[Koha-devel] Gender-neutral pronouns

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Hi Eric,

Eric Phetteplace writes:

> 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 like the proposal, thanks for putting it together!

Best wishes,

Alex