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+# Gender-neutral Chromium code |
+ |
+## Why this is important |
+ |
+Some points in our code, documentation and comments contain needless assumptions |
+about the gender of a future reader, user, etc. __Example: "When the user logs |
+into his profile."__ |
+ |
+Our [Code of Conduct](https://www.chromium.org/conduct) under "Be respectful and |
+constructive" says: |
+ |
+> Each of us has the right to __enjoy our experience__ and participate without |
+> fear of harassment, __discrimination__, or __condescension__, whether blatant |
+> or subtle. |
+ |
+Emphasis is added: unnecessarily gendered code is discriminatory and |
+condescending, and reading biased code isn't enjoyable. |
+ |
+## Suggestions on how to keep code gender-neutral |
+ |
+These are only suggestions. You make the call. |
+ |
+Things to avoid: |
+ |
+* Gendered pronouns: he / she / him / her / his / hers, etc. |
+* Instances of the phrases "he or she", "his/hers", "(s)he", etc. All of these |
+ still exclude those who don't identify with either gender, and implicitly |
+ (slightly) favor one gender via listing it first. |
+* "Guys" as a gender-neutral term, which has male associations. Usually in |
+ comments it implies anthropomorphism of inanimate objects and should be |
+ replaced with a more precise technical term. If it does refer to people, |
+ consider using "everyone", "folks", "people", "peeps", "y'all", etc. |
+* Other gendered words: "brother", "mother", "man", etc. |
+ |
+Cases that are likely fine to leave alone include: |
+ |
+* References to a specific person ("Rachel is on leave; update this when she is |
+ back."). |
+* A name ("Guy" and "He" are both valid names). |
+* A language code ("he" is the ISO 639-1 language code for Hebrew). |
+* He as an abbreviation for "helium". |
+* The Spanish word "he". |
+* References to a specific fictional person ([Alice, Bob, ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob)). |
+ * For new code/comments, consider using just 'A', 'B' as names. |
+* Quotations and content of things like public-domain books. |
+* Partner agreements and legal documents we can no longer edit. |
+* Occurrences in randomly generated strings or base-64 encodings. |
+* Content in a language other than English unless you are fluent in that |
+ language. |
+ |
+How to change the remaining awkward intrusions of gender: |
+ |
+* Try rewording things to not involve a pronoun at all. In many cases this makes |
+ the documentation clearer. Example: "I tell him when I am all done." → "I tell |
+ the owner when I am all done." This saves the reader a tiny bit of mental |
+ pointer-dereferencing. |
+* Try using [singular they](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they). |
+* Try making hypothetical people plural. "When the user is done he'll |
+ probably..." |
+→ "When users complete this step, they probably...". |
+* When referring to a non-person, "it" or "one" may be good alternatives ([wikipedia link](http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neutral_pronouns#It_and_one_as_gender-neutral_pronouns)). |
+ |
+## Example changelists |
+ |
+For a long list of changes, see [this bug](https://crbug.com/542537). Some |
+examples: |
+ |
+* [Make some code gender neutral](https://crrev.com/e3496e19094cf7e711508fe69b197aa13725c790) |
+* [Updates comments in the src files to remove gender specific terms](https://crrev.com/5b9d52e8a6ec9c11a675bae21c7d1b0448689fb6) |
+* [Gender-neutralize a few more comments / strings](https://crrev.com/993006d919c7b0d3e2309041c1e45b8d7fc7ff0e) |
+* [Make some android code gender neutral](https://crrev.com/93d83ac96c3d1c27be9ea7e842b25b3dded2550b) |
+ |
+## Tools |
+ |
+* [Here](https://cs.chromium.org/search/?q=%28%5E%7C%5Cs%7C%5C%28%7C%5C%5B%29%28%5BHh%5De%7C%5BSs%5Dhe%7C%5BHh%5Dis%7C%5BHh%5Ders?%7C%5BHh%5Dim%7C%5BHh%5Der%7C%5BGg%5Duys?%29%5Cb&sq=package:chromium&type=cs) |
+ is a code search link prepopulated with a search that finds a lot of gendered |
+ terms. |
+* To search for files containing gendered terms, use this command (or a variant |
+ of it): |
+``` |
+git grep -wiEIl \ '(he)|(she)|(his)|(hers)|(him)|(her)|(guy)|(guys)' |
+``` |
+* To search in a file open in vim for gendered terms, use this command: |
+``` |
+/\<he\>\|\<she\>\|\<his\>\|\<hers\>\|\<him\>\|\<her\>\|\<guy\>\|\<guys\>|\<man\>\c |
+``` |
+* There are presubmit checks available for this that are run for the infra and |
+ v8 repos. They are not run for other repos as there are too many false |
+ positives. |
+ |
+## Thanks |
+ |
+This document is based on an internal Google document by Rachel Grey and others, |
+which can be found [here](https://goto.google.com/gender-neutral-code) (sorry, |
+Googler only). |