[Koha-devel] Gender-neutral pronouns

[Eric Phetteplace]

Hi list,

I opened bug #18432
https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=18432 because I
saw several places in the Koha codebase where the pronoun "he" was being
used to refer to a generic third person who could be of any
gender. Jonathan Druart noted that this should be a coding guideline, as
otherwise new instances of gendered pronouns might continue to be added.
Perhaps it belongs on the "Terminology" page of the wiki?

So here's my proposal. I'm trying to be concise.

----

*Use gender neutral pronouns*

When referring to a person who could be of any gender, you should use the
words they/them/their. This goes for code comments, text in templates, and
strings in tests. For example, here's a string from a patrons test updated
to be gender neutral.

Before*:*

is( $total, $enrolmentfee_K + $enrolmentfee_J, "Kid growing and become a
juvenile, he should pay " . ( $enrolmentfee_K + $enrolmentfee_J ) );

After:

is( $total, $enrolmentfee_K + $enrolmentfee_J, "Kid growing and become a
juvenile, they should pay " . ( $enrolmentfee_K + $enrolmentfee_J ) );

Gender neutral terms are preferable for a few reasons. They're more
welcoming, showing that Koha expects users and contributors to be of any
gender. They're also more accurate. Inappropriately using a particular
gender can cause confusion, leading someone to believe that code operates
differently based on the value of borrowers.sex, for instance.

----

I hope that's clear. I'm happy to reword it, and to attend the next Koha
developers meeting to explain further if need be.

Best,
Eric Phetteplace
Systems Librarian
California College of the Arts
libraries.cca.edu | vault.cca.edu
510.594.3660
2>/dev/null
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