Replace "his" with "their" for gender neutrality

[sk22]

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

[MasterOfTheTiger]

https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html

[JoshuaKimsey]

This is unnecessary as English grammar uses masculine pronouns as gender-neutral pronouns, much like most other languages of the world, such as Spanish, French, and German.

[sk22]

guess it makes no sense to create a politically biased pull request on a political repo, does it

[TristanBomb]

This has been discussed before. In almost all circumstances, I agree - the singular they is the most neutral wording to use, and if this had been another question, I would merge immediately. However, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a quote from Karl Marx, and hence changing "his" to "they" would alter the quote.

I am not fundamentally opposed to changing it, though, and perhaps the question would be well-served by a set of quotation marks.

[teo-tsirpanis]

What about one's?

[Genora51]

I think their works perfectly well grammatically; the issue is more about whether or not to change a direct quote. Personally I'm not averse to using the singular they here even if it does change the original quote a little, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus on this presently.

[sk22]

I think their works perfectly well grammatically; the issue is more about whether or not to change a direct quote. Personally I'm not averse to using the singular they here even if it does change the original quote a little, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus on this presently.

i agree. i mean, in the context of 8values, the question isn't whether you agree with the quote itself, but whether you agree with the meaning of the quote (which is the same with either pronouns), so i kinda dislike the idea of putting quotation marks around it.

but i get the controversy. and yeah, i think using "one" would also make sense. maybe "from each according to one's ability to each according to one's needs" is better than with the singular they pronoun, but imo "they" better reflects the original quote. but i'm not an expert on the language

[connorwilloughby]

Don't agree with the pronoun neutrality but if you're going to do it it makes sense to use the line from sk's most recent comment.

"from each according to one's ability to each according to one's needs"

[papel]

First, we shouldn't use ideology when making the question and the act of wishing "gender neutrality" is a ideology.
However, when we use the words 'everyone', 'each one', 'anyone', 'no-one and so on, the right pronoun is the singular they.

And most people don't know that it is quote from Karl Marx. The text should be clear and easy to understand. It should be rewritten to be more specific and clarify if it is about the poor, unskilled or disabled.