Do you have a source for your claim that code examples with Alice and Bob with she/he pronouns are not accepted on Stack Exchange? I haven't seen any claim like that before.
>June 2018: There was a TL discussion about gender-neutral pronouns and then "preferred pronouns". (I know they're not "preferred", but this was the phrasing used by the people bringing it up.) Some moderators who are not native English speakers expressed confusion. I said I avoid singular they for that reason, 95% of the time you can write around the problem, and (on SE) I'm offended when someone edits my posts badly to solve a gender-neutrality problem. (Editing well is fine, which usually means pluralizing or using a name or something like that instead of either generic "he" or singular "they".) Some people said not using preferred pronouns invalidates the person; I said for me it's not about the person at all but the quality of my own writing (an important part of my identity). Tension rose, other people said some things I saw as bullying, and I stepped out. For a long time after, I didn't enter the room unless strictly necessary. Note: no employee said anything to me about my role in this conversation, and while some other mods disagreed with my position, none said anything like "this is a Code of Conduct (CoC) violation". Employees witnessed this discussion.
I don't see anything in there that would apply to fictional characters (Alice and Bob). It all seems to be only about real people. Also I don't see anything in there that indicates Stack Exchange says you can't refer to Alice as "she", unless Alice specifically wants to be called by some other pronoun.
theyre editing posts for perceived or pretend offense
if it was a specific person then theres nothing to edit because you would just use the pronouns and there wouldnt be any issue. they dont talk about anyone who specifically wanted different pronouns in that story
> theyre editing posts for perceived or pretend offense
Who are "they"? Monica in that part is upset about people coming along and adding weird grammar into her posts. Those people could be other mods, or could be even regular Stack Exchange users. At no point does she say Stack Exchange staff are editing her posts, or that the editors were following a Stack Exchange rule.
> then you would just use the pronouns and there wouldnt be any issue
Monica has said she never uses 3rd person singular pronouns. So no, she would not "just use the pronouns". And people have taken issue with the fact that she never uses 3rd person singular pronouns, that's the reason she was fired.
> they dont talk about anyone who specifically wanted different pronouns in that story
Just because Monica doesn't mention a specific person by name in the blog post doesn't mean there wasn't a specific person involved with the situation. I think it's very likely the story Monica is talking about involved a specific person.
exactly "they" are people who create problems where they dont exist.
if YOU specifically dont have a specific preferred pronoun then theres no problem to be concerned over. editing posts to be gender neutral is the most privileged form of outrage ever
