like that very frequently these days.

> Wait, that doesn't happen. At all.

Absolutist + so much exaggeration, and it seems more like you are arguing in bad faith.

That's why nobody wants to talk about the usage of the singular "they". We can't even point out that your English authority doesn't agree with you.

> This is non-issue.

It's a non-issue to you because you aren't the students who are rejected by universities because of low TOEFL score.