Found this blog post and found it had more insight into the issues around the dev and the toxicity in FOSS
Calling an unspecified gender person anything other than “they” was until recently considered to be incorrect. “They” is plural but now is used to refer to singlar persons because writing “he or she” everywhere is too much. Calling a user “he” does not imply that users are male or can only be male. Not using “they” or “he/she” or obscure gender neutral pronouns does not make something inherently transphobic. Closing PRs that unnecessarily change pronouns as spam is not inherently transphobic, but the accompanying comment is not very inclusive.
The post talks about “white suppremacist language,” but the proposed change did not remove white suppremacist language. It was just a generic anti “woke” message, possibly motivated by people brigading after the original PR to change “he” to “they.” White suppremacists may use also use similar language, but you can’t just pick things that a white suppremacist has done and decide that anyone else who does the same is a white suppremacist. He’s not blameless, but people are intentionally provoking the developer and exagerating the responses for drama.
‘They’ has always existed in the English language as plural or singular, context dependent. Hence it’s natural transition into a pronoun. Non-native English speakers can be excused for using gendered pronouns because the problem isn’t them not knowing and using it in the first place, it’s them refusing to update the language after a reasonable explanation to do so.
People are brigading, sure, but it’s such a simple change to make, one that only helps the world. So, yeah, fuck the devs honestly. Just accept the PR and move on, there was no need for any of this.
Well, not always: Plural ‘they’ is a borrowing from Old Norse ca. 1200 AD, and the earliest attestation of singular ‘they’ is about a century later.
But, yeah, you’d think 700 years of continuous use would be enough to make it uncontroversial…
until recently
TIL 600 years ago is recent!
Singular “they” is older than singular “you.” And note, of course, that the pronoun “you” is conjugated as a plural, and we deal with it just fine.
until recently
the first known written appearance of singular “they” is so old that it was still spelled with the thorn (þei)
also in that regard, there are languages (swedish, and my native language german are among them) with a grammatical gender to nouns. Coming then from a language like that to a language where everything is the, you really need to think twice which pronoun is to be used.
Sure, but does that also cover accusing someone of inserting their politics into things when they suggest a change? Especially one that has nothing to do with politics at all?
