Re: [PATCH] docs: process: use gender-neutral pronouns

[Kees Cook <kees@kernel.org>]

On Wed, Sep 09, 2026 at 09:14:04AM -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> Ruben Sutton <ruben@scstudios.tech> writes:
> 
> > Several process documents use gendered pronouns when referring
> > generically to developers and maintainers. Use singular they instead,
> > making the language inclusive without changing its meaning.
> >
> > Leave pronouns referring to named people and text in attributed
> > quotations unchanged.
> >
> > Assisted-by: LLM
> > Signed-off-by: Ruben Sutton <ruben@scstudios.tech>
> > ---
> >  Documentation/process/2.Process.rst            | 2 +-
> >  Documentation/process/5.Posting.rst            | 2 +-
> >  Documentation/process/6.Followthrough.rst      | 2 +-
> >  Documentation/process/handling-regressions.rst | 2 +-
> >  Documentation/process/howto.rst                | 2 +-
> >  Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst   | 2 +-
> >  6 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
> 
> Ouch.
> 
> I have no objection in principle to this change, but if we try to clean
> up the whole kernel in this way we're going to have a *lot* of churn
> and, undoubtedly, some unpleasant discussions at some point.
> 
> I'm tempted to raise this question at the maintainers summit to see if I
> can get some sort of project-wide policy laid out.

FWIW, I'd agree "indefinite they" (or "singular they") is the right
language here: "his or her" is both annoying to read (too many words)
and non-inclusive. Using "their" solves both.

-Kees

-- 
Kees Cook